In Trash, which had a premier screening in Hollywood on June 24, youthful director/writer Mark Anthony Galluzzo, has attempted to bring assorted true events of the area near Ocala, Florida, to the screen in order to show the difficulties that poor Whites face in a part of the South where economic opportunities are limited. The tagline of the film is “Nothing’s easy on the edge.” When the film starts, an eleven-year-old boy accidentally shoots a rifle and kills an adult while several men are on a hunt through rough back country for fresh game, but most of the film focuses on teenagers who are about to graduate from high school with no particular future ahead of them. One of the teenagers, Anthony DeMarie (played by Eric Michael Cole) has no father, and his mother (played by Grace Zabriskie) comes and goes from the home in a trailer park. Anthony therefore falls back on a group of schoolchums as a support group. Although Ms. Evans, the principal of the school (played by Veronica Cartwright), recognizes that Anthony has considerable writing talent, and enters a short story of his in a contest, when he wins third place and a college scholarship, he cannot contemplate leaving his close boyfriends behind in Ocala. In due course, Anthony robs a jewelry store, runs from the store, is shot while police pursue him, and he is then jailed. Later, he escapes from a hospital while being treated for the gunshot wound, and he is tracked down again by police, and soon shot and killed. Sometime during the project, filmed around Ocala, Florida, the working title “Nobody’s Children” changed to Trash to refer to “white trash.” An observer with no previous experience in trailerhome communities will find difficulty in reaching empathy for any of the characters, as they seem so lacking in ambition and direction. Galluzzo’s voiceovers, though attempting to provide poetic statements about various situations, are cryptic and obscure. After the screening, when asked about his cinematic role models, Galluzzo named a number of directors, including Stanley Kubrick, but curiously not John Sayles, the one director whose path he clearly parallels. However, Sayles has a clear message about how the ruling class in America rides roughshod over ordinary working people. Galluzzo, who hails from somewhere near Ocala and has achieved a measure of success, is content to construct Trash without a clear message about who in the United States gets what, when, how, and why, preferring to focus on the poor White victims of poverty for whom he has some nostalgia. MH