“Where is everybody?”
Michael Schwarz is wondering, and he aims to find out.
Schwarz is a documentary filmmaker from Oklahoma who, with his video camera, has been in and out of Pine Bluff since early 2023 and collected 50 to 60 hours of footage across some nine weeks of taping.
On Sunday, he posted a 3-minute trailer for the segment, now titled What REALLY Happened to America’s Fastest Shrinking Town? And he’s looking to have the first of two to three episodes out by the end of spring or early summer.
“I’m always looking for the next project – something to keep my creative juices flowing,” he said, “and Pine Bluff jumped out at me. It’s full of people trying to change the city’s image, and everybody wants to talk about it. ‘Don’t get shot,’ some said, or ‘Watch out for the crime.’ And they would say that even if they didn’t live in Pine Bluff or hadn’t lived there in years.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Schwarz was quick to point out that, even though he’s heard all the negative crime comments about the town, he personally has never had a bad experience here.
“I’ve never felt unsafe once,” he said. “I went into all those places, all those abandoned buildings by myself. I occasionally would run into someone down on their luck, but I never felt threatened. I oftentimes feel scared going to other places but not once in Pine Bluff.”
Schwarz begins the trailer by standing in the middle of Main Street, which at times can look like — cue the tumbleweed — an abandoned movie set and then, with arms wide, asks where is everyone. He cuts in footage from a couple of Little Rock TV station newscasts about the fast and steep loss of population the city has suffered and a Main Street once cut off from traffic by piles of bricks from fallen buildings. He goes on to interview a handful of public-facing individuals: activist Jack Foster; Jodi Alexander-Robinson, a former council member; and Mark Cannon, who uses a Facebook livestream to publicize a variety of topics, among others.
Schwarz said the trailer, which some might perceive to be a negative take on Pine Bluff, could have shut down conversation, but he said it’s had the opposite effect.
“I had someone call me to complain that I was being too negative,” he said. “I told them that I wanted to get everyone’s side of the story. I want to show people the real Pine Bluff, whatever direction that takes me. So I thought I was done taping, but I’m not. I’ve had other filmmakers from here call and say I should talk to this person and that person. It’s actually opened a lot more doors. This will make the episodes even better.”
What Schwarz said he had found in his time in Pine Bluff was that, no matter who he talked to, everybody wanted change for Pine Bluff.
“Everyone is so gung ho,” he said. “They want their city to be vibrant once again and to have a good image.”
And the time he has spent in Pine Bluff has been intense, Schwarz said.
“When I’m here, I’m doing nothing except that,” he said. “I try not to just show up. I usually come in with a plan. So nine weeks has definitely been a lot — especially with me doing this on my own.”
His main focus is on the abandoned buildings in town, saying at one point that he’s surrounded by hundreds. He said he tries to keep his own feelings out of his movie making but finds himself using the pronoun “we” when talking about Pine Bluff as if he’s a resident.
“The city has already come back from the days of the bricks falling into Main Street,” he said. “Now there’s the Saenger Theater and the Pines Hotel and countless other places that need to be demolished or put back into use. The problem is that if a city demolishes too many structures, you can lose your town. The town’s identity starts to go away.”
For that reason, he said, he’s rooting for Pine Bluff to see its fortunes change for the better.
“My personal hope is that I want to see Pine Bluff come back,” he said. “I want to see those buildings reused.”
In a way, he said, the documentary could turn into a catalyst for such improvements to happen. He said he made a piece about an abandoned building in Oklahoma City. The building was about to be torn down, but then all that changed.
“Someone saw it that didn’t know about the building and didn’t know it was about to be demolished,” he said. “It was going to be torn down with taxpayer dollars and no one would have batted an eye. Now, three different proposals are on the table for repurposing the structure.”
Schwarz works under the label Prairie Nation Creative and distributes his pieces through the Abandoned Atlas or Abandoned Arkansas platform. Asked if he was going to try to get the Pine Bluff documentary on Netflix or another streaming service, he said it was a tricky question. He said he had pitched the piece in that direction but had gotten only low-ball offers.
Too, he said his experience with streaming services had been disappointing. He has some of his creations are on Prime and Apple TV, but he’s never seen a dime from either service. Schwarz also said that in addition to not being offered much money for his work, big companies want creative control over the projects.
“This would have been a completely different documentary if someone was telling me what to do,” he said, adding that his funding for now has come in the way of donations.
Consequently, Schwarz said he would be putting the documentary on YouTube, saying that the piece needs to have easy access by the public and not be behind a paywall.
“In my head, this is the smarter way to go,” he said. “Just because it’s on YouTube doesn’t mean it will be low quality. It doesn’t need to be on Hulu or Netflix. The content will speak for itself.”
As for when he will know the documentary should wrap, Schwarz said it’s all about the buildings.
“The story of Pine Bluff will never end,” he said. “For me, it will be when the abandoned buildings are either demolished or restored. That will be the end. Not when Pine Bluff gets a new mayor or is the [Go Forward] tax good or bad. To me it will be physically seeing the change when you drive into town. The series can piece that together as it’s happening.”
Michael Schwarz, a documentary filmmaker, says he is trying to find out wny Pine Bluff has so many abandoned buildings. (Special to The Commercial)