I sat down with Dan Klores and Ron Berger, directors and producers of The Boys of 2nd Street Park. This is the first documentary by Klores and Berger, their first film endeavor and they "self-did it" as far as shooting, funding, etc It is the story of a group of boys- and the men they became- who grew up in Brighton Beach in the 1950's and who called the 2nd Street Park their "home". They came of age during the turbulent era of the 1960's, and we share in their trials, failures, accomplishments and most difficult moments, recognizing parts of our own lives in their stories.

What prompted you at this point in your life to make this film or was it something you always wanted to do?
DK: There was a feeling that you hear that so many things that happen to so many people and you think well, that would make an interesting story, but how would you tell the story-in a book? No, in a film, and I mentioned it to Ron and he clicked in one second and that's when we started.

What was so compelling about the six main characters whose stories you focused on from the original 25?
DK:….it was hard to get it down…right away….some were guarded, not open,… but you learn as you go along that less is more….there weren't any surprises actually….
RB:…When Dan started doing interviews early on he would call me after and say 'you can't believe this, even the cameraman and camera crew were crying.' From a storytelling point of view it became also clear to us that each of them had an interesting arch in their story….and the six really have very different, very distinct, but very connected storylines.

The film is really such a great jumping board or tool to explore the time period- experimentation with drugs, sexual experimentation, the war (Vietnam). Did you intend that from the onset?
DK: Yes, absolutely…. Larry Brown says it in the film 'some people went too far, but that was the experience'
RB: The reason why it has, we think, the potential to have such social significance is looking back, you're talking about the most important decade, starting with John Kennedy getting shot- we were freshmen in high school, Martin Luther King getting shoot, Bobby Kennedy getting shot the man landing on the moon, the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon resigning…. An amazing period of time that no one had ever seen and this generation that the film represents fell headlong into that.

Do you think that part of the attraction of the park was that many came from immigrant families and lived in small apartments and it became a surrogate family?
DK: The Park was a haven. The apartments were small. It was all about the park, even when you were five or six years old….And then there was that first love and addiction…a real obsession…everything revolved around basketball.
RB: Basketball was the game that just captured everybody.
DK: That park was special, I remember my grandfather taking me when I was four or five, walking on the boardwalk, taking me to that park, it was special…it was like a different neighborhood, you met different kids….
DK: It really was a sense of family….when we had the reunion we shot for the end of the film and had a party that night and it was clearly a family reunion.

There are instances in the film when the characters stop turning to others, was it a sense of preserving the innocence of the park?
RB: One of the things I heard a lot is that. you look at some of the decisions that people made at certain points and say how did that happen? The whole film is really about decisions. Baseball is a matter of interest; life is a matter of interest too….

The use of photographs- personal and archives- was very effective in setting the tone and showing the contrast of the free-spiritedness and freedom of the characters in the past compared to the present. How do you feel about the use of photos and what was the process of obtaining them?
DK: We asked everyone we interviewed to bring photographs. We also had a great researcher and I think we got almost everything we wanted.
RB: Yes, we had some great stills of the Grateful Dead but the moving images were too expensive.

Now that the film had the reunion and got many of the people back in touch do you think they will continue to be in touch?
RB: Yeah….we started playing these games ten years ago and it's gradually grown…everybody's still got the same moves….

Rachel Markus