Read about the film's characters on the Character Sketches page.

Read the Treatment of the Film (completed 3/98).

A bus drives through a mountain pass
A finger passes along a map, over Montana towns
and past mountain passes
we follow the finger to the town of Butte.
An ear with a headphone over it
the shadows and reflections of movement
the whirling wheel of a bus
a photograph of an old city
an old photograph of an old city
the movement
a song plays loud and its rhythm determines
the cuts of finger, or bus, of map, of photographs.

A friend faces the camera, "You're going where?"
"What are you going to find there?"

A bus pulls into a small bus station, green,
looking like a former hamburger stand.
Irene steps out
Irene closer
the headphone over her ears
she looks around at the people and baggage at the bus station
there are a couple people
though none of them pay attention to her.
She looks up at a mountain,
at a few tumble-down buildings
she looks up a hill
sees a jumble of buildings, glowing,
reflecting light.
She grabs her bag from the baggage out of the bus
she pulls out the straps from the bag
it's a backpack
She swings it up on her back and looks around
She walks away from the bus and the unloading.
She walks to the sidewalk
the sidewalk goes up a hill
she looks around
she turns the volume up on her music
she walks through a graveyard
A coffin is lowered into a grave
a little girl holds onto her mother's hand
The little girl holds a Kodak instamatic camera
She turns to towering mom and snaps a picture
The camera covers her face
A second coffin is lowered
The girl, grown, Irene, stands alone
a video camera raised halfway to her face
She tries to raise it further, fails
Her boyfriend moves his mouth, yelling silent
Her feet walk up the sidewalk, slanting toward the sky
Her boyfriend's face turn to cement
He looks into the camera,
He says,
"You've got that thing on again, don't you..
You're living your life through other people,
aren't you?"

Irene walks through the graveyard
stands between two markers
she walks a hallway
the house is very plain, modern,
but has a few old things in it
she walks in a bedroom
with little but a cross and picture of Jesus
on the wall
she opens the closet
her eyes are attracted to one dress.
We see the little girl Irene standing at the cemetery
her mother wears the dress
Irene runs her fingers over the dress
hugging it with her hand
while she does this it slips from its hanger
it falls to the closet floor.
We see the buildings on the hill pass by
she slants her body up the hill
her back bent under her backpack
her face sweating
she holds a strap of her backpack with her hand
as she brings her hand down it falls
to the floor of the closet
she picks up the dress
and sees under it a shoebox with a lid
she picks up the shoebox
she adjusts the headphones on her head
the music plays
the street slants up
she slowly takes the top off the shoebox
she has set it on a bed with an old fashioned coverlet
she looks in
she puts her hand in very carefully
as if she were an archaeologist who made a very important
but also very delicate
discovery.
One of Irene's friends looks into the camera,
She says, "What do I know about my genealogy?"
And begins talking about her family.
Irene sits across the table from her
Irene is holding up a small digital video camera.
She is taping an interview.

Ascending the slanted street of Butte
with her heavy backpack
she has to stop and hold onto a street pole
to steady herself.
Her hand lightly touches the contents of the box:
some old postcards
and photographs
all black and white
all old fashioned handwriting
The pictures on the postcards are from the early century
drawings and photographs
black and white of a bustling city
a great park
she turns a card over and examines the postmark.
We see that the postmark is from Butte
and the music has ended
and a voice has given the call letters of the station
from Butte Montana.
She holds a black and white photograph of a few small people
standing in front of a building
she walks past the building
and stops, admiring it.
The voice on the radio is replaced
by the voice of Irene
she is reading some basic statistics about Butte
she sits in front of a computer
as a web site about the city of Butte pulses in front of her.
Population, elevation,
served by an airport and buslines
Welcomes tourists
discover the history
spend some time
with the colorful past.
Genealogical resources
she looks at the web site of the Butte Silver Bow Archives
Waves of immigrants poured into Butte
most of their offspring left.
In another interview, a friend of Irene's tells about
how he went about doing research on his own family's
genealogy.
How he talked to relatives,
how he spent time in libraries,
how he unearthed family histories,
went to family reunions.
and why did he do all this work?
Irene's questions is left unanswered.
As he talks, as she asks
She browses web sites about genealogy.

She walks past a deserted lot
she walks past small houses close together
she ascends a hill next to a mountain
she holds a postcard up closer to her face
she sees the grain of the image
she turns it over and sees the curve of the handwriting.
she bites her lip
She looks up and sees the city above her.
she walks with the backpack on her back.
She looks down and watches her footsteps over a crumbling sidewalk
A casket descends into the ground
The faces of women in photographs
A finger traces a line in a map
Her footsteps, the backpack bends her back down.
Her footsteps.
Her face, her neck bent down by the pack,
bouncing with the walk.
Irene, tiny under an empty brick building.
The bobbing sidewalk ahead of her.

We see Irene's face up close.
She is holding the video camera up to her face
and addressing it directly.
"Who was my mother?
I don't know if I know.
I'm in her house
and most of the things here are the things she bought.
I don't know if they tell me anything about her.
But I found this box.
There's nothing about her in this box
But there's something here."

Tiny houses set so close they nearly touch,
a vacant lot
a set of railroad tracks
a big brick building, leaning to one side
a hot sidewalk that leans up
a pickup truck that groans up the street beside her
the small town turns into a 1910 city
the buildings start to rise up around her
she looks down at her feet
she steps up on a higher sidewalk
she tilts her head up
her eyes rise up beside a Victorian skyscraper
the city has built itself around her
she turns and takes it in

The music rises when her words stop
The music is old fashioned and dances with the buildings
the music rises up when her head does
the music ends and we hear a music sting
A voice rises after it:
"This is the story of Butte,
another chapter in the life and times
of the richest hill on earth."
The voice tells about the silver mining boom of Butte,
about William Clark,
and about Marcus Dailey,
how he took his sample of Butte copper
back to his investors
and came back to Butte with the money
to buy the Anaconda mine.

Irene sees her face
reflected back in the windows
of a shop
she walks along the sidewalk
walking under the tall buildings
walking toward a mountain ahead
she stops and looks into
the windows of a restaurant.
She opens the door
she looks in.

A friend of hers addresses the camera,
"I'm me, I'm not all those people in the past.
I don't have any interest in them,
they didn't have any interest in me, did they?
I'm just not interested.
I'm interested in me, in what I'm doing,
in where I'm going.
They're all dead."

In a far corner
of the cafe
two men sit at a table
they look up briefly at her
she looks around and starts to slip her backpack
from her shoulder
and down to the floor.
Emily comes out from behind the counter
as if out of nowhere
her face a big smile
as if she had expected Irene to come.
She gestures and beams to a table near the wall
and under the windows.
Emily reaches over to the bag
as if she wants to help Irene
Irene waves that she can handle it herself
and pulls it over to the table
she sits down and Emily hands her a glass
and menu
Irene quickly glances at the menu
and points out something on it
Emily walks off, turning back to smile at Irene
Irene, suspicious,
watches her walk away
making sure she has left the room.
Irene looks out the window
she looks over at the table
where the two men sit
far from her
they look up briefly at her
then back down
looking at nothing.

A friend of Irene's addresses her camera,
"I only recently started going to the family reunions,
every summer, at a church,
meeting people I never knew,
hearing stories I didn't know,
eating potluck dinners and getting sick..."
As he talks we see
Family photographs,
Some black and white,
Some new and in color.

Irene sets her plate aside
she wipes her mouth with a napkin
she opens a zipper in her backpack
and takes out two of the postcards
that she had found in the shoebox
in her mother's closet.
She is looking at one
as Emily comes and clears her plate.
Emily asks:
"Is there anything else?"
Irene nods no, not looking up
from the postcard.
On the postcard is an address
written in a flowing script
Irene looks closely at it
at the sweep of the writing
at the clots of the ink.
Under the postcard is a photo
black and white, of a large house
She looks at it closely
she tries to see an address by the door
but the address dissolves to incomprehension
through the grain of the photograph.
Emily comes back and asks again:
"Is there anything else?"
she stands over Irene
Irene nods no without looking up
Emily turns to walk away
she walks a step
then turns back to look at Irene
"Are you sure?" Emily says
Irene slowly looks up
she looks at Emily
first looking puzzled, then smiling.
Irene waits a second
then asks
"Do you know where this house is?"
Irene hands the photograph to Emily
Emily looks at it
holds it closer to her face
flips it over then back
she shrugs her shoulders
she turns to look at the table
across the restaurant
she nods to the two men
who look up
Emily says,
"Do either of you know where this house is."
They come over.
The first looks at the photo and nods no
The other looks closer at it.
He puts on his hat
He says to Irene
"I know where it is.
I can drive you there."
Irene looks up at Emily.
Emily nods yes and points to the driver,
encouraging Irene.
Irene looks at the man
who is nodding to the door
he walks to Irene's bag
and lifts it up
not sure how to carry it,
trying to carry it like a suitcase
and not altogether successful
Irene reaches over to it
Grabs it
He leads her away from her table.
Irene shrugs her shoulder at Emily
and follows.
She presses the other black disk
of headphone
over her other ears
and the music rises.

Looking out the window
of the car
the town passes by
and then disappears
into broken sidewalks
and empty ground
a giant iron structure towers
Irene looks up
trying to see the top of it
as they pass by
they have left the town abruptly
Irene turns her head back
to see it

A friend of Irene's addresses the camera,
speaking about the stories she heard
about her family's goals,
about how they moved across the ocean
years ago
and what they expected to find
and what they did find.

Irene looks forward
at the parkinglot
their car has turned into
They park next to a small building
with a long sign on its roof.
Irene looks back at the town.
The driver opens his door.
he says,
"You'll have to follow me."
Irene is a little unsure
but she opens her door
and walks around the car.
She follows the driver
who walks past a small ore car
and through an opening
that looks like an old mine entrance.
He looks back at Irene
and waves her to follow him.
She looks at the small touristy building
sees the sign about the Berkeley pit
and follows after.
The driver walks ahead of her
he walks silhouetted
by a spot of light ahead of him
Irene looks back
then forward
and walks after
the spot of light that silhouettes the driver
grows in size
burning brighter
until it burns completely around him
Irene has to wipe her forehead and blink her eyes
to adjust the light around her
and sees and huge pit dug into the earth
a giant hill with terraced edges
spanning a huge space in front of her
a voice on a speaker rises over the music
playing in Irene's ear
the voice explains mining in the Berkeley Pit,
the mile wide part of this mile high,
mile deep city.
Irene looks down
at a vast body of water
rising in the pit
hauntingly still.
She sees another man on the platform,
Frank,
he seems to be pulling something out of his pocket
and ready to throw it,
he looks at Irene and the driver
waiting for them to turn away
before he unleashes.
The driver reaches over to the photograph
which Irene still holds
in her hand.
He takes it from her and holds it up to the left side
of the pit.
Frank takes his opportunity
and throws something into the pit.
"Somewhere there," the driver says,
holding the photo up to the edge of the pit
to illustrate the once-upon a time
location of the house.
Irene takes the photo back from him
and holds it herself.
We see the photo against the backdrop of the pit
the sides of the pit rising
on all sides of the black and white house.
Irene and the driver look back at Frank,
who pushes the button to start up the story
about the Pit again.

The story about the Pit continues,
mixing with the music in Irene's headphones
the story merges into interviews
talking about when mining in the Pit stopped
and the pumps that kept the underground mines dry
were turned off
how the pit filled with water
just how polluted the water was.

As the report continues
we see Irene step out of the door of her hotel
and look down at the town of Butte
at night,
spread down in the plain below her
like a sky of stars.

The report interviews speak of
a flock of snow geese
flying high above Butte
following their traditional migration patterns
how they saw the water of the pit below them
and made a stop there one year
how their bodies were found
over two hundred of them
floating on the water of the pit
how they were eaten from the inside
to out
by the strong chemicals
the pollution in the water
from years of mining and smelting
from years of separating one thing from another
years of industrial chemical processes
that made the earth under the city
dangerous
that made any water that came in contact with it
poison.

A friend of Irene's addresses the camera,
speaking about how he found out other things,
history, how people lived
by researching his family's history.

The report interviews speak about the toxicity
left in Butte
after years of mining
about high rates of leukemia
about the slow poisoning of underground miners
about the legacy of this shrinking mining city
about the work to clean up the pit and
the other residue of its booming past.
Irene walks through the streets of Butte
with her camera.
She frames a beautiful old building
she frames a disintegrating section of sidewalk.

She sits in her hotel room and
looks out the window.
We jump cut between her, sitting on the bed,
looking out the window,
and the face of her boyfriend,
who is addressing the camera.
Irene's face has tears,
then it is bored.
"Irene.
Do I miss you, I don't know
But one thing that I don't miss is your music
all the time.
I had forgotten what silence sounded like
It's nice
and I've been
well,
I don't think this is right
I mean you and me
mostly you --
I don't think there's anybody there some times
I need something more real,
I need somebody more real.
I just wish you'd speak up sometimes
I don't know who you are
I've been thinking about all our time together
and I don't really know any more about you
than I did when we first met
Sure I know more about what you like and don't like
but I don't know you
I don't even think that you know you
You're always taking pictures,
you've got that camera on now, right?
listening to music
listening to music made by other people
taking pictures of other people
of things
Maybe that's because you don't have anything
musical, anything about you to take a picture of.
I'm sorry
I don't want to sound cruel, Irene,
but I wish you'd just speak back sometime,
I wish you'd just disagree
I wish you'd just be somebody
I need an equal,
somebody more like me.
Instead of that camera,
those headphones,
I feel like I have to talk to the camera
not to you
if I want to get to you.
I just don't think it's going to work out
I don't think you can change
I don't know if there's anybody in there to change
I mean, for Christ's sake, your mother's dead
she died and did you even mourn for her,
did you ever hit anything or want to scream about it
you're just so empty
I gotta go
When are you leaving on your trip?
When are you coming back?
How long are you going to stay in that dump?"
The video turns to snow
Irene looks out the window
and holds the camera to her face
and looks into the lens
as if there was something in there.

In a series of still images we see Emily
lift her hand to wave
We hear her voice say
Hail and Good morning, mother of God.
A Madonna statue
ties to lift an arm to wave back
but only makes a crack in its side
and wobbles, having just lost its balance
the wobbles grow greater as we see
that the Madonna is on a rocky mountain top
We see the still images of Emily
as her face turns from joyful to horror
Her head moves down on her neck
as if she were watching something fall from
a great distance
The statue twists in the air
falling down a great mountain
Its head impassively tumbles
end over end
Emily's head looks down farther still
in still images
as if following the movement
the statue twists falling
into the deep pit, the Berkeley Pit
it falls into the water
as if slipping into an envelope
Emily, now moving
opens her eyes quickly
her head twists and turns
and her body sweeps into a fall

A friend of Irene's addresses the camera,
She talks about library research,
about starting with a name
and looking in public archives
to find clues based on the name,
The friend asks Irene if she has a name to start with
Irene, holding the camera,
looks down at an old postcard
and answers,
"Mary Harrington, my
great grandmother."

A book of records
its shredding binding
a row of books.
Irene's finger roving down a column of names
A voice describes the resources of the Butte archives.
Irene walks down a row of books,
she stops and pulls out a random volume.
She walks past a row of portraits
she peels through a pile of maps.
The resources of the archives are described
how they assist people researching their genealogy.
What you can find in the birth and death records
what you can find in the police reports and newspapers.
Irene pores over a book of newspapers from the early part
of the century.
She looks through a death record
and sees listing after listing of
men's names
and sees written in optimistic flowing ink
following their names
the simple words,
"Asphyxiated in mine,"
or "died in mine,"
or several variations on that.
She pulls out a volume.
We hear her repeat the name,
"Mary Harrington,
Mary Harrington,
Mary Harrington."
She looks through a record book
The old flowing script holds a secret
until you stare at it long enough to
puzzle out the name.
She looks at a row of names
she picks another volume
name after name
her finger moves down
it moves to a "Mary Harrington."
She repeats the name.
Her finger slips and she can see
that there is a Mary Harrington underneath the first
She repeats the name
She lifts her finger
and sees Mary Harrington after Mary
Harrington.
She repeats the names, one after another
She passes her hand over her face
She moves to another page
and sees one after another,
nothing but Mary Harringtons' listed
her voice is repeating the name and
overlapping on itself
She slams the book to stop all the sound
to stop all the Mary Harringtons.

Emily walks down the street
in her waitress uniform
as we walk we flash cut
to various images of Madonna statues.
When we cut back to Emily's face
she smiles more and more with each Madonna
then we see a variety of shots
of a huge Madonna
one that seems to be on top of a mountain
Emily's smiles on the cuts
as she walks
are slightly more demented
and stronger.
Out of her enthusiasm
Emily falls down onto the sidewalk
near the door to the restaurant where she works
A man walks past
stopping briefly where she has fallen
looks down at her
kneels down as if to feel her breath
then looks around from side to side
gets up
and walks away rapidly.
Emily's eyes open
as the sidewalk beneath her waves
the waves decrease
and she pulls herself up on her feet
looking quite dazed.
she turns to walk into the restaurant
and tries the door
but it will not open.
she looks in the windows,
missing a sign near the door
she comes back to the door and now sees the sign
the sign says, "Out of Business."
Emily moves closer to the sign
then looks down at the waitress uniform that she wears.
She turns to walk away
then turns back to try the door again
and then walks away.

Irene walks down a street
to return to her hotel
she sees Emily,
still wearing the waitress uniform
sitting on a bench
Irene starts to walk by
but leans down to look at Emily
Emily wistfully smiles
and motions for Irene to sit beside her
They sit beside each other
silent for a while,
Then Irene turns to Emily
and says,
"I'm working on a project,
Could I interview you with my camera."
Emily looks at her,
looks at the camera Irene has taken
from her backpack
looks around
to see if anybody else is looking
thinks a second
then shrugs her shoulders.
Irene moves the camera to her face.

Emily addresses the camera:
"Did you find your house?
Oh, it's gone.
A lot of things are gone in Butte,
but a lot of things are still here, too.
And even if something is gone,
that doesn't mean that there isn't a trace of it.
People in Butte save a lot of things,
especially stories.
The stories and the leftovers
can probably tell you as much
as that house could
if it was still around.
Do you think that when someone dies
all that's left is their name?
I don't think so.
People have been living in these houses
and walking on these sidewalks
long before we had names
Sometimes I hear somebody walking by my house,
or sitting down on the porch,
and I look out and there's nobody there.
Maybe I'm hearing somebody from long ago.
We might now be sitting on this same bench
with people who are dead.
Who's to say that just because they're dead they're
not around any more."

Irene moves the camera down from her face

Irene walks away from the hotel
with her backpack on.
She holds a brochure and reads from it
"Visit the World Museum of Mining"
We see the brochure she is reading, a photo
of old Butte.
Then another photograph, and another.
Irene walks into the entrance
of the World Museum of Mining.
She adjusts the headphones on her head
The sound of her voice reading from the brochure has changed
to the institutional voice of a tour guide describing a tour of the museum
on a tape playing on her stereo.
The voice welcomes you to the World Museum of Mining
and invites you to check out the recreated mining town there.
Irene walks through the town, looking into the window of a shop,
looking into the window of a house,
her feet creaking on the board sidewalk.
She listens to a description of the wild days of the young
mining town.
She walks across another street and looks into a building.
She walks through a doorway into a room
filled with display cases and mining equipment.
She walks through and listens
to descriptions of underground mining and the life of a miner.
As she hears a description of a miner leaving home
and walking up the hill to a mine to work
we see Frank, dressed in his miner's gear,
but with a shovel hung around his shoulder
like a bandito's rifle.
He leaves a house and walks up the sidewalk.
Irene listens to a description of all the different kinds of men
all the different nationalities
that came to Butte to work in the mines.
How Irish immigrants
only had to hold up a photo of the Neversweat mine
to be loaded up onto a train leading to Butte Montana.
We see such a photo of the neversweat mines
we see photos of miners
their faces staring straight at us.
we watch Frank walk to a mine headframe
we hear that for decades all Butte miners went to work
by taking an elevator under ground.
Frank walks up to the derelict elevator
inside a derelict head frame
and waits
a photograph of miners gathered around
a mine elevator dissolves
into images of mining tools in the museum
we hear descriptions of underground mining
and see the tools mounted in the museum
and photographs of men using them
surrounded by rock
far under the surface of the city.

The institutional voice describing
the hard work of underground mining
dissolves into the voice of Irene
reading a passage from a book.
The images of the mining tools
and photographs in the museum
are now the photographs and drawings
in between and around the text of the book
that she is reading.
Irene sits on the bed in her hotel room.
She sets the history book aside
And reaches to the telephone book
On the bed beside her.
She pages through the telephone book,
she underlines a number and dials it.
She said, "Hello, My name is Irene,
I'm working on a video project.
Could I ask you some questions about
Butte and its history."
She nods and writes something down
in her notebook.

Irene stands up and walks down a street.
She finds a curb to sit down on
She opens her backpack
and takes out a couple photographs.
She holds one up to the street in front of her
and she hears sounds that match the photograph
though the street around her is empty.
She closes her eyes tight
and opens them wide.

She clicks the play button
on her headphone stereo.
The music begins to play.
She walks down the street
looking more carefully at the buildings she walks by
her eyes linger over details as she continues her forward
movement.
She waves at someone
and we see she is waving at the people
standing at a corner
in an old photograph.
She walks down the street
the buildings nearly the same as they were
in her great grandmother's time
as the music plays.
She walks through the city
as old photographs of the city
pass by her
she waves
she nods.

We see a long-time resident of Butte
talking about
the work around the house
the influence of the mines
and the Company
that inspired both fear and respect
all over the city.

Irene is holding her camera
she pulls it down from her face
we zoom into her face
the background disappears
she says,
"Was Mary Harrington the wife of a miner
an immigrant who did not want to leave
the old country, who did not want to leave
Ireland, but came across the ocean with her
husband, but came to Butte with her
husband
and watched him leave the house every morning
and take with him a helmet
and take with him a bucket
with his lunch
and saw him come home in the evening
his bucket full of beer instead of the lunch
and all during the day or the night,
whenever his shift was,
sat and worked and worried
over whether she would see him return that day
or whether that was the day
she would never see him again."
Irene walks
down the streets of Butte
with the music playing
in her ears
and behind her passes a headframe
and as she walks we see the faces
of women in photographs
we see a hand scrubbing
scrubbing away black dark soot
from a uniform
Irene continues,
"And when she slept beside him at night,
with her family sleeping all around in the
room where they all lived
did she still smell the mines on him,
the smell of deep beneath the ground
the smell of death
the smell of certain people growing
supremely wealthy
and others risking their life
to feed and clothe their families."
Irene walks by small houses
one after another
and we hear stories
the stories of people in Butte.
Irene stands in front of each person
with her small video camera at her face
as the people of Butte talk,
intercut with the rest of the movie,
and tell their stories of life in this city.

Irene walks up a street in Butte
she walks down a street
she passes by metal cutouts
they tell a story
of a day in the city's past
she looks down a street
and hears a story about Galena Street
where the prostitutes did their very lucrative
business in the mining days of Butte
when there were so many single men
risking their lives every day.
Irene holds her camera to her face
and on this square
she interviews one of the founders
of a museum set up
to tell the story
of prostitution in Butte.
Irene listens
and, bit by bit,
the words of the interview,
fade into the words of Irene:
"Was Mary Harrington a prostitute,
did she work the shops on Galena Street
did she spend her days and evenings
with miners of all ages
men still stinking of the bowels of
the earth,
men with little to lose
men whose primary source of love
was just such an encounter,
was just such an exchange.
Did she have the independence
that such a working woman had,
did she have the ability to shop for the things
that she wanted most
did she have the opportunity to try on fashions
that only the wealthiest women in the east could wear
could she strut down the street
and feel that she had made it
that she was in control of her life.
and did she ease her suffering
her diseases
with the cures from down the block
in Butte's Chinatown,
and did she ease her pain
or ease her forgetfulness
with the opium she smoked
in such a room
down the street.
And did she live
or did she die
happy or not
at such a life."
Irene walks through the Dumas hotel
looking at the small glass wall rooms
walking down the halls
seeing images of the building
of the street
during its days of bustle
during its days of busy trade.

Emily kneads the newspaper
her fingers massage it on their way down
the columns of the classifieds.
she has a thick pen
and circles the promising ads
she lifts up the phone
and places a call
and does not hear what she wants to hear
and sets the phone back down.
A hand
surrounded by the sleeve of a
great white robe
sets a business phone down
on its rocker.

Emily reads from an ad in the paper:
"Wanted: a dependable employee,
must say please and thank you
and you're welcome and come again soon.
must work as a team player,
preparing our delicious ingredients
into something so familiar people will
not ask why.
must have a smile for all
and a kind word for the most obtuse,
must work hard until knuckles are white
and still have a smile and a
you are certainly correct."
A very tiny Emily walks through a
gigantic fast food restaurant.
She tries her best to smile
but invisible forces try to
tickle her and pull her over.
She continues to read:
"Wanted: a good worker,
a fine addition to our team,
remember when you have a thought of your own
that you supervisor is watching you
and has a good idea of what
you are thinking."
As Emily tries to avoid the unseen forces
and still keep her smile it becomes plain
that there is a brightness coming from the corner
of the screen.
In and out of that brightness can
occasionally be seen
the head of a Madonna,
quietly and severely
observing.
Emily reads again:
"Wanted: a bendable, dependable,
expendable
a people person
without a soul.
Wanted for a few good wages,
wanted to forget about your life outside
wanted to drop all your serious needs
while you serve
our guests.
Good benefits,
if you can call them that.
A not so shabby way to spend your days
until the day you die
for a minimal wage.
Perfect for deadbeats
and folks without a life."
Emily is now in a gigantic factory
an assembly line races past and around her
far bigger than she can reach
she tries to reach up
to grab the products
her hands go through the motion
of putting something onto something
but they reach at nothing
but empty air.

Irene walks down the street
an inside smile on her face
we look closer at her face
and when we look back she is wearing
an old fashioned dress
with a large hat
as she walks
we see images of other women
with large hats
standing outside
in front of, buildings.
Irene holds the camera to her face
we see interviews with a variety of women
talking about the various roles that women played
in the mining city of Butte.
The voices of the interviews
fade out
and the still photographs
that illustrated the interviews
dissolve into Irene's imagination.
We hear Irene say:
"Perhaps Mary Harrington was a reformer,
a busy woman,
who gave packages to the poor
and then approached the saloons
with an axe or her anger
and railed about the evils of drink
and the dissipation and putrefaction
that spread from it.
Perhaps she strode down the streets of Butte
streets of men with the inside of the earth
still on their mind and bodies
and slammed open the doors of the bars
which sipped away so many
of these men's above ground hours
that drank away so much of
their time with their wives and families
that clouded their minds
from that dark sweating rock
and from that mud that sucked their ankles down,
in the mud
that they lived in by dark day.
Perhaps she strode in
a fierce fright on her face
and threatened to break bottles
and did indeed break bottles
and lectured in empty halls and
impatient saloons
on the evil of brew
on the harsh effects it drew out of a man.
On the end of the life, on
the discomfort and pain
that slipped out of the bottle
and wafted into your head."
We see a series of photographs
of temperance workers
as Irene pours out
the contents of a bottle
of hard liquor.
Irene walks down the street in
the period dress
but she has the headphones on her head
and the music plays.
"Who was Mary Harrington,
who was my Mary Harrington,
who was the Mary Harrington
that I want to find,
that I need to,
and why should it matter?"

Emily walks down a strip
of fast food places
and strip malls
and casinos.
The cars drive past her
she negotiates surface parking lots
she walks under a freeway bridge
behind her is a big plain
shopping mall.
"Wanted: for hire:
We need a good friendly
a greeting is important
remember the customer,
a rewarding work environment
be part of the big national team
wear the uniform proudly
you will have a name badge
every customer will know you
but all you will know about the customer
is that they are right.
Employment opportunities.
Make extra money
dependable, bendable,
expendable,
ask us about our employment needs.
Please do not burden us
with yours."
Emily stops and looks up at the mountain
a speck of white up there
it twinkles
it glows brighter than the daylight
it glows to lose her balance
she sways
before steadying herself on a bus stop bench
staring high into the sky
like a saint
as dozens of dirty cars pass by
and the freeway bridge shudders.
We hear the words from deep inside her:
"Hail Mary Harrington,
help me in my hour of need."

Irene sits on a bench in Uptown Butte
she has a few items from the cardboard box
spread out beside her.
We hear a woman talking
an interview that Irene has made
the woman talks about how
many people in Butte,
especially many of the Irish
came over from the old country with
the same name,
the same John
the same Mary
the same last name
as did many of their neighbors.
And how they had an extra name
a qualifier
in front of their name
so that they could all tell themselves apart.
Some examples are mentioned.
Irene looks at a postcard from the box
It is addressed to "Hail Mary."
She looks at another
It is addressed to "Hail Mary."
She looks at yet another
addressed to "Dear Hail Mary."
She looks up
and sees Frank in the distance.
She puts her things back in her back pack
and gets up to walk in his direction.

Frank walks to a stretch of hard
vacant ground.
He stands there and listens
sliding his foot as if he were listening through it
He looks down over
as if his feet were the deck of a bridge
and doesn't see what he wants to see
he moves on a few steps
and repeats the actions,
moving his feet as if he were listening to them,
and looking down as if over.
We watch him do it from the front
then watch him do it from the back.
He moves a few feet away
and tries a new spot.
He delicately slides his foot along the ground
as if he were using it to tune a radio
and we hear it, like sliding your radio
into the station that you want
he slides his foot back and forth
over a certain spot
to tune in the sounds better
when he finds the sweet middle spot
we hear a chorus of faint voices,
low voices, like people voices
slowed way down,
or like the voices from the ground itself
or something below the ground.
Irene peeks from behind a nearby building
to watch him.
She looks at him from behind.
He has found his spot with his foot
and tenderly wipes back some of the dirt from the spot
with his boot.
He bends his body down
and places his ear to the ground
cleared by his boot
He nods as if he heard what he thought he should.
He bends himself back up
and slides his shovel over his head.
Irene opens her bag
and takes out her camera
as Frank takes his shovel
and carefully aims it at the spot of ground.
Irene aims the camera at Frank
and as Frank's shovel takes its first
bite of ground
he bends his head up
as if he heard something.
He turns around
and catches Irene's eye,
or catches the look of her camera.
He turns,
gently slides his shovel out of the spot it bit into
and rearranges it over his head
and onto his back.
He slowly and nonchalantly
steps away,
looking only briefly back
at the spot where Irene stands.
She looks a little shocked
She looks a little found out.
When he has gone
she walks to the spot into which
he had dug his shovel.
She bends down to take a better look at it
and sees nothing.
She bends herself back up
and walks back the other way.

Irene sits in the Butte archives
bent over a bound book
of old newspapers
She looks at huge headlines
of a mining disaster
We hear her read the text of the article
about the great mine disaster of 1918
Her words melt into
the interviews with people
who talk about the danger of mining
and the great disaster of 1918.

Butte falls asleep
the lights of the flats reflecting back the sky
Butte wakes for the day
the sun hauled up over the mountains
A radio announcer's voice rises over
the night's static and begins to list
the scores of sports games
except the teams that he names are all
chemical names
like Manganese trounced Silicon, 32 to 14
and Sulfur defeated Silver, 5 to 4.
He lists a long list of these
as Frank heads out over the plain of Butte
walking through an urban wilderness
through broken streets and concrete steps to nowhere
He finds a spot
rubbing his foot over again as if trying to find a spot
on the radio dial.
We see him do this through a shaky
telephoto image.
He finds the spot and looks around,
from side to side, back and forth
he pulls the shovel from over his back
and shoves it into the ground
and digs out a slice
and then digs another
we see him up close,
his shovel gently but firmly shoved in
we see him from a distance
through a shaky telephoto image
he has finished with the hole
and slips the shovel back over his head
he reaches into the backpack behind him
and pulls out a copper teakettle.
He drops it into the hole
and slides the shovel back over his head
to flip the dirt back into the hole
and over the teakettle
we see him do this as if from a distance
the image shaking
and then zooming back to show us the
great space and distance from which
we were viewing.
We see Irene with her small camera
in front of her face
she drops it down
so we can see her watching.
She walks forward.
Frank pats the dirt onto the top of the hole
and slings the shovel back over his back
He walks away.
As Frank walks to the Berkeley pit
and Irene follows him from a distance
he says,
"It's what we walk on
what we stand on
it's what holds us up,
what makes us possible.
Despite that, we spit on it
we cut it and scar it
and take out its guts
we rip out its insides
we tear out its heart
and wear its guts on our bodies,
around our necks, around our fingers
we fill our houses with the intestines of our earth,
our mother, our only home,
and string bits of its flesh together to heat us,
to run all our gizmos.
We walk on it,
we rely on it
we foul its breath with our greed
and condemn it with our contempt.
We scar it and bruise it
and expect it to take the pain
without shaking us,
without boiling us or freezing us
without blowing us over,
and then we complain and deny
when those things do indeed happen.
We do not borrow it, we do not use it,
we eat it, we shit it out,
we empty it of all future possibility
to buy all our current comforts.
And through this,
and through all this,
it keeps on spinning,
it keeps on bringing us night and day,
winter and summer,
sun and moon,
despite all our hatred
despite all our uncaring
despite all our greed and ingratitude,
it keeps us and holds us
and welcomes us and feeds us.
Despite our ingratitude
despite our rape
despite our contempt."
He has walked all the way,
looking down, following his shadow upon the ground,
he has walked to the observatory
at the Berkeley Pit.
Irene has followed him,
followed his shadow on the ground,
followed hers,
and follows him onto the observatory platform.
The eroded scarred walls of the Pit
spread out in front of them.
The water of the pit
stands still.
Frank turns
and his eyes catch Irene's eyes.
He turns back to look at the Pit
and pulls some bits of copper wire from his pocket
and flicks them into the Pit below him.
He turns to Irene and says,
"Sometimes in order to get something,
you need to give something."

Irene sits in her hotel room
She is cleaning her camera
She looks through the box of things
from her mother.
She selects several photographs
And arranges them on the bed
Before her.
One at a time
She holds them in her hand
As if weighing them.

Irene goes back to the museum of mining
into an office.
She takes some of the family photographs
out of her backpack
and slides them onto a desk
Irene says to the woman sitting at the desk,
"These are some old photographs
from my family,
I'd like to donate them to your collection."
The woman at the desk looks up from her papers
and pulls the photographs closer to her.
She picks out one specific image
and holds it closer to her face
She flips it over
as if looking for identification information.
"Do you have the names of the people in the picture?"
she asks
Irene nods her head no.
The woman at the desk says,
"This woman looks like Hail Mary Harrington."
Irene leans closer,
"Did you know her,"
The woman says,
"No, but many people did.
Listen to this tape."
And she reaches through the drawers
Of her desk,
And she hands Irene a cassette tape
labeled, "Tales from Dublin Gulch: Oral Histories."
Irene looks carefully at the tape
She puts it in a careful place in her backpack,
thanks the woman at the desk
and walks out.

Irene walks down the street
her headphones on and playing
pulsing music
She sees Butte
in the kind of detail
that she never noticed before.
She sees the patterns of brick
on the side of a building
she sees an extreme closeup
of peeling paint
and the deep patterns in it
she looks up
to see sun bent by windows
old and wavy,
their glass slowly flowing
down and around.

She notices the wood
of a particular front porch
with a Madonna statue sitting on it
and another Madonna
and another
she stops
steps back
and slowly zooms back
step by step
to see the whole picture:
Emily is sitting on the front porch
of a Butte house
with a number of Madonna figures
seated around her.
Emily waves at her.
Emily has a Madonna statue in her hand
she is gently wiping it clean.
Irene stops and asks her
if she lives here
Emily says,
"Yes, would you like to see
some of my collection?"
Emily sets down the Madonna statue
and stands up.

Emily and Irene walk into the door
of the house
Irene looks almost in shock
we see only her face
She says,
"Can I turn my camera on?"

We see the inside of the house
through Irene's camera.
There are Madonna statues
everywhere.
On the bookshelves
on tables,
lined up on the floor like soldiers
on windowsills
on chairs
in every bit of vacant space.
Emily walks into the camera view
and says,
"This is only some of them
all that I have room for
there are more in boxes
in the attic.
Every month or so I box up
some of the ones in here
and take some of the ones
out of the boxes."

They walk out of the house
out the back door.
Frank is sitting on the ground
in the back yard.
He has one ear to the ground.
As Irene and Emily walk out
he sits up.
Emily introduces Irene to him.
Irene says that they have already met.
Emily explains that Irene is looking
for her great grandmother
and that is why she is in Butte.
Frank smiles and says
"Oh, so your great grandmother
is underground now."
Irene slowly nods yes
"Of course," she says.
As if she only now realized something
That she should have thought of long ago.

Irene, Frank and Emily walk
to the gate of a cemetery
on the flats of Butte.
They walk in,
passing between the rows of headstones.
Frank leads the way,
looking back at Irene with excitement,
"Let me tell you about Frank Little,"
he says.
Irene takes out her camera
and turn it on,
Frank tells the story
as he nearly walks backwards
leading them into the cemetery.
He says,
"Frank Little came to Butte
at a time when the Anaconda Company,
the conglomerate that had grown
from the original mining company
started by Marcus Dailey,
was becoming known as simply "The Company."
Anaconda was buying up independent mines,
and growing strong enough to have full control
over all the laborers in Butte.
Its wages, its labor policies,
became the Butte standard.
Little was popular,
and his message was making waves.
One morning his body
was found
swinging under a railroad trestle.
Nobody was ever brought to justice
for the murder of Frank Little."
The three walk through
an unkempt part of the cemetery,
a place where the grass ends
and scraggly weeds
mark the space between tombstones,
some of which are made of sticks of broken wood.
Frank points out the tomb of Frank Little
and we see his name and dates
and the inscription beneath it.
Frank says,
"A long procession led from Uptown Butte
to this cemetery on the flats to bury Frank Little.
They say that more than ten thousand people
witnessed the funeral.
They put him back into the ground here.
Maybe they put your grandmother here too."
Irene looks down at her feet.

Frank stands at Little's grave
while Irene and Emily wander off.
Irene passes through the rows of markers,
Emily is many headstones away from her.
Irene puts the tape
she was given at the museum,
the tape labeled,
"Stories of Dublin Gulch: Oral histories of Butte's Irish"
into her headphone stereo.
She hears an elderly man talking.
She plays the tape for a little,
then fast forwards into it
We hear the speeded up voice
as Irene looks at the rows of gravestones.
She stops it and pushes play.
The old man says,
"One of the most colorful characters
of Dublin Gulch was 'Hail' Mary Harrington."
Irene starts and stops walking when she hears it.
She presses the stop button
and walks forwards and backwards a little
as if she can't tell what to do.
She looks over to where Emily is
and where Frank is.
She takes a breath.
She presses the rewind button
on her tape deck
and plays it again:
"'Hail' Mary Harrington,
who owned a boardinghouse in the gulch.
Two dozen miners stayed there,
some of them sharing the same bunk:
the guys working the night shift
slept during the day and the men
working the day shift
slept on the same cot at night.
I remember Hail Mary
that's what everybody called her,
because my family used to go to her
boarding house
for her big meals,
the same meals she cooked for the miners.
We used to go there,
mom and dad and I
and eat there, side by side with the miners at a big table.
That was quite a treat."

Irene looks ahead at Emily,
walking a few rows away from her.
Irene continues walking,
looking down at the gravestones,
some of which have writing in a language
other than English,
some of which have photographs
embedded into them showing the deceased.

"The thing I remember the most
about Hail Mary's house
was all the statues she had.
They were all little trinket things,
most of them of the Virgin Mary,
which might have been how she got her name.
They were all little statues of women,
and she used to clean them gently
with a cloth after she had served the big meals she cooked up."

Irene presses the stop button
on the tape machine.
She catches up with Emily,
who is standing at a tombstone.
Irene bends down to read the name on it.
The stone says, "Mary Harrington."
Irene looks up at Emily,
who is still looking steadily at the stone.
Emily says, quietly, "My mother died last year.
Her name was Mary.
Her grandmother's name was Mary."
Irene gets up and stands beside Emily.
With both hands,
Irene grabs the speakers of her headphones
and pulls them and the wire connecting them
down to her neck.
Both women stand and look intently at the grave marker.

Irene walks down a street in uptown Butte
with the headphones down around her neck.
We can hear an easy breeze but little else.
The man who directed her to the Berkley Pit
on her first day in the city
is walking toward her.
He sees her, smiles and waves.
She smiles at him
but when she gets to him she keeps on walking past.
He stops at the point
where they would have met
and watches her walk past.
The smile on her face grows.

As she continues to walk
we see a gallow's frame superimposed over her face.
We see a series of quick images of Irene,
shots of her face from various angles,
shots of her looking up, turning.
We see closeups of her hands, legs walking,
we see shots of her from some scenes of the film,
out-takes, images of her
with the camera to her face.
We see these images superimposed
over images of Butte,
of jerky time-lapse images of Uptown Butte,
of a slow pan over the city from the hills above,
shots of individual streets and buildings,
details of walls and ground,
textures,
glimpses of historic photographs.
As we see these images superimposed,
we hear Irene's voice:

"Irene came to Butte to find something,
to find a story.
She felt like she had none.
She had lost some of the people
who gave her life a meaning,
who gave her life a punchline or a happy ending
or resolution or catharsis
and she was left all to herself,
without a direction,
without a plot.
All she had was a box,
like a clue in a detective story,
and so she went to Butte to solve the mystery,
to discover a story.

"Butte was a place with a history,
with a series of stories.
This city's glory days may have passed,
its population much lower,
its power and position in the greater world
or even the state of Montana diminished,
yet those stories gave the city a certainty
about what it was,
they gave it a name and a reason
despite the many troubles and challenges
that it faced and faces.

"Irene also found people,
two people who lived in Butte,
and though she was much more concerned
about herself and her own search
than she was about these people,
she found that the more she tried to ignore them,
the more they intrigued her.
She also found
the same thing about herself:
the more she tried to ignore
who she is or who she might be,
the more those very things intrigued her,
carried her."

Over these next words
we see images from
a variety of family photographs
intercut with the images of Irene
and superimposed over
both smooth and jerky images
of Butte and its environs.

"Irene discovered
that her great grandmother
was 'Hail' Mary Harrington,
who was born Irish
but sailed across the ocean
and landed in Butte, Montana.
She had a collection
of small statues of women,
mostly the Virgin Mary.
Mary had a daughter named Mary,
who loved the statues, and inherited them.
Daughter Mary passed them on
to her granddaughter Emily when she died.
'Hail' Mary also had a daughter Constance.
Constance hated Butte
and left as soon as she could.
She said nothing about Butte
To her daughter
Or to her granddaughter.
Her granddaughter,
Irene,
Had to find out these things for herself.

"When Irene was young,
she thought she knew everything,
but that was only a sign
of how little she did know.
Today she realizes
that she knows very little,
especially about herself,
but she does know how magic
that kind of ignorance can be."

Copyright © 1999 John Akre

http://www.sloppyfilms.com/buttemagicm/script.htm