I often post about the films and filmmakers I go to see as an audience member. But sometimes I get to be the filmmaker and show my film. It is only fair. Of course, in the role of traveling showmen, we no longer traipse about with a reel or two of film. One can no longer identify fellow filmmakers at the airport by the instantly recognizable 16mm film carrying case they surely haul onto the plane. Now we just slip a DVD into our briefcases (or in my case, Danish school bag).
I am just back from Harvard where I showed Errol Morris: A Lightning Sketch on February 25th in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. It was for Robb Moss’ class, Documentary Workshop.
Robb Moss and his class, Documentary Workshop
His students had seen two Errol Morris documentaries in preparation for my visit. My homework assignment was to fill an increasingly embarrassing hole in my viewing knowledge: Moss’s Same River Twice (2003).
It returns to a group of friends he filmed river rafting in the 1970s, which resulted in Riverdogs (1982). That material is the jumping off for his documentary as he catches up with these friends some 30 years later–as they reflect upon (and often struggle with) relationships, work, age and health. The film and the issues that it explores certainly engage me but the more distant past of leisurely encounters with nature were remote. I remember one summer in the 1970s, when I finally got outside the city for a day or so, my eyes ached from all the green. By the late 1970s I was spending my days in the editing room–or increasingly reading microfilm. My river experiences, if you will, came earlier. They were in the Outer Banks of North Carolina which I visited often, and where I worked as a commercial crabber and fisherman from the end of high school into college. (And where I did my first filming.) But my stint on Hearts and Minds (1972-1974) put an end to that kind of exploration forever–replacing it with a new type of encounter. Perhaps I should finally return to Edenton.
(I suspect these encounters with nature are much rarer today.)
I found The Same River Twice poignant for another reason. Several names in the credits were people I had come to know (directly and indirectly) through the making of A Lightning Sketch. This included Ann Petrone, who appears in my film and is Errol’s producer/office manager. But it was Karen Schmeer–the editor on Same River Twice––that struck home most poignantly. Karen Schmeer was killed in a horrendous hit and run auto accident in January 2010 and her death was still reverberating through Errol Morris’s office when we filmed. She was the editor on several of his films, notably The Fog of War (2003), which she was cutting while she was also cutting Same River Twice. (Amazing!) Her name and her contributions to Morris’s career came up several times and in the end, we dedicated A Lightning Sketch to her.
Kareen Schmeer
I didn’t know Karen, but I vividly remember reading about her death and the shock and sense of loss it cause. As someone who still sees himself as a New York-based film editor–an identity I established for myself as an adult in my 20s and into my early 30s, I thought to all those times when the film itself continues to consume an editor’s thoughts. One is in the film world much more than the real world. There is a sense, too, that we New Yorkers act like we own the streets–which we do except when some crazed driver comes out of no where and creates death and mayhem. Surprisingly, in the wake of my making the Morris bio, I have been meeting many of Karen Schmeer’s friends and colleagues and have been piecing together her life. These included Robin Hessman (made of My Perestroika) and film critic and historian Gerald Peary, who made the documentary For Love of the Movies (2009).
A few more photos from my class visit.
Teaching Assistant Lucy Lindsey and Robb Moss
Robb’s class reminded me a lot of my own. Roughly the same size. Grads and undergrads, all sitting around a seminar table. It is just that their table is made of mahogany while ours is definitely more downscale. The fact of this symmetry only became apparent through the good offices of a young filmmaker and mutual friend whom Robb and I both mentored: Rebecca Wexler. It is due to her good offices that we have a slowly evolving association that will hopefully take us in interesting directions. Thank you Rebecca.
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This might be the place to add a few photos and remarks about a couple of other visits I made in the fall, when I was still recovering from having my camera stolen.