EIFF Review: Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea

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"Enjoy climate, comfort, and stench!!!" That's the tag line from the poster for this, another fine doc at EIFF05, followed by "featuring Hungarian revolutionaries, Christian nudists, pop stars, land sharks, hard drinkers, empty cities, failed resort towns, tons of dead fish, a dying café and a man who built a mountain."

Ah the tangled webs we weave when first we practice to irrigate a desert wasteland. So begins the tragic tale of the Salton Sea, when a water scheme nearly straight out of Chinatown plots to feed farmland east of San Diego. Things go awry as they often do, the water is contaminated by chemical-laden run-off from the farms, some storms blow through and cause all kinds of havoc, and before you know it, what was once a booming resort to rival Palm Springs turns into, what narrator John Waters so elegantly puts it, a toxic margarita.

But the people that were there for the boom refused to be scared off. Believing that one day it would be beautiful again, they stayed on. They grew old. And older. Some died off. But the ones that were left are a stalwart bunch of loonies the likes you'll never see outside of America, I bet (see first paragraph). I think it's quite apropos for two reasons that John Waters is the narrator. First, he's kind of eccentric in his own right. Second, his last name. Maybe not as eccentric as Hunky Daddy, the unofficial mayor of Salton City. Or the naked guy who waves to traffic on the highway. But hey, still eccentric.

So this is the story of the people who stayed, how the sea might never get better, and why there's a park named after Sonny Bono right there smack dab in the middle of it all. With Secuestro Express I determined that I would not be visiting Venezuela any time soon. Add this place to that list also.

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