C-Rock refers to a cliff in the Bronx overlooking the Harlem River. The steep cliff was made during construction of the ship canal at Spuyten Duyvil on the northern tip of Manhattan. The “C” of C-Rock comes from the blue and white C on the side of the cliff, which stands for Columbia University. The Columbia University crew team painted the C there in the early 1950s. In The Basketball Diaries, this location is referred to as “The Cut”, a name which many locals still use for it. After reading a piece in the New York Times about C-Rock, Jordan decided to investigate this tradition. Travelling from Toronto to New York, he investigated the merits of the story. What he found was much deeper and more emotional than simply a bunch of kids jumping off a cliff. Roth said, “A lot of the guys I talked to were really aware of this time of change in their lives. They know that this is a rite of passage. They know that soon they’ll leave this place and their childhood behind. That might not carry the same weight as it does for an older person who knows what it is to have more adult responsibilities and concerns, but it definitely means something to them in that moment and I tried to understand that…or at least remember how I felt at their age.” Roth added, “It was cool to see that these guys had a genuine excitement towards this tradition. It’s a hallowed tradition. Some of the guys would talk about it like that. And, I think as an older guy coming into this you could hear that kind of talk and snicker because you think you know better, but I remember also getting absorbed by traditions at my summer camp. These things are important and meaningful to a young person.” What Jordan has captured in C-Rock is that moment of realization in the lives of these young men; a perfect snapshot. They are taking part in an event in which older generations of the men in their lives also took part. The jump from C-Rock bonds them to their childhood comrades while they also recognize that they will never visit this period of their lives again.
Every bit as compelling as the story of C-Rock is the look and feel of this documentary. It’s as though the camera becomes a participant in the activity in C-Rock. “C Rock the documentary” is just another teenage boy along for the ride and the experience. It feels an affinity and connection with those interviewed on screen, just hanging out. The warmth of the summer day is as much a look of this documentary as it is a means of emotional transference. When someone is speaking, the camera pays attention but sometimes quickly has its attention diverted to another action or speaker, just as a young boy might react. Roth worked with C-Rock’s editor Karen Lynn Weinberg in creating the approach for C-Rock. “Rarely does one get to work with a director who is also a unique and gifted writer, an engaging storyteller, and is easygoing and fun to work with,” Weinberg said. “Jordan has that amazing combination we all hope for in a creative space. His enthusiasm is infectious; he keeps a playfulness and inventive spirit to the process.” Jordan had a very distinct approach for the camerawork, supplied by Eric Branco (director of photography). Roth revealed, “The footage has a warm, sunny quality which was something Eric and I talked a lot about while shooting. We wanted to capture that summer feel. Well before any post [production], that feeling and look was there.”
[JR1] That said, Roth and Branco also carried this approach through their post-production process. “Eric and I worked with Nice Dissolve (a post house in Brooklyn) to get the feel we wanted for the final product. We didn’t want to pretend that this was Kodachrome or shot on 16-millimeter film and give it a fake veneer, but we wanted to capture the nostalgia that’s a part of it and the sense that this could be happening in any summer. Our approach was to take some of the saturation, the purples that you see in some older footage, and try to get that feeling, while not pretending this is something it isn’t.”
C Rock resonated with a large portion of the film community as evidenced by its inclusion as an official selection at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (DocFest), Rooftop Films, New Filmmakers, Manhattan Film Festival, and the New York City Independent Film Festival. C Rock’s writer/producer/director confirms that many viewers talked with him about their personal connection with his film. Roth commented, “A surprising number of people who watch the doc tell me that they connect to it because they had some kind of swimming hole in their hometown. Other people will say there’s a more general sense of their own childhood that they felt while watching. While it would be cool to say I had a childhood tradition as charming as this one, I’m more in that latter category of people who found out about this place and it resonates. To me, the place is like a temple of being a kid. It makes me think about what I was like at that age and about my own growing-up”