Script Tunnels Las Vegas
Quote Barry/tunnelbewoner: ‘Just go zero zero, zero, one. And keep working your way up and if you have all nines and you still don’t have then something is wrong’
Voice Over: Sometimes a city is not what it appears to be. Even early in the morning Las Vegas shines and sparkles (..)The neon lights seem to have a magical effect on everyone. Anything is possible in Vegas.
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist: ‘Everyone is so happy and excited. They pose in front of the sign without even realizing what is right beneath them…’
Voice Over: On this very spot I meet journalist Matthew O'Brien.
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist: ‘It’s quit a contrast too. To see all the juveniles up here near the sign. And people smiling and what you see down beneath the city in the underground flood channels…’
(..) ‘Are you ready?’
Voice Over: Just across one street and the city as we know it disappears. This is the entrance to another world.
Quote Miranda Grit/reporter: ‘Over there is the famous sign; welcome to Las Vegas, and right under the sign is here the tunnel, an underground flood channel. It is 300 miles long and hundreds of people are living in here.’
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist:
‘Stay near the middle of the tunnel. Because on the side you have spiderwebs as you can see, some black widows’
Voice Over:
These tunnels have the purpose to drain rainwater ...
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist:
‘The watermark right here. Almost knee high. Which may not seem like a lot of water but I have seen two tons boulders that have been washed in. I have seen a car that has been washed into a flood channel. The flood water is very powerful.’
Voice Over: When working on a story for the local newspaper, Matthew discovered people living here.
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist: ‘I heard about a murderer that used these flood channels to evade the police. I decided to follow his trail. To see what he experienced down in these tunnels. I thought I maybe would come around some ironic debris or some cool graffiti. I was not expecting to find hundreds of people living in these underground flood channels.’
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist: ‘It looks like someone has placed plastic over the tunnel floor so they know when someone is approaching their camp and be prepared.’
(..)
‘Yeah here is some chain link fence that has been put on the floor. We are approaching a guy named Craig he has a camp. I have known him for a few years. Let’s see if he is around’
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist & Craig/tunnel dweller:
Matthew: ‘He Craig….Craig?’
Craig: ‘Do you want me to give you a tour or something? ‘
‘If you sit on that…’
M: ‘That’s your bathroom?’
C: ‘That’s my clean bathroom? Toilet.’
‘Yeah, I grew up on a farm I don’t have a problem. I am 30 feet under the ground. How far do you want me down?’
M: ‘You take it outside every once and a while and dump it?’
C: ‘Yeah’
‘This is like where you would go into your house, this is like my garage…’
Voice Over:
At 49, Craig has been living underground for six years now. What strikes me is his hospitality and his collecting mania.
Quote Craig/tunnel dweller: ‘I found all this plastic 1500 feet down by the wash. It makes great homes for the homeless’
‘This are battery operating lights. Go on and off.’
‘This is my escape route if you needed one. I only have seen once where the streets were totally flooded. So you can get up here. I would say you are 20 feet underground.’
‘I have lost everything three times. That were good floods, three days floods, that are abnormal. So well this was a bed but I use it now for storage.’
Voice Over:
He even lost his set of teeth in one of the floods.
Quote Craig/tunnelbewoner:
‘I think I have a fax machine in here..He well you have one thing you don’t the next’
‘we go on in here. This is where sleep in.’
Miranda: ‘You have a real bed?’
Craig: ‘Yeah I make it. I don’t like the tunnel. I try to get all those aspect out of’ it.
Voice Over:
I’m amazed by his underground home. Once a truck driver, now living underground. I wonder how he ended up here.
Quote Craig/tunnel dweller:
‘You had a wife? I had a wife yeah. She died of lupus? I was on the road a lot. She was ten years older than me. She was a wonderful woman, and 6 months after she passed away my father had three months to live. Also cancer. So I took care of my grandfather, grandmother, my dad my wife. Take their last breath. I got off the road. Snored a line. That’s what Vegas does. You come here to party and drink.’
‘It shocked and odd me myself. I never pictured myself being there.’
‘I do hang my clothes up, cover them up’
‘My biggest problem is the gambling and the whores. Oops. Prostitution (..)We do all the same stupid crap(?). We give the casino’s our money. ‘
Quote Matthew O’Brien/writer:
Matthew: ‘It is kind a comforting when you walk for a long time in pits dark and even though this is not the end of the tunnel it’s nice to get some light.’
Miranda: ‘And some fresh air’
Matthew: It’s scary being here on your own and not knowing who or what’s down here. Or where it leads to. There were times where I entered the tunnel in downtown Las Vegas and came out in north Las Vegas a different part of town. Some of these tunnels are very long.’
(..)
‘Hey Travis it’s Matt’
Quote Travis/tunnel dweller:
‘She has got five or fifteen which she has to take a cart and she busted. So I lost my 100…’
Voice Over:
It seems obvious Travis is a serious gambling addict. Even in pitch dark he constantly keeps on playing cards.
Quote Travis/tunnel dweller:
‘The dealer has 18’
‘I came to Las Vegas on vacation. Probably six and a half years ago. After about three days we lost all our money. Ended up writing payroll checks. True casinos for 900 dollars. We cashed ten or fifteen of them…we were caught with one and got probation for a year. ‘ I could not leave the state. Can‘t get a job without ID and if you don’t got money here Las Vegas does not care about you. I became someone under the porch.
Stranded in Las Vegas at 31. In a tunnel where the daylight never reaches.
Quote Travis/tunnel dweller:
Travis: ‘Here you go’
Miranda: ‘What’s that?’
Travis: ‘It’s a knife. I am scared everywhere I go. Doing something that I get in trouble or doing the wrong drugs one day and be lying there. You could be out playing or something and people may not like the way you play the machines. They just watch us close.’
Voice Over:
When the sun sets, Craig leaves the tunnel to gamble. In the evening he goes looking for money in the casinos, illegally.
(..)
We walk deeper into the underground system. The further one steps away from daylight, the shyer man gets.
Quote Matthew O’Brien/ journalist: ‘It’s kind a like exploring a cave. Where you can learn a lot about the history of the place by reading the walls. You see names and dates. And get some sense of who lived here when and what their live was like.‘
‘I think of myself as an intelligent sensitive human. With the soul of a clown. Which forces me to blow it on the most important moments.’
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist:
Matthew: ‘Barry are you here? He its Matt’
Matthew: ‘Barry is been down here 6 or 7 months. What are you doing over there?
Barry: ‘Word search’
Matthew: ‘Barry is been known to figure out the combination of locks down in here…’
Quote Barry/tunnel dweller:
‘Like this one here. I broke this one in less than a day. It took me 6700 tries to break it. It works right now….It gives me something to do. I have nothing else to do so.’
‘If a company wants to hire me to drive I would. But because of my past I can’t get a company to hire me. Right, I just got of prison sixteen months ago.’
Voice Over:
Barry spent 18 years, three months and ten days behind bars.
Quote Barry/tunnel dweller:
‘I was accused of something. I could not proved I did not do it. But with a public defender and no money they didn’t want to do very much. So what was the accusation? I molested my two cousins. And that was a charge where you’re guilty until you’ve proven innocent. And it supposed to be your innocent until proven guilty. ‘
Voice Over:
Barry hardly leaves the tunnel, only when he has to. (SB it is not much but is something) He is 41 and after all these years finally a free man. But he is lost.
Quote Barry/tunnel dweller:
‘When I was in prison I read a book, a psyche book. It was saying cowards choose to die but the strong will keep the world to love. So it’s living’
Voice Over:
Matthew has been wandering through the tunnels for years now. It inspired him to write a book ’beneath the neon’. But more importantly, it motivated him to help those in need.
Quote Matthew O’Brien/journalist:
‘About a year and a half of working together we placed more than 60 people out of tunnels in the housing and helped to turn their lives around. So that’s by far the best thing that came out of the book. The outreach that I do with the help of Southern Nevada.’
Voice Over:
But not everyone wants to be saved.
Quote Craig/tunnel dweller:
‘Silvermining that’s how I make my living. It’s machine checking, slothunt. I call it just good money haha’
Voice over:
Craig is a petty thief. Looking for money tourists leave in the slot machines. Since filming is prohibited in casinos, we follow him with a hidden camera.
(..)
Right away he sees his chance.
Quote Craig/tunnel dweller:
‘Coming out here with just a few dollars. I have 50 dollars now that I made in the casino. I quit. That’s enough for me today. It’s a lot. If you do that every day and for the rent I pay you cannot beat that.’
Quote Barry
‘Right now I have 4949 different tries. This one I am working on now a couple of months on’