Marc Levin shares the story of how his documentary,Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, got made

In the summer of 2007, my producing partner Daphne Pinkerson and I met with HBO senior producer Nancy Abraham and Sheila Nevins, president of HBO Documentary Films, who was interested in finding a good story to illuminate the the current troubled economic times.  I had made a number of contacts in the hedge fund world and the sub prime crisis was just beginning to heat up.   I thought I might be able to get access to Wall Street insiders while the crisis unfolded for an unprecedented verite look.   But she rejected the idea  saying, “Wall Street’s for Bloomberg or CNBC, not our style – why don’t you go to the Garment Center.”

Sheila looked at the label on her blouse, “This was made in China, my skirt was made in India, my shoes in Italy…do we make anything here anymore?

“If you want to wear anything made in America,” Daphne responded, “or that is made by non-exploited labor or a non-polluting process, you will probably have to go naked.”

“The Garment Center?”  I muttered.  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

Sheila smiled, “You’ll figure it out.”

It’s taken a while, but right from the start we playfully referred to the project as the SCHMATTA film.  Those who knew the Yiddish word for rag, laughed and thought it was a ballsy working title.  But we were surprised how many folks in the garment and fashion industries had no idea what the word meant.

As we talked to more and more people, it was amazing how almost everyone had some family member or friend who was somehow connected to the “Schmatta” business.  When Sheila revealed her great aunt Celia had died in the Triangle Fire, things began to gel.  I looked back to my own great grandfather, Isaac Levin, a young immigrant from Lithuania at the beginning of the 20th century, who invented the “adjustable dress form.”  My grandfather Herman Levin and his brothers took over the Acme Dress Form and Hanger Company in Brooklyn.  My father, Al, refused to go into the family schmatta business.  He and my mother Hannah were young labor organizers as was my father in law, Bill Burke, who actually worked with Sidney Hillman, the founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union.    

We decided from the start that the film was going to be like a tapestry and the challenge was going to be in the stitching together of these compelling stories and characters.  We didn’t want experts or academics.  We wanted real people to create this rich human fabric - a colorful cast who would stay true to the word SCHMATTA and give the film a first person, street smart, raw, authentic, heartfelt, humorous voice.

The garment center would be the main character and the main location.   It  was once a magic kingdom and now it was down and almost out, a microcosm of the economic crisis that had touched so many.   It seemed that 2008 could be the last season in the garment center for a good number of the folks we met.       We decided to start the contemporary story at February Fashion Week and follow it through to September Fashion Week and then end with Black Friday and the start of holiday shopping.  Simultaneously, we developed a historical time line starting with the tragic Triangle fire in 1911 and ending with a similar recent tragedy, a deadly fire in a Bangladesh sweatshop.   We wove the stories of present day hard times and past history together with an emotional thread provided by a series of interviews with a wide variety of professionals who had just lost their jobs in the industry.

Over and over again we were moved by their stories which had a similar theme – they were devastated by a new world that no longer promised job security, benefits or the life style they were accustomed to.  Their testimony was emotional punctuation to what was happening to America’s middle class.  It was literally hanging on by a thread.

We wanted to highlight and contextualize the immediacy and power of their experiences.  We recalled Stud’s Terkels classic oral history – “Working,” and referred to our interviews as “Not Working.”  What ever happened to the working class hero?  What ever happened to the Average Joe?  It seems he had been devalued, laid off, or outsourced.  His fortunes mirrored the vanishing American dream.  We wanted to pull the curtain back to see the people behind the scenes who make and sell our clothes.

During September Fashion week 2008, Wall Street crashed.  There was concern that current events might be outstripping and outdating the SCHMATTA project.  But as we watched the Thanksgiving Day parade, I felt that if anything, it had made this film even more relevant and timely.  We had the story, “Rags to Riches to Rags.”  The Crash revealed that much of the wealth of this new gilded age was a mirage.  As the floats passed by Macy’s, it hit me, “THE ECONOMY HAS NO CLOTHES.”

~ Marc Levin

 You can find screening information for Schmatta here