I was over at the other building where an elderly guy sat. I was wasting time so I decided to chat the guy up about filmmaking. He's a guy from the Bronx. His name is Richard. White hair now. He quietly sits around former film equipment. Splicers, rewinds, split reels and the like. We started talking about a guy who use to work at our company named Bruce.
Bruce was a weird fucking guy. I always fucked with him, because it was like that scene in "Rain Man" where Charlie Babbitt screams at Raymond,"I know you're in there somewhere!" Bruce talked like Rain Man too. Always going over the same phrases over and over again. His favorite was "you in charge of the music?" Many looked at him with a passing glance not wanting to engage. I leered at the guy. Dumb retard, is all I could muster. I'm a mean angry jerk sometimes.
Richard grew up with Bruce. He told me back in the early 60's he and Bruce, as kids, use to explore New York City to find locations for their Super 8mm movies. One particular trip they went out to an island, remote from what the map had indicated. Looking closer, the name was called "Welfare Island." As kids this just amped up their curiosity. So they took a subway out to this place and crossed a single bridge onto the island. They discovered later that in the 1800's they use to use it for a lunatics asylum. A place to put undesirables. They later renamed it Roosevelt Island.
Then, as they were exploring a police officer pulled up.
The police saw these two little kids and waved them over. Richard first, then Bruce at his heels. They slowly approached the patrol car, to which Richard then told me he saw an issue of Playboy on the passenger seat. The cop muttered something. To which they both looked at each other, confused. "You kids aren't suppose to be here!!" the cop bellowed. Then drove off. Presumably to find a place to wank off.
They just stood there...perplexed.
Bruce was a filmmaker. He would drag Richard all over NYC looking for potential locations to film. I recall talking (in his more clear moments without the Rain Man shit) to him about my films that I make. He was curious, almost envious that I still had that ambition, and infrastructure to get it done. He was more animated and concise without an ounce of being an idiot when he spoke about making movies. The rest of his life was total garbage. Having gone through TWO...yes two mail order Russian brides who fleeced him. More than anything, he loved that I was "out there" giving it a go. You see, he had given himself so many excuses to stop it all. A clue to his mindset was when I was shooting short spec commercial in the sun. To which he cautioned "oh, you'll never be able to see through that eyepiece. Closing down the aperture that much, you won't be able to focus." I had already shot it, and then showed it to him. To which, to his credit, he glowed about the quality. Left speechless about how it was possible to get that type of image on 16mm. He started to believe his excuses, I guess.
I asked him one time if he'd be willing to sell me one of his cameras. As he owned 16mm Bolex cameras. This one was a motorized 16mm camera that I could really put to use. He got quiet. And never responded. Ever. I got the message: don't bring it up again. I could tell it was something personal. As if it was the last grasp of his youth on that island. Despite the fact that this camera was encased in some basement in the Bronx, completely unused, to sell it would mean the final admittance that he didn't do what he wanted in life.
Bruce died a few months back. It saddens me he didn't at least give it one more try. But the world had passed him, as life had pretty much marginalized his existence. I could tell you the time he was at the crossroads of meeting Stan Lee and offered the rights to Spider Man, which is a true story, but he turned it down, for reasons only Bruce knows. I assume he was haunted with that decision for life. But I think what I got from this is that you should never stop trying. Despite adversity. To go to your grave not feeling you gave all you could to yourself is one of the greatest disappointments.
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