By Michelle Morrissey
NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — It was supposed to be a new Riviera, a retirement and tourism mecca in the 1950s where people could enjoy water skiing, sunbathing, and martinis by the sea.
Now, the Salton Sea in California is considered one of the country’s worst ecological disasters.
Filmmakers Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer chronicle the rise and fall of this would-be paradise that is now populated by an eccentric mix of characters in their documentary, “Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea.”
The movie, narrated by cult film icon John Waters, will be aired in Beverly, Mass., at the Hastings House on Sunday. Springer will be there to discuss it.
“We thought it was some sort of nuclear testing site. You see flooded buildings and all these dead fish,” said Metzler, who, while traveling on a road trip with Springer, got lost and ended up in Salton City.
“We were taken aback by how weird it was, and we didn’t know what to make out of it,” Metzler said.
Ultimately, they would make their documentary, which runs just more than an hour and depicts the bizarre, bleak life of those who live around the sea that was accidentally created 100 years ago.
In 1901, the Colorado River was diverted to flood the Salton Sink, a dried-out riverbed. It created nutrient rich land farmers could work year-round.
Eventually, silt blocked things up and several unprotected cuts were made in the river to keep water flowing. And flow it did when, in 1907, heavy rains caused the Colorado to break free. The Salton Sea became a permanent body of water.
In the 1950s, the idea to create a resort community around the man-made mistake was born. Yacht clubs were built. Fishermen arrived in droves. Land was divided into buildable lots. And Salton City promised homebuyers an affordable paradise on earth.
That changed in the 1970s, when salty agricultural run-off and a pair of heavy tropical storms caused flooding to ravage the would-be bucolic neighborhoods.
Because Salton is “like a puddle at the bottom of a bathtub” with no natural outlet, whatever gets into the sea stays there. High salt content killed fish by the millions, sometimes piling up 2 or 3 feet deep, according to one Salton resident. The decaying fish bodies then provide nutrients for algae, which grows rapidly, encouraging a spike in the fish population. The fish population then dies once again due to the salt content.
In the film, this perverted ecological cycle isn’t the only thing bizarre about life on the Salton Sea. There’s also an eclectic mix of characters, including “Hunky Daddy,” a Hungarian immigrant who provides beer to neighborhood kids, and earnest diner owner Paul Gaston, who is seen closing up his diner after nearly three decades.
Some people believe the Salton Sea is a toxic dump with water contaminated by rotting fish and birds. But others say it’s the opposite: They’ve eaten at Salton Sea fish fries for decades and say they’ve never been sick. They swim in the water and say it cures skin ailments.
With much camp, the film delivers just the right amount of its foreboding message on the environment, while keeping viewers entertained with sound clips and kitschy visuals.
To be sure, this isn’t something to bring the kids to — there’s a nudist who waves to tourists as they enter Salton City, and while Hunky Daddy has a thick accent, it’s easy to make out the numerous swear words with which he peppers his opinions.
But adults will enjoy the film and its easy-to-navigate telling of the Salton Sea’s complicated past.
The Beverly showing is part of a Greater Boston movie tour. Metzler said they picked the sites because they thought that a mix of people in the region would enjoy the film for different reasons.
“It’s an environmental story with a quirky backdrop that we thought people in that area could really appreciate,” he said.
“Plagues and Pleasures” ends with the Salton Sea’s fate still up in the air. It was a pet project of none other than Sonny Bono when he was a California congressman. But when he was killed in a skiing accident in 1997, the cause fizzled out.
“As filmmakers, sometimes you want a traditional wrap-up of a story ending. But like so many things, (the Salton community) kind of continues to chug along. In a way the people of the Salton Sea are people who will continue to live their lives no matter what happens,” Metzler said.
“We call it an environmental comedy. If you like the odd and campy stuff, you’ll have a good time. If you’re an environmental person, you’ll like it because certainly what’s going on in Salton Sea is going on throughout the United States.
Michelle Morrissey writes for The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, Mass.
