According to Blockbuster, Penny Allen is also a stage actor and has supporting roles in such films as Dog Day Afternoon, The Bad Lieutenant and a recent one I hadn't heard of; Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her. They also provide this synopsis for Property:
"This semi-improvisational film, set in Portland, Oregon, is based on a real event and features many of the actual participants for the cast. It tells the story of a group of people who endeavor to buy a neighborhood slated for demolition so they can establish their own community in the 1960s. Among them are a poet, a midget who aspires to be a stand-up comic, and a con man and his young girl friend and their child." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
I remember when Paydirt came out, but I didn't see it and couldn't recal if it was a film about dirt track stock car racing in Nevada or Pot Growers in Oregon.
I suspect that Property was set in Northwest Portland. I'll bet your right about film not being about gentrification. The Willamette Week, being modeled after the Village Voice, is probably spinning the gentrification issue. Northwest Portland was pretty damn seedy in 1978, demolition is the more likely theme. (leave it to Blockbuster to get the story right and a lefty rag like The Willamette Week to skew the facts) The gentrification didn't happen for another six years or so. My family moved into that neighborhood in the 1970's after the working class had split for the suburbs in the 60's, fleeing the onslaught of bohemians, drug addicts, and half way houses for criminals, the mentally ill and physically disabled. Most of the neighborhood residents, my family among them, fled in the mid 1980's when a young couple (rumored to be from California, gotta get that bash in there) by the name of Singer converted most of the Victorian houses along 23rd Ave. into shops. This was the beginning of one of the city's most unprescedented realestate booms.
One of the film's stars, Cork Hubbert, wasan aspiring actor and comic and also a regular fixture in the neighborhood.
Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy also does a great job at portraying some of the character and characters of Northwest Portland in the 1970's.
I'm pretty sure that Penelope Allen the stage and film actress (who sometimes goes by Penny) isn't the Penny Allen who directed Property. "Penelope" has quite an extensive acting resume, going back 30-some years. I tried to correct the IMDb entry on Property to show Penny Allen as director, but so far the editors haven't acted on it, probably because of the confusion of names. (I did successfully correct Cork Hubbert's resume to include Where the Buffalo Roam--they were spelling it "Cork Hubbard.") Postscript: Penny Allen was finally listed in the IMDb as the director of Property.
Your comment about Blockbuster vs. Willamette Weekly cracks me up. As I recall, the term gentrification came into common use in the '80s; the '70s was still the era of "white flight." The history of that part of Portland sounds like a fascinating book, and all the players in Property ought to be looked up and interviewed. The Blockbuster blurb jogged my memory a little bit: that one of the most interesting things about the movie was the "self-reenactment" aspect--that many of the same characters who lived the experience came back and acted it out. I distinctly remember the "con man" playing himself--he's in a couple of scenes, right after he gets out of prison, and he's a kind of oily "street intellectual"--charming, a bit scary, and absolutely not an actor. Hubbert is clearly a thespian, but playing himself as a thespian, in a communal situation, trying to buy a block of houses. Once again Willamette Weekly's term docudrama is an anachronism--an '80s concept applied retroactively. Property had more revolutionary things on its mind than "docudrama."
I was thinking the same thing last night, that gentrification and docudrama were terms that were coined or at least came into vogue in the 80's.
Chances are that the only demolition of homes taking place in Northwest Portland in the late 1970's was due to the expansion of Good Samaratin Hospital or some sort of industrial warehouse.
As I remember it, the only "gentrification" going on in Portland at the time was happening on the outskirts of the city. The gentrification of farm lands and duck and beaver ponds by malls, housing developments and freeways.
I like your idea for a book on the subject. I had no luck finding a link to "Ninteenth Street" a great book full of photos and essays on the history of Victorian era Northwest Portland. My memories as an adolescent exploring the enormous and abandond St. Vincents Hospital which stood on the hill overlooking the neighborhood are enough for a large chaptor of such a book. It was a terrifying and dangerous place which stood empty and accessable for 20 years.
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"This semi-improvisational film, set in Portland, Oregon, is based on a real event and features many of the actual participants for the cast. It tells the story of a group of people who endeavor to buy a neighborhood slated for demolition so they can establish their own community in the 1960s. Among them are a poet, a midget who aspires to be a stand-up comic, and a con man and his young girl friend and their child." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
I remember when Paydirt came out, but I didn't see it and couldn't recal if it was a film about dirt track stock car racing in Nevada or Pot Growers in Oregon.
I suspect that Property was set in Northwest Portland. I'll bet your right about film not being about gentrification. The Willamette Week, being modeled after the Village Voice, is probably spinning the gentrification issue. Northwest Portland was pretty damn seedy in 1978, demolition is the more likely theme. (leave it to Blockbuster to get the story right and a lefty rag like The Willamette Week to skew the facts) The gentrification didn't happen for another six years or so. My family moved into that neighborhood in the 1970's after the working class had split for the suburbs in the 60's, fleeing the onslaught of bohemians, drug addicts, and half way houses for criminals, the mentally ill and physically disabled. Most of the neighborhood residents, my family among them, fled in the mid 1980's when a young couple (rumored to be from California, gotta get that bash in there) by the name of Singer converted most of the Victorian houses along 23rd Ave. into shops. This was the beginning of one of the city's most unprescedented realestate booms.
One of the film's stars, Cork Hubbert, wasan aspiring actor and comic and also a regular fixture in the neighborhood.
Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy also does a great job at portraying some of the character and characters of Northwest Portland in the 1970's.
- steve 1-12-2002 4:53 am
I'm pretty sure that Penelope Allen the stage and film actress (who sometimes goes by Penny) isn't the Penny Allen who directed Property. "Penelope" has quite an extensive acting resume, going back 30-some years. I tried to correct the IMDb entry on Property to show Penny Allen as director, but so far the editors haven't acted on it, probably because of the confusion of names. (I did successfully correct Cork Hubbert's resume to include Where the Buffalo Roam--they were spelling it "Cork Hubbard.") Postscript: Penny Allen was finally listed in the IMDb as the director of Property.
Your comment about Blockbuster vs. Willamette Weekly cracks me up. As I recall, the term gentrification came into common use in the '80s; the '70s was still the era of "white flight." The history of that part of Portland sounds like a fascinating book, and all the players in Property ought to be looked up and interviewed. The Blockbuster blurb jogged my memory a little bit: that one of the most interesting things about the movie was the "self-reenactment" aspect--that many of the same characters who lived the experience came back and acted it out. I distinctly remember the "con man" playing himself--he's in a couple of scenes, right after he gets out of prison, and he's a kind of oily "street intellectual"--charming, a bit scary, and absolutely not an actor. Hubbert is clearly a thespian, but playing himself as a thespian, in a communal situation, trying to buy a block of houses. Once again Willamette Weekly's term docudrama is an anachronism--an '80s concept applied retroactively. Property had more revolutionary things on its mind than "docudrama."
- tom moody 1-12-2002 7:09 pm [add a comment]
I was thinking the same thing last night, that gentrification and docudrama were terms that were coined or at least came into vogue in the 80's.
Chances are that the only demolition of homes taking place in Northwest Portland in the late 1970's was due to the expansion of Good Samaratin Hospital or some sort of industrial warehouse.
As I remember it, the only "gentrification" going on in Portland at the time was happening on the outskirts of the city. The gentrification of farm lands and duck and beaver ponds by malls, housing developments and freeways.
I like your idea for a book on the subject. I had no luck finding a link to "Ninteenth Street" a great book full of photos and essays on the history of Victorian era Northwest Portland. My memories as an adolescent exploring the enormous and abandond St. Vincents Hospital which stood on the hill overlooking the neighborhood are enough for a large chaptor of such a book. It was a terrifying and dangerous place which stood empty and accessable for 20 years.
- steve 1-12-2002 8:56 pm [add a comment]
He is something on gentrification in the UK. It looks like much of it dates from Thatcher's time.
- bill 1-12-2002 9:09 pm [add a comment]