eorge Ratliff's look at the West Texas town of Amarillo's relationship with its biggest employer, the Pantex Plant, is a humorous slice of Texana mixed with a case of nuclear fear. Pantex, one of the biggest producers of nuclear weapons (now the primary disassembler of weapons in the post-Cold War era) looms over Amarillo like a boisterous brother-in-law.

Kids used to grow up with a sense of pride that Amarillo was one of the targets the Russians would take out if they ever pushed the proverbial button (take that, Lubbock!) but now many have come to question the benefits of Pantex. Specifically, they wonder what effect having so much plutonium lying around their town is having on their health. The usual argument of providing jobs for the town is tossed around, while the threats to the ecosystem and the inhabitants -- seen most recently in Texas in the debate over the proposed Sierra Blanca waste dumpsite -- are presented as valuable counterpoints.

In a style reminiscent of director Errol Morris, Plutonium Circus cuts back and forth among a set of characters without labeling them with titles or narrative introductions. Instead, the audience is left to discern identities from context and from the subjects' own words. We follow an erstwhile country singer with a smile as bright as an oncoming night train who has become the Pantex mouthpiece, an elderly couple tracking cancer deaths in the area around the plant with straight pins and a homemade map, and Amarillo celebrity Stanley Marsh, opinionated proprietor of the Cadillac Ranch. Although the character we spend the most time with seems like an Amarillo inside joke, Plutonium Circus nonetheless amuses and informs, providing an extremely human face to the still very salient debate over how much a town should remain in debt to its biggest industry, and vice versa.

LBJ

Plutonium Circus

Texas Blues Guitar