Carnival Train- feature-length documentary, 1999.  Seven years in the making, this ethnographic film explores the lives of carnival workers who travel up and down the east coast on the last “train show” in America. Often misunderstood as social outcasts, carnies form a unique subculture, stick together through thick and thin, and create a kind of traveling village while operating the midways on county and state fairs that provide their bread and butter.

I spent five years as a carney myself, and made this film as an homage to a special way of life that may one day disappear as an anachronism. What I found when I was “with it” as a game operator was a rough but close-knit world where it felt great to be a part of a palpable community. People took care of each other, and that appealed enormously to my sixties-oriented sensibility.

“Carnival Train” is in the American Folklife Library at the Library of Congress.

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