BEYOND: Hope, heartbreak for Marion Barry

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously declared, “There are no second acts in American lives.”

Try telling that to Marion Barry.

As Dana Flor says of the District’s former mayor, “He’s got a second, third and fourth act. The story is not over.”

The story to date is well-told in “The Nine Lives of Marion Barry,” a compelling documentary directed by Ms. Flor and Toby Oppenheimer that closes the Silverdocs film festival Saturday night. It follows the rise and fall, rise and fall and perhaps another rise of the 73-year-old phoenix, who went from Mississippi cotton picker to civil rights activist to mayor of the nation’s capital to convicted criminal — and, amazingly, back to mayor again.

Mr. Oppenheimer and Ms. Flor got involved in the project for quite different reasons — one because he thought outsiders knew just one thing about the former mayor, the other because she thought insiders often had that same view. Both grew up in the city that was shaped by Mr. Barry, who served as mayor from 1979 to 1991 and from 1995 to 1999.

“When you talk to people about Marion Barry outside D.C., it’s a totally different perspective,” says Mr. Oppenheimer, who has lived on the West Coast and in New York for the past 12 years. “All they know is a one-note punch line — he’s the mayor who smoked crack. It drove us to make a film to tell everything else, which no one outside D.C. knows about.”

Ms. Flor says even District residents think of him only as the mayor who was busted in office in a 1990 FBI sting and then spent six months in prison. “We’ve grown up with the lure and legend of Marion Barry,” she says. “I thought I knew about him, but I didn’t really.”

Outsiders are always asking why Washingtonians keep voting for Mr. Barry over and over again, Ms. Flor had noted. “I wanted to give some context to that question,” she says. “There’s a reason for it. Washingtonians are not stupid.”

The answer, she holds, is different for every election.

Mr. Barry, who is on the DC Council, just made headlines again by being the only member to vote against gay-marriage recognition, saying it could start a “civil war” with the black community. One thing remains constant — he’s one of those figures Washingtonians either love or hate.

“Marion Barry could not have existed in any other city than D.C.,” Ms. Flor says. Mr. Oppenheimer adds, “It’s the racially split nature of the city. He’s really used that, in a sense, to stay in power.”

He’s also a down-to-earth man in a city full of fake smiles. “People in the film say everyone’s got a Marion Barry in their family,” Mr. Oppenheimer says. “That makes people relate to him and humanizes him in a way.”

The documentary is one of “heartbreak,” Ms. Flor says, the story of a man who never fulfilled his promise.

“In his early years, Marion Barry was an inspirational leader,” Ms. Flor says. “He could have been Martin Luther King’s successor, as one person says in our film.”

He couldn’t get control of his personal demons, though. Even after losing the mayoralty and doing jail time, he tested positive for cocaine and marijuana in a test required for a sentencing hearing for his federal tax troubles.

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