SERGIO GOES Mel, a drug dealer in East New York, has been in and out of jail since he was 11. He and his best friend, Tiz, are the subjects of the documentary "Black Picket Fence."

Color barriers

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By Scott Vogel
svogel@starbulletin.com

Sometimes it's a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Take filmmaker Sergio Goes' son Gabriel, for example, who was born at 10 p.m. on Feb. 22 (also known as 2/22/02 at 22:00). But others are not quite as fortunate, their seeds having been planted in the bleak, drug-ravaged streets of East New York, Brooklyn.

Such was the case with best friends Mel and Tiz, the subjects of Goes' new documentary "Black Picket Fence," which will be screened tomorrow evening at Leeward Community College. And yet each is struggling in his own way to triumph over the streets, to somehow escape the cycle of poverty into which he was born.

"It was a hard film to title," said the director, a 10-year Hawaii resident and key figure in the late great Honolulu Underground Film Festival who decamped to New York in 1998. "These guys are stereotyped as what's bad in society, but their dream is the white picket fence dream. They want to have a house in the suburbs and chill -- very middle-class aspirations."

But their pursuit of such goals is anything but middle-of-the-road, as Goes' 90-minute film demonstrates. In the course of following his subjects for two years and shooting more than 150 hours of digital video, the filmmaker watched as Tiz's career as a hip-hop rapper began to take off (thanks to the mentoring of old-school wizard Kool G Rap), while Mel's career as a drug dealer followed a similar arc.

"We meet Mel on the day he gets out of jail," Goes said. "He's been in and out since he was 11 -- he's 24 now -- and during that time he's never been out for more than a year."

For Tiz, Mel represents everything that the young rapper is trying to run away from, especially now that his girlfriend is pregnant with their child and maturity no longer seems optional. But the pair is bound by friendship, fractured pasts and a freak accident that occurred almost a decade ago.

"There's this crazy event where Tiz shot Mel by mistake when they were robbing a store when they were 16. Tiz almost killed Mel -- he shot him in the back. (The characters' reminiscence) is one of the greatest scenes in the film because of the two versions of the story and the way they talk about it in such a mundane way: 'We woke up in the morning, smoked a joint and decided, hey, let's go rob a store.' And then his best friend almost killed him."

For Goes, a Brazilian national with a penchant for Hawaii, the world of Mel and Tiz couldn't have been any further from his own, an urban blight of "no banks, no businesses, no nothing, just the housing projects and a very scary vibe in the air." It's a cliché to call such places war zones, but there's a battlefield-like desensitization to things like prison and death in parts of East New York, he said, a hardening that's become a necessary survival tactic.

"One of Tiz's friends describes one of their friends getting shot right in the head right in front of them, with his brains splattering all over the cement, and they were 14 years old. It's bizarre to think that children are going through that."

During the documentary's filming, five of his subjects' friends (all of whom Goes had met) were shot and killed in the streets, their deaths powerful reminders to the director of just how unlivable East New York can be.

Yet there are signs of hope throughout "Black Picket Fence." Tiz can be heard on Kool G Rap's latest CD, which comes out in May, and is currently on a 19-city European tour. Mel, too, is trying to reinvent himself as owner of a local record store. Even Goes, who by his own admission was dealt a better hand in life, gained strength and inspiration from two men in Brooklyn who struggled against greater odds.

"I felt like there was nothing I couldn't overcome when I looked at these people who were still positive and loving and beautiful and went through hell in life, basically, and are still going through hell. Their problems never stop. I just stopped filming."

'Black Picket Fence' When: Special screening at 8 p.m. tomorrow Where: Leeward Community College Theater, 96-045 Ala Ike St. Cost: $10 general; $5 students Call: 455-0385

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