Mike "LIGHTNING" Sardina during his tour in Vietnam
Last month when SONG SUNG BLUE was scheduled to screen at the Minneapolis International Film Festival, Minneapolis resident, Michael Doperalski contacted me to let me know he had grown up in Milwaukee, WI and was actually a childhood friend of Mike "LIGHTNING" Sardina. Michael went to see SONG SUNG BLUE at the festival and recently emailed me to share his thoughts about Mike "LIGHTNING" Sardina, SONG SUNG BLUE, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I thought you might enjoy some of his perspective.
You captured Mike’s personality extremely well... If I had to describe Mike to someone in a few sentences, I would say he was childlike, fun, energetic, loved performing - but was naïve about life in some very basic important ways. He loved music and that was our bond, plus he was admirably ambitious and not afraid to ask for what he wanted. He was a dreamer who couldn’t always focus his energy in directions that would have a chance of paying off for him.
Your film is extremely intimate - perhaps the most intimate film about real characters that I have ever seen. It left me emotionally churned and it was interesting to learn that the friend I brought with me - who didn’t know Mike at all - felt almost the same way.
... Mike’s story is really Milwaukee’s story - and could have been about any one of thousands of people from that city. Growing up in the same Catholic, blue-collar, unionized working class Milwaukee as Mike, I saw the traps that lay ahead and left in 1979. Milwaukee’s working class is FULL of talented, ambitious people descended from German, Polish, Italian etc. immigrants who were often craftsmen, musicians or scholars in the Old World. That strong artistic heritage is in the blood of many of the kids I grew up with but those were skills that were not needed by the employers of Milwaukee. My friends were not prepared with any of the training or encouragement needed to make it beyond minor dabbling in their dreams. I would dare to call it “systematic” as the Milwaukee I grew up in needed lots and lots of factory workers and actively prepared kids for that life. Pretty much everything - schools, families, social institutions - prepared us to be working drones and accept our fates. Family and friends would actually discourage someone from going to college as that was either considered not necessary to having a “good job” or that you were vainly claiming you were too good for those around you. Your world was totally geared to keeping you in your social class. Bars and churches were on almost every corner and both could medicate your feelings of a life half-over and hopeless.
I’m not naïve enough to believe this situation was unique to Milwaukee, but I do suspect Milwaukee has more than its share of frustrated working class who could have been accomplished artists, musicians, actors, poets, writers or filmmakers. Mike Sardina is one of them and you told his story beautifully. - Michael Doperalski, Minneapolis, MN
I'd like to thank Michael for allowing me to share some of his thoughts with you and for his support of SONG SUNG BLUE.
