After 12 days of pushing the house through the streets of Victorville we did our last interview. In total we moved our mobile MCmansion for about 10 miles, interviewed 35 people and shot 18 hours of tape. We are now back in Los Angeles to prepare the video for the final presentation in the Schindler house.

The first five days were really great and we did many interviews with a lot of different people. We were surprised how easy we got people interested to do interviews. Only on our six day we were suddenly confronted with people that did not want to be interviewed. We walked for about two miles in unbearable heat (43 Celsius). We did not find anybody in the streets and the people in the cars that passed by only asked;  “Is this for sale?” (This is the most common question we constantly hear. It’s very strange especially when you realise that most of the people out here are completely up side down on their mortgages and have enormous debt or are even in a foreclosure procedure with their house and still they are thinking of buying our little ‘Doll house’.)

After six hours we finally got our first interview. It was with a man from San Diego who had come to Victorville for a rehabilitation program because of his alcohol addiction. He now lived in a ‘sober house’ and hopes to get back to San Diego very soon. It was a friendly person and we had a good interview, although he had a voice disability everything went fine. Around five o’clock we broke one of our wheels and needed to change it before pushing our 500 kg house uphill in severe headwind. Two hours later we finally arrived in a cul-de-sac (a perfect safe haven for parking a mobile Mcmansion overnight.) We accepted the fact that we had a bit of an off-day but before we knew we had another hour long interview with a man who told his story. It was a very good conversation, although the content was confronting, he saved our day.

We now have 10 hours of tape and we have the idea we can already create a very interesting documentary. We will continue our journey even more and are very curious who else we will meet on our way. But first we have to see if the house survived its six night, standing alone between all the other parked cars.

This was our third day of our journey through Victimville (as some people call it here). We are doing interviews with people that we meet on our way and hear a lot of fascinating stories. While pushing our house through the streets people get out their houses to see our house and start helping us or start to ask questions. So far it proved to be a really effective way of getting in contact with the people here. They bring us drinks, take pictures and call their friends. Children love the house and play inside.

The interviews are very interesting, they deal with issues related to the housing crises. A lot of people tell us how they deal with the financial crises and how they find solutions. There was an woman who told about her situation of losing her home in Adelanto and how she bought a new home together with her brother-in-law, sister-in-law and her mother-in-law. They joined forces in order to be able to live in their dream house. Others tell about the foreclosure crises, the rise of the crime rate and how it all influences their neigborhoods. We spoke to someone who was selling homes in Victorville, but stopped her business because she couldn’t deal with the competition any more and start feeling guilty that’s she was part of the big real estate problem. A positive thing about the crisis is that it seems to bring people closer together. You now have food programs that provide food to family’s in need and there are a lot of other small initiatives or charities that started from within the community. It is a very interesting contrast, in the midst of the suburban individualistic landscape you can find social idealists or grassroot community initiatives.

After almost three months of constructing our ‘mobile studio’ we finally made it to Victorville. The transport went really great, we had the best truck driver ever. At 11:00 AM we could start our journey through Victorville. We needed to get use to the weight of the house but at the end of the day we could manage really well. Sometimes we had to watch out that the desert wind does not blow our house in the wrong direction and we had to watch the parked cars, other than that it went surprisingly good. We did 3 streets and 4 interviews in 7 hours. We take our time to get good video footage and talk to a lot of people about our project and about their houses and their lives here in Victorville. The interviews that we did are very interesting and already show a broad range of different stories.

At 6:00 PM we parked our home at the side of the road and went to a Hotel to start working on the editing of the video. We are very happy that we decided to stay in a hotel for the coming weeks. Here in the high desert it is extremely hot and dry, the heat just sucks all the moisture out of your body and you definitely need a good meal, a shower and some air-conditioning at the end of the day. We both got a bit sunburned and need to rest for tomorrow. We will start in the early morning with cleaning the house (got a bit dirty because of all the playing children inside, they love our house) and than we will push the house further down the streets. Hopefully the house will still be there tomorrow morning and did not get vandalized or even stolen. Some people warned us for these things but we will see tomorrow morning.