My wife and I saw a documentary tonight called The Wild Whites of West Virginia on Time Warner's On Demand. It was a Tribeca Film Festival selection and produced by Johnny Knoxville (of Jackass fame). Before you dismiss this movie because of Knoxville's sophomoric record, you should check this doc out. It was absolutely fascinating.
This movie follows an "outlaw" family in Boone County, WV, for one year showing their utter disregard for law, social norms, and discretion. Between the family members in jail, the rampant recreational drug use, and the complete surrealness of their lifestyle, it is an eye-opening look at life in the hollows of West Virginia coal country. The men are fighting and shooting people that cross them. The women are CONSTANTLY pregnant. The children drop out in middle school. They all live on government checks, committing prescription drug fraud, social security fraud, selling weed and pills, and generally living reckless lives. Yet beyond my complete repulsion at their lifestyle, the characters are largely reckless from a pervasive economic hopeless in the coal towns of Appalachia.
If you get a chance, check this movie out. Not only is it entertaining and often funny (you're laughing at the people, not with them), but at the end you see a part of America that is as foreign as cultures ten thousand miles away.
This movie follows an "outlaw" family in Boone County, WV, for one year showing their utter disregard for law, social norms, and discretion. Between the family members in jail, the rampant recreational drug use, and the complete surrealness of their lifestyle, it is an eye-opening look at life in the hollows of West Virginia coal country. The men are fighting and shooting people that cross them. The women are CONSTANTLY pregnant. The children drop out in middle school. They all live on government checks, committing prescription drug fraud, social security fraud, selling weed and pills, and generally living reckless lives. Yet beyond my complete repulsion at their lifestyle, the characters are largely reckless from a pervasive economic hopeless in the coal towns of Appalachia.
If you get a chance, check this movie out. Not only is it entertaining and often funny (you're laughing at the people, not with them), but at the end you see a part of America that is as foreign as cultures ten thousand miles away.
