Detour February 2000 photos Vava Ribeiro
Stay-press jeans by Levi's. Laminated denim apron by Miss Sixty and Ella denim skirt by Stussy
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Urgh tumblr is being funny with me. It won’t let me reorder or relocate my gifs 🥲 so bear with me with these gifs 😅
-Detour Magazine 92 ,March 1994
A look of what happened behind the scenes of The Fence
‘Billy recently starred in an as - yet - unreleased movie entitled ‘The Fence’ directed by first timer Peter Pistor. Billy plays a man who has spent most of his life locked up, initially in a juvenile hall at the age of 13, and then onto a maximum security prison, from which he is finally freed at age 29. Erica Gimple (Fame), plays the woman with whom Billy falls in love when he gets out of jail, and Paul Benjamin (Escape from Alcatraz) plays his friend in jail. The role is arguably one of his most challenging to date and the experience was so gruelling and brutal, he still feels the effects of it today.
They spent four days in Joliet Prison near Chicago doing research, which left him feeling very depressed, seeing a side of life which remains hidden to most of society. The production crew later returned to actually shoot the prison scenes at Joliet, using real inmates (on good behaviour) as actors. He describes his attempt to have respect for the prisoners in what is essentially their home and to find a way to meld into their environment.
“Being a New Yorker, hanging out on the street playing basketball, helped some,” he says. “I’d asked them what they were in for, and they’d say ‘Murder,’ and the interesting thing. I’d , they did kill people, and yet you could still see the playful children in them.” Billy says that that signifies to him their potential for rehabilitation, and yet, he maintains, there is no effort on the part of the authorities to facilitate that. Sure, there are libraries, and sure, he met some genius guys who had suffered or found God, but they weren’t the majority.
“ I don’t Know,” Billy sighs, “It’s fucking hardcore. Stone cold cells. We all worked together, and despite the knowledge that these guys had committed horrific crimes, you could see the goodness in them. And yet guards couldn’t and I couldn’t see the goodness in a lot of the guards. There was one occasion when we walked through a corridor lined with the really hard criminals, the ones never let out of their cells. They had mirrors which they shot out and used to see us when we walked by, and they let out the most violent, primal screams I have ever heard. I guess they were just releasing the repression and anger they felt, and just trying the scare us. I guess that’s just how they got their kicks. Prison is hell.”
Billy concludes “it’s certainly not rehabilitative. The inmates who were acting with us were getting attention, direction, and love, and you could see that. I made friends with all of them, and it was hard, at the end of the day, to leave and hear the bars shutting behind us.”
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