Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell

Well I finally managed to get a hold of a copy of this movie and like most people who watched the first film by Martin Bell and his wife Mary Ellen Mark, ('Streetwise', on the subject of the homeless kids of Seattle and the harrowing yet fascinating stories that unfolded unbelievably before your eyes...) I always had hoped for some kind of sequel. Just something, anything that gave us an update on the lives of those kids. Or, as in this case the life of one of those kids.

As the title states, this is all about TINY. If you don't know who she was in the Streetwise film or don't recall then she was the very young prostitute girl who kind of stood out for a number of reasons, one being her upbeat and smiley attitude every time we saw her on the film. She just seemed so happy. Yes, it seems like a contradiction when you consider the life she was living and some of the things that happened to her but there you have it. She really was memorable due to her hugely happy and smiling face. Almost like a poster girl for homelessness and prostitution. I know how ridiculous that sounds, I am being sarcastic of course.

The other main thing that made her stand out to me in the Streetwise film was her Mother. When she was talking to her mother at one point on the film and her mother said something about her being a prostitute and then talked to camera when Tiny had left the room. Her mother then went on to say she didn't approve of tiny being a prostitute but it was just a phase she was going through and it wasn't something she would do for long.

WHAT?!

I thought I was hearing things! I have never heard a mother have such a lackadaisical attitude towards a daughters behaviour, especially when the behaviour in question is prostitution! That really smacked me in the face when I heard that. I remember it so well. (If not quite remembering the exact words used!)

So Tiny is now older. A grown up woman. She has 9 (...or was it 10?) kids. She has an opiate addiction. She is overweight. She has no job.

She is living the life, basically, that one might expect someone would end up living having been through what the poor girl went through and, having had the mother and the motherly advice on things like prostitution that she had also.

I felt so bad watching this. It was, like Streetwise, a sad view on the life of someone living a difficult track and showing you up close how they live it. How they deal with it. But this isn't Streetwise. This wasn't a fascinating look. This was a very tragic look.

The image projected was a tragic and desperate view. Tiny was getting older and she was struggling with so many aspects of life at the time this was filmed, or in the times before the film as she described in it. There wasn't even the slight comedic relief like the pizza ordering by Rat in the Streetwise movie or other funny scenes by other characters. This just felt like watching someone on a downward journey, struggling with too many kids and not enough help and and well, it saddened me.

If you are looking for entertainment then look elsewhere.

Another review called this A SOBERING DOCUMENTARY.

I think I will conclude and leave it right there.

Very sobering indeed.

I do hope Tiny got off the opiates in the end. I am taking them myself for pain and have become dependant/reliant/addicted to them myself so I know exactly what that is about. I know how she will struggle to get off and away from them too but she is a strong woman and she can do it if anyone can!

TINY: THE LIFE OF ERIN BLACKWELL is Martin Bell's follow-up documentary to 1984's Streetwise & the culmination of 30+ years of work between Bell & his wife, Mary Ellen Mark. In Streetwise, we meet many characters, all street kids in Seattle--but the charismatic stand-out of the film was Erin "Tiny" Blackwell, a 14-year old runaway, who makes ends meet through prostitution. In Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell, we step further into Tiny's world, from the time she met Mary Ellen Mark in 1983 for the LIFE Magazine photo essay "Streets of the Lost", to the present day as the mother of 10 struggling with a methadone addiction. Throughout the film, we meet her children, who range in age from 30 to 5. We witness not only the continuing struggles of Erin's life, but also those of her children, some of whom have encountered the same difficulties with drug addiction & the law as their mother. Although each of her kids have very different personalities, they all seem to have inherited their mother's charm, spunk & smarts. The film touches on subjects that are acutely familiar to Seattle (& many other cities)--the vicious cycles of homelessness, addiction & racism. Although we are left with no solid answers as to how to combat these problems for future generations, in the eyes of some of her youngest children we are left with a twinkle of hope for their futures.

It's hard to know how to come up with 600 words to say about this truly compassionate and honest work.

Life is pain. Pain is passed from one generation to the next.

We love and we are selfish. We are chained by the past and, sometimes, we struggle nobly against it, despite all of our flaws and limitations.

Streetwise and Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell should be used, in tandem, as a introduction to the complexities of social work and of human behavior more broadly. The two films tell the whole tale.

Are we entirely products of our conditioning (i.e. Without responsibility or culpability)?

No.

Do we have genuine free will-- and can we defy our conditioning opt out of intergenerational trauma?

Also, no.

Is this an irreconcilable paradox? Maybe. But what more can we say?

Blessings to Erin, her family, the filmmakers, and everyone involved in the making of these films.

I'm surprised this movie drew so few fans given the popularity of "Streetwise."

I watched it for the second time the other night and found it better than I remembered. It's really, actually, in a class with the first film. Fascinating people share their experiences with Erin from the first film.

Make no mistake, this is heartbreaking stuff, again, much like the first film. We sense at the end, after survival and occasional triumphs, the past is coming back for Erin's family. We can only hope they are somehow moving on in love. See Rat's story on the Criterion extras for a bit more hopeful story.

If you liked the first film, you should defiantly see this, as I say, included with the first film in the Criterion Set.