Proposal

Lakefront Brewery
Timothy W. Sienko
Intro Documentary Production

Milwaukee's Lakefront Brewery is a very a good micro-brewery, just like so many mircos around the state and country. However, Lakefront's personal and physical ties to the city makes its story to have only been possible in Milwaukee. The tour provided to patron's of the brewery is also unique by focusing less on the process of making beer and more on Milwaukee culture and the personalities of the tour guides and the building. A documentary about the brewery will include interviews with founder and president Russ Klisch on his story of the brewery's beginnings as compared to the story as told by the tour guides (many of whom are MPS teachers).

The story of the business is told to have begun with a sibling rivalry over who could make the best beer, and Russ Klish began to make his beer available to individual bars near his initial building. As the business started to grow, he had to deliver single kegs via taxi to the locations. The business soon grew and left original building which was condemned by the city. The current location was purchased, according to a tour guide, for $1 from the city as it too was condemned (this one for being too close to the river and abandoned). The building is made, of course, from Cream City bricks(a common feature of Milwaukee architetcure by virtue of the clay coming from the area), but features light fixtures that were initially hung in the Plankinton Hotel (here in Milwaukee) in 1916 for a beer garden that was pre-empted by prohibition.

The tour, though less informational than many brewery tours, is certainly more entertaining. Beer is given to the tourists before and during the tour (unlike the traditional end of tour sampling). The tour guides, according to the website, are not given a script that is recited but rather are given an outline that is to be filled in by the guide's personality and sense of humor. Some of the highlights that may or may not be part of every tour include a story of how the fermenting tanks came to be named after the three stooges (as opposed to the official serial number that every other tank in the country is registered as) and a group sing-a-long of the Laverne and Shirley theme.

The documentary will cut together interviews with Russ Klisch's version of the story and footage of the tour guides retelling the story in their own idiom, contrasting the alleged facts of each story. The piece will follow the tour piecing together the most interesting tidbits and jokes from all of the tour guides creating a narrative that is told through many mouths. This woven narrative of a negotiable truth will turn a story that is unique to Milwaukee into a commentary on the validity of a history agreed upon.