Streetwise. 1984 Documentary about runaways and street kids in Seattle..

Do any of you 30 somethings remember this? It was one of the most hard hitting and memorable documentaries for me, ever. I watched it around 1987 (when I was like 8) and it had a very similar affect on me as the original "Scared Straight" i.e. watched it only once at a very young age but pretty much remembered EVERYTHING about it, even most of the quotes etc. through the years. I was kind of surfing youtube a month or so ago on an insomnia night looking for old HBO Docs and was pleasantly surprised to stumble on this one. I watched it again and did some research on these kids, trying to figure out where they are now.

Streetwise (1984 Documentary) In it's entirety.

This is kind of a rare gem, and unless you watched it on PBS during the first few years after it came out, you probably never heard of it. To my knowledge it's never been released on DVD or anything. It's basically about young runaways and street kids (some completely homeless, others with a shitty home and zero parenting) growing up in Seattle in the early 80's. 13-14 year old prostitutes, drug users and a particular 14 year old that went by the name of "Rat" that kind of stole the show for me, being one of the few that was absolutely on his own and seemed to thrive by only panhandling and dumpster diving. A Jeff Bridges movie American Heart, (1992) starring Edward Furlong not long after he did T2 is loosely based off this documentary. American Heart did terribly shitty at the box office with a 10 million dollar budget and it only grossed like 350K, so this didn't do much to gain exposure for the original documentary, however I think if you watch Streetwise, you'll be compelled to check out American Heart, or vice versa. But Jeff Bridges says this is the film he's most proud of, in his entire career.

SPOILERS: For those of you that plan on watching this.....

Not much info out there about what happened to a lot of these kids which is very disappointing for me, but one of them (Rat's friend Dewayne, who is also the inspiration for Edward Furlongs character in "American Heart") ended up hanging himself in Juvie before they wrapped up filming this, and one of the prostitutes became a victim of Gary Ridgway aka the Green River Killer. Also another main character, actually THE main character, a 14 year old prostitute named Tiny did an interview a few years ago (around 2008) and she was still alive, although not much better off than she was as a teenager, now just older and fatter (like 400 lbs), suffering from many diseases ranging from Diabetes to multiple STD's and the mother of like 12 kids. Another one of the main subjects, a very brash bull dyke named LuLu in the Streetwise Doc, was the inspiration for "Freddie" in American Heart. She stood out in the movie and the documentary because she was always trying to defend and protect the newer runaways, from just giving them pretty valuable advice to outright brawling with grown arse men to defend the smaller kids that were being Deebo'd by these predators. Anyway, LuLu/Freddie can not be mistaken if you watch American Heart and Streetwise (they did a great job with the casting lolz)..... she looks and talks like a dude and is wearing this hat that says "Alcatraz" on it and you'll see her in many skirmishes throughout the documentary. Unfortunately one of these skirmishes got her stabbed and killed a few months after the filming of Streetwise. So as you can probably imagine, most of these kids were dead before the 80's ended. The rest of them just fell off the face of the earth, so you'd assume they are more than likely dead now or still living on the streets.

If any of you are hip to this, I'd love to have a discussion about it and wonder if y'all know anything about "where are they now?" that I couldn't dig up. And if you aren't hip to it, I strongly suggest you click on that link. I don't think you'll be disappointed.