Catching Out: A Film About Trainhopping and Living Free

I understand that the creator wished to tell the story of these traveling kids before someone told it for them, but it seems that there is no innocence left to the concept of living free and riding the rails. Although this is not a major production, it seems to me like the movie is selling out the train hopping community, and that is disappointing to me. I commend those that hop trains and live free, because it is something that I will probably not get the chance to do. I would say that this generally representative of train hopping kids, but not exactly. I liked this movie, but I feel that the director lost some of the magic that could have really been there if some things would have been changed. It is not a movie for everyone, because not everyone will appreciate these people for what they do. For those that enjoy seeing people that don't fit the expected lifestyle of American society, this is a good watch.

I was really frustrated and angry with a family member who had so much potential, yet decided that she wanted to drop out of high school and hop trains. I never understood it and questioned her safety. Catching Out gave me a different perspective. We haven't reconciled yet, though I am sure we will when the time is right. That aside, I'd love to know how the cast is doing. I visited the website, which doesn't appear to have been updated in some time. Many of the links are broken. Bummer! :(

Sarah George's documentary is about people who hop trains and live a kind of contemporary hobo's existence. Her camera captures the sense of an escape from the straight world with its tedious responsibilities and appalling hypocrisies as the wheels clickity-clack under your butt on the hard cold bed of a box car.Well, that's how I would imagine it. Yet when you're young (in heart as least) and feel the wind in your hair and no load on your mind, a train ride snitched from society may indeed be something like a return to the freedom of some bygone day.Surprisingly there is an entire counterculture devoted to trainhopping complete with a 'Zine and annual pilgrimages to sacred places. George's film concentrates on some people who have taken up this way of life. She shows them hopping trains, riding trains, being interviewed, dodging "bulls," and in some cases visiting family and friends and talking about the life and themselves and their hopes and dreams for the future. They pass the number around and look askance at the camera and talk about what the future holds. They are not just lost men with nothing better to do with their lives, or young people still seeking what it is they haven't found. Instead George introduces us to a wide range of people including women and married couples, a lawyer, and even some anarchists who try to thwart hunters by scaring their game away with bull horns.There is a Jack Kerouac feel to this way of life, a pride taken in being outside of society, of being free from the indoctrination and the boxed-in life of the wage earner or the corporate cog. But there is also the terrible question whispering down the track, how long can you go on living this way? For one couple, the birth of their first son brought an abrupt end to the wandering lifestyle. I am reminded of a song from fifty or sixty years ago sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford and others:Tonight I heard the wild goose cryWinging north in the lonely skyTried to sleep, but it ain't no use'Cause I am the brother to the old wild goose.My heart knows what the wild goose knowsAnd I must go where the wild goose goesWild goose, brother goose, which is bestA wandering heart or a heart at rest?(Lyrics by Terry Gilkyson)George didn't interview the bulls or train company executives, although she reports on their "no tolerance" policy toward trainhoppers. And George didn't use any vintage film from, say, the depression when riding the rails was not a means to escape but the best way to get from one possible job site to another, from the grapefruit groves of Texas to the strawberry fields of California. I would have liked a comparison of the old hobos and the new. George does interview some of the older trainhoppers, but even they are too young to have been riding the rails in the days of the depression.The documentary ends with the high whine of the rails--very pretty actually--and as the closing credits roll down the screen we hear sung the plaintive "Hobo's Lullaby."Nice, neat documentary that could use a little more depth.

The truth is, I'm not sure what I expected. "Catching Out" isn't a train movie (but there's lots of beautiful shot, gestural train footage); It's not really an alternate lifestyle movie (though it revolves entirely around the various subsets of Hobo Culture. But in the end, "Catching Out" is a visual tone-poem on the idea of freedom. Is freedom "just another word for nothing left to lose?" Or is freedom actually this romanticized notion we're indoctrinated into as the highest American ideal? Or maybe it's both; or neither?Don't look for answers in "Catching Out". (Don't look for locomotive fetish photography either!) Instead, against the expansive backdrop of the American West, there are ultimately only questions in this absolutely American film: questions about Frost's path in that yellow wood, about Thoreau's quiet pond; about what it means to chose your own destiny and (maybe) find your a little peace of mind along the way.

Perhaps you've known people like the characters in this film, people who at least for a time have "checked out" of the assumed priorities of all Americans -- steady job, a home integrated with society's grid. This film goes deep into the lives and thinking of people who "ride the rails" and one guy who dwells in a shack cut off from even a "rural" definition of infrastructure, whose now stationary existence nonetheless shares the philosophy of the transient characters. The visuals of landscape in motion and the detail about the joys and consequences of this kind of life will give you food for thought.I was never deeply moved by "On the Road" or more than vaguely acquainted with "hobo" society but this film communicated the spiritual heart of these outsider cultures to me for the first time, and made me contemplate the meaning of "freedom" for myself. Have I curtailed my own life according to conventional priorities like "security?" Or are some of these characters riding the rails to address or avoid their own interpersonal issues, as a stage they'll eventually outgrow? The film does well by staying with these characters long enough to see them evolve, including one couple who "settle down" after having a child.