If you've seen the video, it's hard to forget: A tank, weaving through suburban San Diego streets, indiscriminately destroying a car here, a Winnebago there, a fire hydrant farther down the street. The story ends tragically when the tank driver tries to jump the median on the freeway to escape the pursuing police. When he refuses to give up to the police who storm the tank, ripping open the hatch, he's shot to death.
End of the story? Not quite. Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story is a fascinating documentary by filmmaker Garrett Scott which delves into the man behind the wheel of that tank, Shawn Nelson, and the reasons he took such drastic measures. Along the way, it brings into sharp focus the problems of the everyday American workforce, the evil influences of drugs (in this case, crystal meth) and the obsessions of one man and how they got out of hand.
Shawn Nelson took matters into his own hands when he stole a tank from a nearby National Guard depot on Kearny Mesa in the San Diego suburb of Clairemont. It was May of 1995 when Nelson had had enough. He was convinced his backyard contained gold and had built an 18-foot shaft to mine it. The stories differ a bit here--either the County granted him a claim or they didn't--but Nelson was at the end of his rope. An ex-soldier and a meth user, he decided to drive a tank onto the steps of the County building. That way, he reasoned, they'd have to listen to him. He never made it that far.
Cul de Sac paints a fascinating portrait of Nelson through interviews with his brother and friends. To be honest, the whole bunch seem just a bit off, like they're all--or were at one time--major tweakers (meth users). Even the one who seems to be the most intelligent of the bunch, with the nicest home, is revealed to be mired in conspiracy theories (semi- and unrelated to what happened to Shawn), suggesting that using meth and quitting causes long term damage. Meth is a central character in this story and its history as a government based drug used to keep bomber pilots going for hours on end is explored, as is San Diego's historical place as the entry point to the US from overseas service. Because of that, meth became a part of San Diego after WWII and stayed here. (The aforementioned friend with the nice house expouses the theory that meth was created by Hitler and fed to all Germans, thus demonstrating their loyalty to a government and leader so obviously failing.)
Beyond that, Scott brings in the story of San Diego's rise as a post World War II production center of military-based aircraft and weapons and how it all went to hell in a handcart when the Berlin Wall came down. One man is interviewed on the site of the former General Dynamics plant on Kearny Mesa, a relative ruin that closed just a few years earlier. The issue of major manufacturers who don't change with the times and retool are explored. Clairemont basically fell apart after GD failed, and hasn't recovered since. It's a town which may have outlived its usefullness.
Nelson's story is tragic. Convinced that he had a gold mine in his backyard, his obsession leads to his downfall. The film uses TV news footage of the time, a lot of it from KUSI, and there's nothing like seeing Rod Luck chased from Nelson's house by a swearing woman clad only in a black t-shirt, laying F-bombs on TV akin to the archival footage Scott uses of planes doing carpet-bombing runs in WWII. We'll never know how much Nelson's journey was crystal meth-enduced, how much was honest and real, and how much was his desire to just drive a tank through city streets, a fantasy he mentioned to numerous people numerous times. This footage almost always shows up on World's Wildest Police Videos and shows of that ilk. Sadly, that kind of showcase robs it of its human side of the story, and that's the most fascinating part. Shawn Nelson's story is part and parcel of the way the world is changing and how, many times, people tumble off of it.
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