by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

Sometime last month it was reported that Susan Sarandon, 68, exited the five-year personal relationship with New York-based ping-pong venture partner Jonathan Bricklin, 37, and while this isn’t an essential footnote in her long Oscar-winning career, ironically it does have a connection to her son’s new documentary “Storied Streets” since the impetus for the film was a player at the Sarandon-Bricklin club SPiN. Last night, after the documentary screened at the Ray Stark Theater in USC Film School, Sarandon and Robbins had a chance to discuss their project.

Chronicling a new “face” of homelessness, “Storied Streets” includes a ping-pong scene. “See that guy playing ping pong,” Sarandon points out at the Q & A, “he met Morgan at the club.” Both Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me") and Thomas Morgan ("Waiting for Mamu") are producers, with Morgan as Robbins’ co-director, on the documentary. The short story is that the player opened a world of homeless-in-hiding, people who are “unhoused” and on the down low, that represent an ever growing segment of the American population since the economy tanked around 2007. Although if you ask Sarandon, she will say that the true rise of homelessness in American “began with Reagan.”

“It’s funny,” Sarandon adds, “when people get angry at me because I am an actor and have an opinion. But if you’re a bad actor (read: Ronald Reagan), you get elected and people listen to you… I just remember what he did when he ran SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild). He gave away a lot of rights.”

And no, she doesn’t think the coming announcement of Hillary Clinton’s second run for the Presidency will help. “I don’t vote with my vagina,” Sarandon says, with a smile. “If Elizabeth Warren (US Senator, Mass.) came up, I would go that way. She (Hillary Clinton) lost me when she voted for the war without looking. Look at her sources of funding, Monsanto is in there.”

This political gene runs in the family, and is the basis for the mother-son advocacy for the unhoused that makes “Storied Streets” not just another look at the issues surrounding poverty, but a gritty, soulful exploration of being human in the face of the American Dream, of admitting that the Land of Opportunity also requires its citizens to uphold the ideal that if you don’t ‘strike it rich,’ ‘make it big,’ or ‘fulfill your potential’ you must have a character flaw.

“Imagine right now, if you had nothing,” director Jack Henry Robbins poses the theoretical. “How are you going to get a job without an address? Without a way to take a shower?”

Robbins, who turns 26 on May 15, describes the people he filmed from New York to Denver to Las Vegas to Joplin with a combination of respect and compassion. For him, Skid Row in Los Angeles was the “scariest. Because there is a hierarchy there, and we were not part of that hierarchy. I’m 6’4,” my friend was 6’5,” and that helped. But I think just being open and transparent helped. We wanted to tell a truthful story.”

With their real names withheld, a dozen different people across the country put “a face to homelessness,” as Sarandon puts it. Grass-roots organizations like Picture The Homeless, The King’s Kitchen in Charlotte, North Carolina, Father Woody’s Haven of Hope in Colorado, and PATH (People Assisting The Homeless) in Los Angeles provide insights into successful transitions from unhoused to housed. One man recounts the story of becoming homeless at 51, of “living” on a park bench for a year, and finally “someone said my name. I had not heard anyone call me by my name in months.” The big turn-around in his life came the day a committed volunteer took action. “He looked me right in the face and said ‘will you allow me to help you?’”

Tessa Madden from PATH is part of the Q & A after the screening. Madden went to USC with Robbins, and their interest in advocacy dovetailed for “Storied Streets.” She points out that PATH doesn’t just “put people in empty apartments” but works to follow up on their cases.

The enormity of poverty in America is unfortunately combined with “Compassion Fatigue,” as Neil Donovan, Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, explains. “It’s when a community” is overwhelmed by a burgeoning homeless population and seek to legislate the problems away. Thus places like Phoenix, or Tempe, AZ, make it “against the law” to sleep on a bench, in short, to be homeless.

Seeing Susan Sarandon hold a conversation with her son Jack Henry is to watch the skillful transition from parent to partner in the business. He looks a lot like his father, actor Tim Robbins, from whom Sarandon split in 2009. And as a mother, Susan Sarandon is a far cry from the cloying stage mother she played last year in "The Last of Robin Hood," about Errol Flynn, with Dakota Fanning. 

Some may view this documentary as a getting a helping hand from a famous parent, but the film stands on its own. “Storied Streets” is a must-see. And here are some facts from the documentary that will hopefully nudge the issue front and center for us all...

Fact Sheet from “Storied Streets” Documentary 

• As many as 3.5 million people will experience homelessness this year. 
• 1.5 million of the homeless will be children and as many as 600,000 will be under the age of 5. 
• 35% of those who are homeless are employed. 
• Top five causes of homelessness are:
  1. Lack of affordable housing
  2. Lack of a livable wage
  3. Medical issues/conditions
  4. Domestic violence
  5. Mental illness 
• 600,000 veterans will experience homelessness this year. 
• Homelessness was the only group submitted under the Hate Crime Act that was not admitted - yet there has been nearly triple the number of homeless-related hate crime deaths than there has been for all currently protected classes combined. 
• Only 5 states in the US have classified the violence against the homeless as a hate crime. 
• There are over 1700 laws on the books of cities across the country that target the homeless. 
• Progress is being made. With some states increasing minimum wage and states like Utah proactively adopting the Housing First model, homelessness has began to finally see a decrease. 
• It costs on average more than 3 times the amount of money to incarcerate someone as it does to house them. 
• 44% of the homeless population is unsheltered. 
•  There are 4 times as many animal shelters in the US as there are homeless shelters. 
• Federal cuts to food stamps threaten 3.8 million people. 
• Federal funding for public housing has continued to decrease and between 2009 and 2012 decreased by 25%.

Visit http://www.storiedstreets.com to rent or purchase a download of Jack Henry Robbins’ co-directed film.

Susan Sarandon Favorites is the headliner for Sundance’s online destination http://www.docclub.com for streaming on demand. She hand-picked the selections for the month of April, as in:  “Academy Award-winning actress and activist Susan Sarandon curates a collection of her favorite documentaries which cover enormously important topics, from artistic freedom to homelessness.” 

"When I watch a doc, at least once, I want my head to explode and my heart to feel. I want to see the world differently. Know something I didn’t know before. Engage me but most of all surprise me. Let there be an image, a person or a moment that never leaves. I might forget a lot of the particulars, but the documentary will now have lodged itself in me. I appreciate a doc when it encourages you to be the protagonist in your own life or when it makes you itch to solve a problem, fight for justice. Others celebrate life and the human spirit. Doesn’t get much better than this." – Susan Sarandon, Academy Award Winner and Activist

Titles include: “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,””Trouble the Water,””Beaches of Agnes” (directed by Agnes Varda),”Marwencol,” “Pink Ribbons, Inc.,” and “Storied Streets.” SundanceNow Doc Club is a subscriber service, where you can stream “Storied Streets” on demand, among other worthy curated projects.

(Editor's Note: SPiN ping-pong club has introduced the game as a scholastic sport, according to Sarandon. "Kids who never joined anything are playing... It's where girls can beat the boys." SPiN info is http://wearespin.com/about/)

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