The Apple Pushers: Mary Mazzio’s Heartfelt Documentary

Mazzio has pro­duced a num­ber of award-winning doc­u­men­taries, includ­ing TEN9EIGHT, Lemonade Stories, Apple Pie, A Hero for Daisy, and We Are BlackRock. Her lat­est effort, enti­tled The Apple Pushers, fol­lows the lives of five immi­grants who have taken up the voca­tion of oper­at­ing street pro­duce carts in New York City. It is an insight­ful look into the drive of free enter­prise, and the incred­i­bly sim­ple solu­tion of bring­ing fresh pro­duce into neigh­bor­hoods that would not oth­er­wise see it. The doc­u­men­tary, nar­rated by Academy Award–nominated actor Edward Norton, has gar­nered over­whelm­ing response and demand for screenings.

The Apple Pushers actu­ally had its gen­e­sis in the screen­ing of one of Mazzio’s ear­lier films. “I met this fab­u­lous woman named Laurie Tisch, who co-owns the New York Giants with her broth­ers,” Mazzio related. “Laurie does an incred­i­ble amount of phil­an­thropy, and about four or five years ago she started a new foun­da­tion through which she is address­ing three core issues, one of which is food jus­tice. She saw a film that I made called TEN9EIGHT, all about inner-city entrepreneurs.

“After the screen­ing she came up and said, ‘I’m work­ing on this really inter­est­ing prob­lem in New York. I think it’s worth being doc­u­mented.’ She asked me, ‘You know what a food desert is?’ And I was like, ‘Um . . . ,’ sort of scratch­ing my head. She explained the sky­rock­et­ing rates of obe­sity in these par­tic­u­lar neigh­bor­hoods from the lack of the avail­abil­ity of fresh food. For me it was an aha moment, par­tic­u­larly when I recalled dri­ving around the Bronx, Bed-Stuy and Brooklyn. Of course peo­ple see the same things in their own com­mu­ni­ties, like Detroit, Boston or the south side of Chicago, or even rural areas. Where are the healthy eat­ing options that are prox­i­mate? And the answer: none.

“So Laurie said, ‘Come to New York; see what you think.’ I was blown away by the depth of the prob­lem, and also blown away by how fix­able it was. At the time, New York was imple­ment­ing its Green Cart Program, try­ing to find low-cost ways to infuse these areas with fruits and vegetables.”

The Vendors

The 5 street-cart ven­dors focused on in The Apple Pushers—who were all tak­ing advan­tage of New York’s Green Cart Program—were cho­sen from over 200 pos­si­bil­i­ties. “It was so hard,” Mazzio recalled. “Our street team inter­viewed upwards of 200. We scoured the city look­ing for these guys. We went from about 200 to 100 to 50 to 35, and then get­ting down from the last 10 was really difficult.

“Each one of these street-cart ven­dors (or micro-entrepreneurs, really) was wor­thy of his or her own story. The tales of com­ing to America—they’re uni­ver­sal; it’s the human con­di­tion. You would aspire to maybe not have a bet­ter life for your­self, but a bet­ter life for your chil­dren and your grand­chil­dren. To see that in action I had to ask myself, would I be that self­less? These peo­ple are in the street work­ing twenty-four-seven, in rain, wind and snow, so their chil­dren can be edu­cated here.”

Mary has lov­ingly crafted the sto­ries of these five, from their begin­nings in their coun­tries of ori­gin, then into and through their tri­als and tribu­la­tions as street pro­duce ven­dors. There is Jake, who emi­grated with his par­ents from Russia as a child, his par­ents flee­ing an intensely anti-Semitic cli­mate. Bardo came from Guerrero, Mexico, and at age 15 walked through the desert into the United States, encour­aged by his mother to “be some­body.” Gloria made the ago­niz­ing deci­sion to leave her two chil­dren behind in her native Ecuador, in an effort to make a bet­ter life for them and bring them here. Shaheen reluc­tantly came from Bangladesh, at the urg­ing of his father, on a one-way ticket and with only $200 in his pocket. And Sarahi, at age 15, nearly didn’t make it into the US due to the dan­ger­ous trip across the bor­der, and arrived deeply in debt to the “coy­otes” whom she’d paid to bring her across. All of these won­der­ful peo­ple are now legal—and highly contributive—US citizens.

The ven­dors must each carve out a niche for them­selves, deal with brick-and-mortar stores that would rather they weren’t there, tan­gle with com­plex reg­u­la­tions, and even han­dle weather issues—all while forg­ing rela­tion­ships with neigh­bor­hoods, cus­tomers and sup­pli­ers that will ensure they make a liv­ing and ben­e­fit the public.

Click any image above to see a larger version.

Response and Positive Change

Response to the film—having been in release for only a few months—has been noth­ing short of spec­tac­u­lar. “We had a screen­ing two weeks ago that the Deputy Secretary of the USDA hosted in Washington; the room was full of peo­ple from asso­ci­a­tions relat­ing to pedi­atrics, dietet­ics, nutri­tion, obesity—you name it—and the place lit up after­wards,” Mazzio recalled. “We watched the same thing hap­pen in Atlanta just a lit­tle later, where Arthur Blank—he owns the Falcons and started Home Depot—is focus­ing on food desert issues in Atlanta. We saw the film cat­alyze this great dis­cus­sion. A banker threw her arm up in the air and said, ‘I work for Community Bank. We just got money from the feds. We can help solve this prob­lem. Any non­profit or any entre­pre­neur that has a legit­i­mate busi­ness plan, come see me.’ A leg­is­la­tor threw his hand in the air, say­ing, ‘I can help on the per­mit­ting end.’ And then the food bank head jumped up and said, ‘Oh! I have X pounds of pro­duce!’ We’re see­ing how the film can really help com­mu­ni­ties think cre­atively about this.

“There have been many other types of responses as well that were great. We had a very promi­nent chef e-mail in, say­ing, ‘I want to source all my veg­eta­bles now from these green-cart ven­dors.’ And jour­nal­ists call in and say, ‘Oh, by God! I live in New York and I’m going to start buy­ing all my veg­gies from my local vendor!”

The Apple Pushers is cur­rently being screened at events all over the country—check the film’s web­site (link below) for details. You can also add your name to a wait­ing list for the DVD, which won’t be long in coming.

“It’s fan­tas­tic to have a piece of con­tent that can get pol­i­cy­mak­ers excited and inter­ested,” Mazzio con­cluded. “The fact that I can put out a nar­ra­tive that excites peo­ple is really the power of film. It’s the visual craft­ing of a message.”

For more on this doc­u­men­tary and show­ings in your area, visit www.applepushers.com.

To pre­order the DVD or request a show­ing in your area, click on the “Order Film” link from the front page of the site.