By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: American director Martin Bell, who helmed Streetwise, American Heart, Tiny: The Life Of Erin Blackwell and more.
Few creatives featured in the Unsung Auteurs column have as small but singularly focused oeuvre than that of Martin Bell. His work is important, emotionally raw, profoundly resonant, and, for the most part, criminally under-appreciated. He’s made one feature film, a collection of shorts, two feature documentaries, and two telemovies, and these are truly the work of an Unsung Auteur. Nearly all of Martin Bell’s projects focus on people who grind out an existence on the margins of society, living rough, working the sex trade, doing time, and scraping by just to survive. It’s tough stuff, and Martin Bell deserves far more credit for it.
After working as a crew member and cinematographer on various films, and directing a music video or two, Martin Bell’s first feature documentary literally blossomed out of the dirt. His wife – the late famed photographer Mary Ellen Mark – had produced a stunning photo essay (with journalist Cheryl McCall) for Life Magazine called “Streets Of The Lost”, which vividly captured the harsh day-to-day of a collection of street kids in Seattle. One of the most compelling and magnetic of these kids was Erin “Tiny” Blackwell, a thirteen-year-old prostitute whose screen presence convinced Mary Ellen Mark and Martin Bell to make a film drawn from the “Streets Of The Lost” essay.
Funded by country icon Willie Nelson and his wife Connie Nelson, the 1984 documentary Streetwise was a striking and frequently shocking portrait of an America ignored. “The idea of the film was to give a voice to these disenfranchised teenagers to allow the audience to enter the world of these kids and give them a sense of what it takes to survive on the street,” Martin Bell told The International Center For Photography in 2014. “The relationship Mary Ellen and Cheryl had forged a few months earlier was immediately clear. It was a side of life I had never experienced before. It was raw and often unimaginably brutal. I hoped that by empowering these kids we might motivate others who have the power to make political and social change happen. By sharing their experiences in the film, it enabled many people around the world to see what a tragic waste of these young lives looked like. We’ve heard from fans of the film that it inspired them to volunteer at a shelter, pursue a career in social work, or just let them know that they weren’t alone if they were having trouble at home. Mary Ellen and I offered Tiny the chance to come live with us in New York, but she rejected our one condition that she go to school and decided to stay in Seattle.”
Streetwise was rightly acclaimed, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. It’s renowned as an important, essential work focusing on America’s cruel underbelly, and is part of the esteemed Criterion Collection. But even with that kind of cred, Streetwise still doesn’t quite get the cache it’s due, and neither does its director. Martin Bell followed the doco up with his debut feature film in 1992, which stands as a work so inexplicably forgotten and ignored to rate as something almost akin to a cinematic mystery demanding official investigation.
1992’s powerful, emotionally rending drama American Heart very much grew out of Streetwise. Major players in the industry were impressed with the doco, and brought in Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Mark to work on a feature film. Originally set to be produced by Warner Bros., the project languished until legend Jeff Bridges took it under his wing, agreeing to star and help get the film made. Based largely on two characters from Streetwise, American Heart is a quiet, simmering tour de force, where Bell proved how powerful his filmmaking chops really were. The story of an ex-con (Bridges) trying to reconnect with his teenage son (Edward Furlong), the film is tough, honest, and authentic at every turn. American Heart received good reviews and a few minor awards, but failed at the box office and soon disappeared. It’s a true gem screaming with seething rage to be rediscovered.
After the failure of American Heart, Martin Bell hasn’t directed a feature film since, but he has done some incredible work. He’s made some fascinating short films (1995’s The Amazing Plastic Lady, 2004’s Twins, 2010’s Prom), and a heartbreaking telemovie with 1996’s Hidden In America. In a searing performance, Beau Bridges plays an upstanding family man forced through circumstance onto the breadline. Again, Martin Bell documents those on the margins with respect and a deep well of sensitivity. Boasting a stellar supporting cast (Jeff Bridges, Bruce Davison, Jena Malone, Frances McDormand, Josef Sommer, Alice Krige), Hidden In America is another forgotten work from an important American filmmaker.
Streetwise, however, remains the essential work on Martin Bell’s resume, with the filmmaker returning to its direct subject matter on several different occasions. He crafted the 2021 doco Streetwise Revisited: Rat, and returned to Erin “Tiny” Blackwell a number of times, for the shorts Tiny At 20 (1993) and Erin (2005), and the full-length feature documentary Tiny: The Life Of Erin Blackwell (2016), a bruising portrait of a singularly compelling figure.
A vital documenter of an America that most people would prefer to ignore, the rediscovery of Martin Bell – whose list of proposed but ultimately unrealised projects is near devastating – should begin right now. “For me, making a film is both an emotional and technical process…it’s what makes the film work,” Martin Bell once said of his approach. “It is a balancing act between the underlying story ideas and the feelings I have towards what I see and how best to capture that.”
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Joan Freeman, Rod Amateau, Sam Wanamaker, Paul Aaron, Savage Steve Holland, Rudy Wurlitzer, Keith Gordon, Alan Metter, Lynne Littman, Chuck Russell, John Derek, Don Chaffey, Harley Cokeliss, Jeannot Szwarc, Craig Gillespie, David Greene, Ernest Pintoff, Paul Williams, Jo Heims, Lee H. Katzin, Christoper Cain, Ken Wiederhorn, Barbara Loden, David Mackenzie, Alan Rudolph, James Lee Barrett, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, Joan Tewkesbury, Jamaa Fanaka, Jack Starrett, Joseph Sargent, Jeffrey Schwarz, George Sidney, Philip Dunne, Zak Hilditch, Luke Sparke, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Morgan Matthews, Tom Laughlin, Diane Keaton, Ed Hunt, Nancy Savoca, Robert Vincent O’Neil, Marvin J. Chomsky, Sam Firstenberg, Jack Sholder, Richard Gray, Giuseppe Andrews, Gus Trikonis, Greydon Clark, Frances Doel, Gordon Douglas, Billy Fine, Craig R. Baxley, Harvey Bernhard, Bert I. Gordon, James Fargo, Jeremy Kagan, Robby Benson, Robert Hiltzik, John Carl Buechler, Rick Carter, Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
