While shooting “On Thin Ice, The Tai Babalonia story” I noticed that the producers were unhappy when I was happy, and happy when I was unhappy. It was a puzzle.
Then it hit me: They were making television. They were happy when the rushes looked like television whereas I was, yeah, okay, I guess so. Looks okay. Looks like standard television.
I was trying to make something that transcended television, something that went beyond what you would expect of television. When we achieved that I would be over the moon, whereas the producers were uh…yeah…I guess. That’s amazing. But is it what we want?
They were making television. I was making, and I can’t think of a less pretentious way to say it, art.
A couple of days ago Danny, my American friend and regular Xiang Qi opponent still living in China, told me that five years have past since I told him I had something less than a year to live because my prostate cancer has metastasized and found sublets in my lymph glands and bones. I guess I over reacted. But that’s what Dr. Google said was my future. I’m a little embarrassed to be still alive, but I suppose I can live with that. Everybody else seems to be happy that I’m still around.
Now that’s a terrifying picture, is it not?
Here again is the picture of my scan showing the metastasizes in my lymph glands and pelvis. I’m now expecting to last to my eighty-first year, but I don’t think I want to go much further. If indeed that far. Every time I go under the knife now, I secretly hope that something will mess up with the anesthetic and I won’t wake up. One of the problems I’m finding is that MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) requires a decision and a delay. That’s the real horror of slipping closer to that drain.
But what a legacy he leaves behind. Norman directed a lot of fluff and schlock, starting with his breakthrough journeyman work on Pillow Talk with Rock Hudson and Doris Day as he moved from directing Canadian television to Hollywood in 1959. By the time I met him in 1982 he had a filmography full of important classics – “Fiddler on the Roof”, “Jesus Christ Super Star”, “Moon struck” and “In the Heat of the Night” to name just a few. His eclectic list of movie titles, with romantic comedy scattered in to social commentary, received 46 Academy Award nominations and won 12 Oscars.
A very much younger Zale Dalen with Norman on the set of “Best Friends”, staring Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn, romantic comedy fluff at its finest. In this photograph he’s showing me the difference between planning a television shoot and planning a feature film. According to Norman, what I was doing was television – laying out camera positions and blocking for the actors. A feature film director works in images, story boards, and planned transitions. I’m afraid I could never catch on to this approach. The images were in my head and the planning went from my head straight into the viewfinder thence into the camera. But sometimes I would adopt a combination derived from Norman’s kind lesson, but usually my planning involved camera positions and blocking, with sometimes lens notations thrown in.
Norman was very kind to me. I don’t think he was please when I told him I was leaving before his shoot was finished. I had to get back to Toronto to direct an episode of “For the Record” an anthology drama series for CBC television, an opportunity I wasn’t about to pass up, not even to sit at the feet of the master.
Walking the beach at Malabu, just outside Norman’s home there, he told me about his deal with the major for “Jesus Christ Superstar”. He’d seen the stage version in London and purchased the rights to make the movie, but he wanted a gross deal. That would mean that he got a percentage of the returns from first dollar, before the studio subtracted their expenses and worked their accountant magic on the returns, famously charging every production for every pencil the studio used. A net returns deal meant that the director and the backers wouldn’t see a penny, even if the film made millions at the box office. But there was no way the studio would agree to a gross deal for above the line participants. It just wasn’t going to happen. At that time, however, the studio considered returns from record sales to be small change, not worth fighting over. So they compromised by giving Norman Jewison a gross deal on the record sales. I had that album. So did many of my friends. A gross deal on the sale of “Jesus Christ Superstar” had to be worth millions. That alone made Norman a happy, and very wealthy, man.
For this Canadian boy who had never seen an A list director with an A list cast and crew at work, the shear luxury of the production was astonishing. I’d seen well stocked craft services snack tables, and eaten from gourmet quality craft services food trucks, but this was a whole different level. For example: one morning Norman announced to everybody, “Hey folks, we were all out late last night and we’re not really firing on all cylinders this morning. Let’s call it a day and come back refreshed tomorrow.” For me that was a shock. Any production I had ever worked was managed people schooled in Frank Taylor style time and motion efficiency expectations. Getting the shots in the can was everything. The schedule was always squeaky tight and taking a break that wasn’t absolutely necessary just didn’t fit in the shooting board. This was pure luxury. And then there was the private nurse Burt Reynolds requested. She was bored stiff and spent her time handing out vitamins and supplements, but she was there at a good salary just because Burt, or somebody else, might need medical attention Again, pure luxury. It was another way of doing business at the top of the food chain.
I was also impressed by the efficiency with which Norman worked. He only shot what he needed to make the film, working calmly and smiling with quiet dignity even when tested by the oversized egos of his stars. I immediately lost any desire to hang out with those stars, or be their friend. I had arranged a special screening of “The Hounds of Notre Dame”, my second feature, for Burt Reynolds because I’d been told that he had his own distribution company. The day after the screening I asked him what he thought. “We’ll talk.” he said. I learned that in Hollywood “We’ll talk” means “We won’t talk.” I had already learned that “Trust me.” in Hollywood means “Fuck you.”
Goldie Hawn bit my head off, figuratively speaking, when I tried to introduce myself. I suppose I had chosen a bad time to approach her, but still… Not my kind of people.
Dead at 97, Norman Jewison had a good run. Still, he died too young.
My father decided that I should become a doctor. When I was about eight years old he sat me down and gave me the pitch for this career choice. He was a professional salesman, and the pitch stuck with me like a prison sentence right into two years of pre-med at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., conveniently located close to where we lived in New Westminster. If you are interested in setting a child up for one doozy of a teenage identity crisis, this would probably still do the trick. I was sold. I bought in heart and soul.
I graduated high school in 1965 and enrolled at Simon Fraser University as a charter student. Student number 65300-7767, in the pre-med science program.
SFU opened in 1965. It was an “instant university” designed by Arthur Erickson in the shape of a key when seen from the air. Get it? The key to learning? It was very clean, and the students were mostly recent high school graduates, so there was no mature student culture to speak of. We didn’t know any different. It was up to us to create the culture. But to understand how and why I ended up there, we need to go back to the winter of 1958.
The Pitch (as delivered by my father.)
This world is incredibly and increasingly competitive. If you expects a great career, you better start thinking about it and preparing for it early. The clock is ticking. You should consider what you want from a career. Forget following your passion and living your dream. That kind of thing is fine for a hobby. When it comes to finding a career, you need to be a cold-hearted realist. It’s going to take the right education, at the right kind of school, and getting that education is where the competition starts.
The Choices: There are only three things a man wants from a career. You want money. Lots of money. Enough money to buy a good house, a good vehicle and a new one every year or so, restaurant meals on a regular basis, annual vacations, food and clothing, everything a happy family needs materially to remain happy, enough money to set your own children up in a good, middle class, lifestyle. Enough money that when it comes time to retire and take it easy you have saved enough to be comfortable in your final days.
That’s the first thing, and arguably the most important, thing you want from a career. But living just for money is not very satisfying. You want a career that gives you more than money. You want a career that gives you the respect of society, a career that tells the world you are a somebody.
And finally, you want a career that makes you feel of value. You are going to spend a lot of time preparing for your career, and working at your career. You want a career that feeds your soul. A career that makes you valuable. A career that makes you a somebody, so that when people hear what you are, what you do, they automatically respect you. You want to stand out from the crowd.
So, what can you do that gives you these three things – money, respect, and a feeling of being of valued.
We looked at possible or available careers. Some careers, like that of Red Adair who specialized in putting out oil well fires, or elite athletes, film or movie stars, famous actors or musicians, offered no clear path.My father had no idea how one developed a career of that kind. He really saw it as a sure way to starve unless the planets aligned and doors opened to invite you in. Let’s get real here. His vision only extended to careers that seemed possible, and for which there was an ordained path for entry. Remember, this was 1958. A career was something you trained for and entered consciously. So, I might consider being a laborer. That’s a time honored and honorable career choice. Such a career paid very little, gave you very little respect, and while there could be nobility in honest labor – somebody has to dig that ditch or tote that bail – it wasn’t going to give you much in the way of job satisfaction.
Then we considered the trades. I might want to become an electrician or a plumber. That gave a little more money, a little more respect, and skilled work could be satisfying. But really, not great on all three metrics.
Next we considered the professions. In 1956 there were only three professions – doctor, lawyer, and… nobody now can ever remember what the third profession was back then. Strangely, it was clergyman. Not even on the radar now. My father had contempt for lawyers. Bunch of crooks with no morals. And while becoming a priest might be good in the eyes of god, it wasn’t a lot of fun. All those tea parties with aging donors, all those hospital visits. Constant pressure to create moving sermons. But becoming a doctor? That was the thing. Check in to a hotel and it was “Welcome doctor. Will you be expecting any calls?” Or go to a restaurant and it was “Thank you for joining us, Doctor. We have an excellent table for you.” A doctor was treated like a Very Important Person everywhere he went. As for money: “A doctor can earn as much as (incredulous voice) a thousand dollars a week.” Remember, this was 1958.
It seemed obvious that becoming a doctor was the clear winner as a career choice. It would give me a guarantee of a good income, fantastic earning potential, automatic respect of society, and what could be more worthwhile than dealing with life and death decisions helping people to live.
From that guided discussion on, I was absolutely convinced that I would become a doctor. Convinced to the point of asking for a Black’s Medical Dictionary for my seventeenth birthday. Well into my thirties I would wake up at night with the horrible feeling that it was too late. I had wasted my life.
Accordingly, I started at SFU in a science pre-med program. The year was 1965 and I was seventeen years old.
So What Went Wrong:
A long list of factors torpedoed my science major career choice – coffee, with which I poisoned myself by the gallon, playing a card game called hearts in the huge university cafeteria, no sex, a vague interest in science but no real aptitude for math, physics, chemistry, or even biology, but probably most of all it was the coffee. I would get to the university on time, settle down with five cups of coffee and four hands of Hearts, miss the first class and then fall asleep in the second. I was a terrible student.
My father was a conservative Canadian businessman. I was his clone. I found myself arguing social issues with people who were a couple of years older than me, far better read than me, and, if not smarter than me, at least far more sophisticated. It was embarrassing. Our nightly after dinner family conversations around a bottomless pot of tea would have sounded very angry to anybody who didn’t know us. Our discussion style could only be described as forceful. When I took that discussion style to the SFU cafeteria, I sounded bossy and juvenile. When I took the discussions I had at Simon Fraser home, it convinced my father that I was being influenced in a bad direction. My father had never been to university, and felt his intellectual inferiority keenly. He was well read, but along the lines of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. He was anti-union, and generally anti-intellectual. Ill prepared to argue a conservative position in the university cafeteria, or argue a liberal position at home, I went off the rail. Who was I? What did I really think?
In a desperate attempt to get me back on track, my father sent me off to Europe to meet the English relatives and see something of the world. By that time I was mostly interested in exploring counter culture values and experimenting with drugs. I returned from Europe to announce that I didn’t want to be a doctor. I wanted to be a writer.
“Well, congratulations,” was my father’s response. “You have chosen the only career I can think of that is harder than selling life insurance.” Oh how right he was.
Looking back at the person I was in those days, I can see very little to feel proud about. I was insufferably arrogant. I was completely lacking in appreciation of the opportunities my father was encouraging me to explore. While I did admire him and appreciate him as a provider for the family, I knew I didn’t want to be like him. I was the poster boy for lost teenagers with a lot of white male privilege. Having decided that my interests were not in mathematics, chemistry, or physics, I wandered off into an English major. I took a semester as the review editor of the campus paper. I joined a jug band, The Vacant Lot, which threw occasional coin into my hat. I tried my hand at acting with a part in “Look Back in Anger’ and quickly realized that the legitimate stage was not my calling either. As my father so correctly suggested, the big problem with the arts is in making a living. The starving artist is the stereotype for a reason.
I had decided I wanted to become a writer simply because my big love was literature. The first hurdle was that writing is hard. It’s lonely. I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t want to write. Though I’d be happy to express my thoughts on social matters, I was, as one professor described me, a “snotnose”. Nobody was interested in my opinions. And truth to tell, I had no interest in journalism. I was only interested in writing fiction, but I could see that writing a novel would take art least five years of hard, lonely effort with a very small chance of financial success. The short story market didn’t exist anymore. I had an abundance of confidence, a nearly complete lack of experience, a huge shortage of social skills, and a boatload of half developed skills at things like guitar and harmonica playing.
I wanted to be a writer. A very specific kind of writer, a writer of fiction. Where is the market for that kind of writing? The only steady market I could see was film and television. So I joined the Simon Fraser Film workshop to find out something about writing for film and television. And that’s where I started to find myself at last.
Simon Fraser University gave me a home while I sorted out my future. I spent a lot of time sleeping in the rotunda, or just hanging out in the basement of the theatre where the film workshop set up shop. I grew my hair long.
I quickly learned that I enjoyed the mechanics of film making, as it was in those days. I found I loved being in an editing room. I found that writing for film came easy to me. When writing for other forms of fiction, I would get caught up in, and lost in, the words, the rhythm of the words, the repetition and structure of and within sentences, whereas while writing for film I could just imaging what I would see on the screen and what I would hear as the movie played, and then just describe that as simply and as clearly as I could. Forget the words. What do I see on the screen? What do I hear from the sound track? Describe that in the simple format that was standard for a film script. Easy. Fill those pages, and estimate one minute of film time per page, and I was off and running.
FADE IN
EXT. LONELY CITY STREET. NIGHT
It’s rained recently. The street is shiny black, with lights sparkling from windows, street lights, and passing cars.
MUSIC UP powerful, orchestral, suggesting impending excitement to come..
A battered old Dodge rattles into frame from behind the camera. On the trunk is a sticker that reads NUKE THE GAY WHALES
And we’re off. The story, whatever the story turns into, begins.
That took a lot of the agony out of the writing, the choosing of the words. But the rest of making a movie, the technical stuff, was, though at times tedious, comprehensible, simple, and fun. There were a variety of disciplines – camera, sound recording and editing, neg matching, and of course writing and hunting for money – and I got to sample them all and learn which I enjoyed. Best of all, there was money to be made. Not a lot, but enough to pay for an apartment and live a frugal lifestyle while doing work I enjoyed.
I found friends at the SFU Film Workshop. Doug White, Tony Westman, Peter Bryant, Brian Small, Jeremy Long, Stephen E. Miller, Ron Orieux and mentors, Tom Shandell, Stan Fox, Shiela Reljic, and later Luke Bennett, Doug McKay. As my friends found ways to scratch out a living there would often be spill over that would give me work for a day or a week or a month. Tom Shandell paid my rent for a couple of months while I hammered out a first draft of his script, Another Smith for Paradise. I got a few weeks work as an assistant editor to Luke Bennett on Sylvia Spring’s Madeleine is...By then I had a girlfriend and was, at last, getting steady sex. We announced to the families that we were going to get married. My girlfriend’s mom started planning a huge Catholic wedding. I couldn’t find work in Vancouver doing anything, including delivering pizzas. I decided to leave SFU for a while and hitch hike to Toronto, the center of Canadian film making.
I found entry level work at CBC in Toronto as an office junior. The office junior put the film into boxes and shipped it out to stations. After a couple of months I got a promotion to Film Assistant 2, which meant that I got the film back from the stations, ran it through my fingers to find and hot splice any broken sprocket holes so that the office junior could put it into a box and ship it out to stations.
After a few months at CBC I got a call from Richard Leiterman. Allan King was looking for an assistant editor for his next feature, Come on Children. I was making $50/week at CBC. and paying $45/week on flying lessons. Allan King Associates was offering $150/week. So of course I jumped ship. My girlfriend had followed me to Toronto and got a job working in a law office. We lived on her salary and banked mine, which gave me enough to buy a Nagra IV reel to reel tape recorder with crystal synch and a Sennheiser 804 microphone with a wind sock. We returned to the west coast and I set myself up as a location soundman. All the time I was writing scripts, hunting for sponsored films, gathering up film equipment to put together an editing studio, and generally doing whatever I could to scrape by.
I think I may have put in one more semester at SFU when we returned from Toronto, but by this point it was obvious that employment in the film industry did not depend on academic achievements. I did one more semester just to qualify for a student loan, then dropped out without a degree and set off to become a movie director. And that’s a whole ‘nuther story.
A few years ago I visited Simon Fraser University. It has aged well. Although thousands of students have walked its halls and sat in its lecture theaters, you would never know it. The choices of materials for the construction were brilliant, and the place might have been built the previous year. A visit to one of the campus washrooms told a different story. SFU is almost unchanged from what it was in 1965, but an old man was looking back art me from the washroom mirror. What else could I expect after forty plus years as a freelance film maker. Still it was a shock. Inside I too was largely unchanged, though my opinions had moderated. Sigh.
I often ask myself what the point is of putting out this blog. Why expose myself to the incredible range of humanity? Why risk attracting a nutter who, for whatever reason, gets a hate on for me and decides to take me down a peg or two? Back when I did a brief stint as a public service advisor for MCI, we were explicitly forbidden from disclosing any personal information or our location. “If you think there isn’t somebody out there crazy enough to travel thousands of miles to bomb this location and kill you over some imaginary affront done to them by you or by this company, let me tell you that you are wrong. When the masses learn who you are and where you work, there will be somebody among them who is crazy enough to decide to travel thousands of miles just to kill you.,” was his speech during our training session. I disagreed with him, though I had to admit he swung a compelling argument. Just consider the case of John Lennon’s murder to see his point.
Still, I disagreed with him then, and do now. It’s my belief that humanity is full of incredible individuals, people who would like nothing more than to be your friend and make a connection to you. Exposing yourself, your religious beliefs, and your location on this planet is worth the risk. Though maybe not if you make a hobby out of denigrating religious fanatics or work for a huge corporation that has “Screw the customers,” as part of its mission statement.
This long preamble is just to introduce the topic of this post. Back when this blog was being written in China under the name www.themaninchina.com, I wrote a post about my bull whip making. That sparked a brief exchange with a fellow named Matt Galizia who shares my interest in that craft. After those friendly messages, I more or less forgot about him. Apparently that isn’t what happened on his end of the exchange. After I completed my last whip, and was very disappointed with the end result, I left that hobby behind, though I did make sure I left China with a kangaroo hide, in case I ever felt like taking it up again. But my last whip took weeks of effort to make. I just haven’t been inspired to try again. Apparently that’s not what happened with Matt.
I got something in the mail last week. Something so gob stoppingly impressive and beautiful that I’m still in recovery. Matt had created a personalized collector’s item whip, just for me. And while I let my whip making hobby slip into my past, Matt has followed his to become a professional level whip maker.
My personalized bullwhip. Check out the smooth curve of the handle into the fall. the smooth transition from one section to the next.
The whip arrived packaged with some spare falls, crackers, and information about the technical construction of the whip (The order of the bellies is 4,6,8,12 and finally the 16 strands that make up the outside of the whip), photographs, and information about making a Scobie hitch. That package alone must have taken a full day to put together.
I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to crack this whip. It is like a collector’s edition pistol, which loses much of its value if it is ever fired. I’ll have to mount it for display. I don’t have any doubt that it would swing accurately and demonstrate perfect balance. The curve as the handle flows into the thong and the perfectly smooth transitions of the bellies tells me that much. I don’t want to risk scuffing it or causing damage.
It is simply beautiful, and the more I inspect it, the more I appreciate it. I try to be critical, and perhaps you can see flaws that I don’t recognize. But from the handle to the keeper I can see nothing that is short of perfection.
So maybe this is why I take the trouble to reveal myself on the Internet. Without my effort to reach out, I never would have learned about Matt Galizia’s existence. Nor would I have this gorgeous whip as one of my prized possessions. This kind of response from a reader makes it all worth while.
Speaking of which, please take a minute to drop a comment on this, or any other, of my posts. You can find the link to add a comment at the top right hand corner of this page, or as the last item in the list of categories. I’d love to hear from you.
Update:
My first impulse was to leave this wonderful whip hanging on gulu gege (“brother skeleton”, a permanent fixture in my office decor) and treat it like a collector’s item pistol, i.e. never firing it. That lasted until curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see how it behaves when I crack it. And that lead to more ambitious cracking. When Tai Haller first showed me how to crack a whip, there was no source of instruction other than one on one personal tutoring. And that was limited by the fact that not many people in my life can crack a whip. But time passes and things change. Now there is a plethora of instruction on line and I’ve been seduced into expanding my whip cracking repertoire.
The only cracks I’ve learned were very basic – the cattleman’s crack, the overhead crack, and….well, that was pretty much it other than passing the whip to the other hand behind my back and cracking it on my right side. Now I’m learning more exotic cracks, like the fast figure eight and the volley. Check out this excellent tutorial:
He makes it look easy, and with instruction like this it actually is. Timing is everything. As always, your comments are welcome. You will find the link to comment at the bottom of this post.
We had a couple of incidents shooting Terminal City Ricochet. The first one I’ll tell you about was my fault, and I hope I learned my lesson from it.
I guess I’m proud of this movie, in retrospect. It was strangely prescient, and even more valid today.
The scene called for our heroes to run security in a big old pimpmobile of a car. A guard with a pistol grip shotgun was to stand in front of the vehicle and fire at the windshield, which, being bullet proof, would only sustain a skid mark as damage.
I’ve had a lot of experience with wax bullets from back in my days playing with my Ruger Super Blackhawk 44 magnum with the fast draw club. I would hand load the wax bullets. They were easy enough to make. All it took was loading in a primer and black powder, then pressing the shell casing into nearly molten sealing wax. The result was a non-lethal projectile that would let me see how accurate my shot had been. So here’s my bright idea: I’ll just make a few 12 gauge wax bullets that can be fired at the car windshield, leaving the desired skid mark without penetrating the glass.
Of course we tested this concept on the prop car, and I was really satisfied with the result.
To do the actual shooting I wanted somebody I could trust with a shotgun. So I enlisted my brother, Ed (Bear) Scott, to play the part of the guard. Ed’s day job was as a prison guard. He carried a pistol grip shotgun most days when he was working in the yard. I knew I could trust him to land a shot on the windshield and get out of the way before he got run over.
Comes the day. Everything is all set. The shot goes off perfectly. No problem, until Ed comes on the walky-talky. “You might want to call for an ambulance,” he says calmly. “That bullet went right through.”
Well, holy shit. That doesn’t sound good. We all race for the car, where we find the actors laughing and pointing at the very obvious hole in the windshield. They were splattered with shards of glass, but fortunately nobody was hurt. They certainly could have been. They weren’t even wearing eye protection.
This was the beginning of my aversion to having a real gun on a movie set. It’s not necessary, as I demonstrated quite well using nothing but Final Cut Pro when shooting “Passion”. It’s now a trivial matter to add CGI flame and smoke to the muzzle of a gun that can only go click, completely incapable of sending out a projectile. The result is one hundred percent believable. Actually even better than what you might get with a real gun because you can adjust the look and level of the flash and smoke. But Terminal City Ricochet was shot in the pre-digital days, when adding CGI would have been completely beyond our squeaky tight budget. No longer, and no more. Never again.
That was one of three incidents I can think of where we had a safety issue on Terminal City Ricochet. At one point, my safety officer wrote a letter to his union complaining that I was ignoring safety concerns. That gave me no choice but to fire the man. This was about the time that a helicopter crash killed performers on the set of Twilight Zone the Movie, resulting in criminal charges against the director, John Landis. It was obvious that I, the director, would be in line to take any blame, and with a letter like the one from my safety officer on file, I would have no defense at all. Thinking back on this now, firing the safety officer did nothing to mitigate my legal exposure, but I think firing him for egregious stupidity was certainly justified. I replaced that safety officer with the head of the stunt man’s union, telling him that he had complete control of the set and that nothing would happen without his approval. He was to sign off on any scene involving a firearm, explosion, or anything else that could be dangerous. None of this would have protected me in the event of another incident, but at least it would give me an argument to make if something else went wrong.
Please stay tuned for two more safety issues on Terminal City Ricochet. It was a scary shoot.
And please, put your thoughts and comments into a comments thread for this post. You can find the link to post a comment at the top right of this page, or at the bottom as the last item on the category list. Comments really help to motivate me to continue writing this kind of material, and ease the feeling that I am screaming into the void. So please, do comment.
I once paid quite a bit of money to attend a workshop on how to be a successful director. I don’t remember what credentials the presenter held, but he managed to turn me off within five minutes of starting his presentation. His first piece of advice was that a director needs to establish dominance by firing somebody. It didn’t matter whom or why, just pick somebody more or less at random and fire them.
No, it wasn’t a program put on by this film school. But similar, I think. A friend convinced me that I needed to attend.
This is the dominance theory of film directing and it’s not for me. I’m ashamed to say I tried it out once on a CBC production in Toronto. I like a quiet, focused set. My hope was that, while the crew would not shape up to make me happy, they would shape up to keep the first AD safe from criticism. So I growled loudly at my first AD: “If you can’t get me quiet on this set, I’m going to get somebody in here who can.” Doing my best to sound angry and nasty.
And then I felt so bad about myself that I never tried being dominant again,
All I can say about this theory of directing is: Don’t be this guy, eh.
I walked out of that expensive workshop after a mere five minutes of listening to the jerk strut and preen his way around the stage. I demanded my money back with the excuse that my back was giving me trouble and I couldn’t stand to remain in the seat. I suppose I could have just told the organizers the truth, but there would have been consequences for that friend of mine who talked me into buying the ticket. Truth can be a dangerous thing to use indiscriminately.
I got my brother, Ed “Bear” Scott, to work with me on Terminal City Ricochet, despite my feelings about nepotism. Mostly I wanted him on set because his day job was as a prison guard. He handled a pistol grip shotgun every working day, and knew how to do so safely. Ed knows me. He knows that I’m a pussycat by nature. And this is what he told me about the crew: “They are terrified of you, you know.” Shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re kidding,” I told him. “No I’m not. They are totally terrified of you.” “What have I ever done to make them afraid of me,” I asked him. “That’s what I can’t figure out,” he said. “But they are.” “Must be just the title,” I said.
We had a lot of real guns on that set. Ed told me about a conversation he had with the props master. “You’re going to have an accidental discharge if you do that,” he told the guy. The response he got roughly translates as “Fuck off. I know what I’m doing.” And then five minutes later, KABOOOM. One of the pistol grip shotguns went off, to everybody’s surprise, especially the surprise of the props master who was holding it, fortunately pointed straight up in the air. Ed gave him a look, but didn’t say anything. He’d been in that position himself.
Terminal City Ricochet had a couple of incidents on set that resulted in me having to fire the safety officer, out of self defense, and replace him with the head of the stunt man’s association. More on that in my next post.
I woke up this morning feeling like I had been kicked in the cajones. Men know that feeling. The dull, ache, nausea, but in my case not restricted to my testicles but radiating around to my lower back, seriously into both left and right groin, flowing down my quadriceps like setting cement until both legs felt rock hard and stiff.
The worst of it came only after I had gained my feet by assuming a pre-natal position, then dropping my legs off the edge of the bed to counter the weight of my body as I rolled into a sitting position, then reaching for the post (supporting the overhead beam) three feet from the edge of the bed and pulling myself up to stand. Gasp. Breathe. Ten minutes earlier I had asked Ruth to take one pill from my hydromorphone tablets and drop it into my mouth, then hold the water glass, half full, at my lips so that I could take a sip. I waited for the opioid to take some affect, but then I asked for a second.
Friday, February 17, 2023. It’s a process, not an event. I’m in the process of dying. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I can squeeze another year or two out of this life of mine. Can I hope for five years? Ten? I won’t know anything until my doctor’s appointment on the twenty-seventh of this month, ten days hence. Likely not even then. My doctor has a heavy accent, likely German, and he mumblers. He’s not a great communicator.
On this morning I had a commitment to drive Ruth to VIU, Vancouver Island University, to teach a class to visiting Japanese students. Remaining in bed was not an option, even if my bladder would have allowed it. I had to get up.
“Should I start your coffee water,” Ruth asked. I drink instant. Don’t judge. It’s what I like, and have liked ever since I read that it’s the coffee served in many five star hotels around the world, with the elite customers none the wiser. It’s just coffee.
“Yes please. I will be up.”
Ruth left the lights on so I wouldn’t go back to sleep and went upstairs to get her act together for her own struggle with consciousness. She hasn’t been feeling great herself for the past few days. Hopefully it’s just a cold. She had a Covid test last Monday, before joining me as support for my doctor’s appointment. Negative. So we know it isn’t that. I depend on her so much now. Depend on her both for physical and emotional support. This process ain’t easy. Not for anybody. Not for me, but perhaps even more so not for those who care about me, my family and close friends.
I have been dribbling out the following announcements for the past couple of weeks, ever since I came to a decision:
“In other news: Mark your calendar. May 15, 2023. Ruth and I had a talk the other night. Pending medical opinions, May 15 is the date I’ll request MAID, Medical Assistance in Dying. If these last few weeks are what my life is about, the party is over and I want out. That should give everybody time to get used to the idea, including me. Please keep the date under your hat, pending a formal announcement, pending conversations with my doctors, but the paperwork’s been done. It feels good to come to clarity.”
The first to get this news was my older sister, Catherine, eighteen months my senior. I told her first because we have discussed this eventuality extensively over the years. I could be confident that she would not play into the dramatics of the situation.
Her response: “I respect your decision but do hope you will wait until you get a more definite diagnosis from your Doctor. If this is what you fear it is and there is no chance of recovery okay I totally understand. There is really no way to soften this. It is a very final solution . I am the oldest of 5 and always hoped I would not outlive any of my siblings.️ (heart emogi, U.)”
The most recent recipient, yesterday, following the same message to my two boys and my daughter, went to my American friend, Danny, still living in China which is where I met him during our first year working in that country. I delayed giving Danny the news because I knew he wouldn’t want to hear it. “Hey David, just outside now. Gonna take me some time to digest the above. (Frowning emogi.) I’ll check in with you in a bit.”
Danny and I play Xiang Qi over zoom most weekends, making allowance for the time difference between here and China. A few years ago, I flew to Thailand while he would be there on business. Seventeen years of talking trash over Chinese chess should leave a hole to get over. People I hope will have a hard time letting me go with grace and maturity and courage, the strongest and most mature of them all being Ruth, my wife, my support, my love.
I’m back from driving Ruth to work now and walking the dog so he could have a pee before bringing him into the house. It’s a beautiful Nanaimo morning here. The scotch mist felt like putting my face over the vegetables in the super market as I let Enzo Lorenzo Barkinton Ferrari of the Manitoba Barkintons sniff the damp winter grass and empty his bladder.
Before we went in to the house we had a chance to introduce ourselves to Inge and her dignified, elderly and deaf, collie, Suki. Out for their daily morning walk past our home. Their passing always sets Enzo into a hysterical frenzy until I let him approach Suki for a peremptory butt sniff, which she ignores and he quickly catalogues as not of mating age. I do love this neighborhood.
Inge with her companion, Suki. A daily sight in our neighborhood of a morning.
And now I can feel the 18 mgs of hydromorphne starting to wear off. The drug has allowed me to type this much in relative comfort, but it’s time to take a break. I have a few things to do before the pain roars back. To be continued.
Why the pain? That’s the question… How did I get into this situation, counting my pills until I can get to talk to a doctor who holds power over my pain level. Well, when we first learned that my prostate cancer had metastasized into the bones of my pelvis and into lymph glands up into my neck, we assumed the worst and over-reacted. We went on our tour to Scotland. I gave away my Italian violin. I went into the palliative care program and settled down to wait for the inevitable.
After three, almost four, years of monthly attention from the cancer doctors and the support community, my cancer seemed to be under control. My PSA, Prostate Specific Antigen, number has been down into decimals, indicating no activity by the tumors. I’ve been taking the latest cancer drug, apalutamide trade named Erleada. I’ve lost my body hair and been returned to a prepubescent state. I was on a very low maintenance dose of hydromorphone, trade named Dilaudid. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I couldn’t tell whether my pain was a result of the cancer, or just the standard aches and pains of old age. So I asked the palliative care treatment doctor to wean me off the hydromorphone so we could see what would happen. I did not want to be on the opioids, with my brain wrapped in cotton baton.
Big mistake. I was free of the opioids for two or three months when the pain in my lower back started to build. I tried to call the palliative care doctor and had a terrible time getting a number for her. I left messages. She didn’t call me back. Finally her nurse called with the news that I’ve been discharged from palliative care. If I want back on the meds, I need to see my family doctor.
It usually takes at least a month to get an appointment with my family doctor. Fortunately, he’d had a cancellation and I got in to see him in less than a week. He gave me a very small prescription for the hydromorphone, set up an appointment for the end of this month, and sent me to get an xray of my lower back and left groin. This was still days before the pain crisis that sent me to emergency.
The next morning I hobbled in to the imaging center, endured the required positions on my back and side, then went home for a quiet weekend, only to go into full blown pain crisis Monday evening. Never have I ever ….. Screaming pain. Pain in my pelvis and lower back, radiating down into my legs and flashing up into my mid back and neck and shoulders. I called the 811 medical advice line and talked to a very nice nurse who told me to go to emergency at the hospital. We did that. They injected me with something, gave me something else to swallow, gave me a prescription for hydromorphone and something called gabapentine. The pain was more or less under control. That was when the emergency doctor looked at my back xray and I learned that I have a small compression fracture in my lumbar vertebrate. What the fuck? Where did that come from? Have my bones started to crumble for no reason. Up until now I’ve assumed that my bones are in good shape. I’ve had falls, but never any sign of a broken bone.
The drug prescription the hospital had given me was quickly evaporating. They had given me a prescription for hydromorphone and gabapentine, but a ridiculously small amount, not nearly enough to keep the pain under control until I see my doctor again at the end of the month. The gabapentine knocked me into zombie land, like a patient in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. The clinic where my doctor worked said he was unavailable until his booked appointment but gave me a telephone appointment with another doctor. So I was sitting there with my phone, waiting for the call, when my phone chirped. The doctor’s call had gone straight to voice mail without ringing.
This is Canada. I don’t pay for doctor’s appointments unless I miss one. The last time this had happened, my phone going straight to voice mail without ringing, my doctor tried to bill me thirty bucks for a missed appointment. I refused to pay, on the grounds that I hadn’t missed the appointment, and let the clinic know that I will only take face to face appointments from now on. The clinic is only five minutes from our home, after all. I’d rather sit in their waiting room than have them assume I’m missing appointments. When it happened this time I jumped in the car and drove to the clinic. Then found another doctor who could see me.
This doctor made it very clear that she wasn’t interested in my medical history. That was for my family doctor. She wrote out a prescription for hydromorphone and gavapentin. She made clear that this was the same prescription my doctor had given me, which meant that it was also inadequate to get me to the appointment date.
This time when I took the gavapentin it knocked me into convulsions. Each pill was four times the dose of the pills given to me by the hospital. It scared me. No way I’m taking that stuff, so I must depend on the hydromorphone. These are four mg. tablets with instructions to take one tablet three times a day. The effect wears off in about an hour. I’ve been told to keep the pain under control, to not let it get away on me, because it’s much harder to bring it back down that to keep it controlled. Obviously, one short acting tablet three times a day is not going to do this. By my calculations, I need fifteen tablets every day to get me through a day and a night with the pain under control. Fifty tablets, as the doctor prescribed, will last me three and a half days, not the ten remaining until my next appointment. I have six tablets left as I write this.
And now they have me looking like an addict seeing multiple doctors to try to scam more drugs to sell on the street. I resent this, but there’s not much I can do about it.
Yesterday, Ruth and I enjoyed a long zoom session with Panda, our “Chinese daughter”, with her Canadian husband and two beautiful children, Oliver, her boy, and Clover, the girl and recent arrival. I was hoping that my Chinese friend Lv Min could join that zoom session, but I missed her text and had to settle for a video call. Lv Min and her husband, Simon, were our students seventeen years ago. They now also have two beautiful boys, Lucas and Marcus, for whom I had the honour of suggesting a name. My heart swells with pride to think that they are still a part of my life.
Time line of events:
Thursday, November 3 In person visit with palliative care treatment doctor. At my request I was given a schedule to wean me off all pain medication with the intention of seeing how much of my pain was due to cancer and how much was due to normal old age.
Wednesday, January 11 First notice lower back pain and comment to Ruth.
Monday, January 16 appointment with chiropractor, gentle massage and plaster
Thursday, January 19 appointment with chiropractor, heat and gentle massage. Back pain getting worse.
Tuesday, January 24 appointment with chiropractor. Back pain worse yet.
Wednesday, January 25 attempt to call palliative care doctor. I’m not called back. Nurse calls to inform me that I have been discharged from palliative care program. If I want any drugs or support I must see my family doctor. This usually takes at least a month, but I luck out. My doctor has had a cancellation and I can get in to see him that day.
Wednesday, January 25 family doctor in person visit. I’m given prescription for 50 tablets of 4 mg. hydromorphone, told to get an x ray of my lower back and left groin.
Thursdy, January 26 I get in to get an xray of my lower back and left groin.
Monday, January 30 hospital emergency visit, pain crisis. Given injection in shoulder, two tablets of something, prescription for some hydromorphone and some gabapentin. Pain crisis brought under control.
Tuesday January 31, morning chiropractor visit. Lunch with Katherine and Roger. After lunch I realize I can’t find the prescription from the hospital. Panic. Search. Drive to hospital emergency and discover prescription lying in a puddle where Ruth had picked me up after my emergency visit. Whew.
Wednesday February 1 teeth cleaned.
Tuesday February 7, I call the clinic and ask for a doctor to call me back. Phone call from doctor goes straight to voice mail. I drive to clinic and wait for another doctor to become available. Given prescription for small number (50?) of tablets of 4mb. hydromorphone. Plus a preseciption of 30 tablets of gabapentin which can’t be fulfilled at Shoppers Drug because of system problem.. Follow up appointment set for Feb. 13.
Monday, February 13. Doctor followup appointment. Ruth accompanies me. Given prescription for 50 tabs of 4mg. hydromorphone. Replacement prescription for gabapentin issued. I take both prescriptions to London drugs, then drive Ruth to VIU for work. I return to pick up prescriptions, then go to Felder Machinery to buy a new table saw. Returning home I take one of the gabapentin tablets. Never again. Terrifying. Muscle spasms. Shakes.
It is now Monday, February 20. I have six of the 4mg. hydromorphone to last me until I hear from a doctor tomorrow, or go in to emergency at the hospital. While my pain level right now is about a two out of ten, I’m feeling scared.
End of time line.
I was greatly conflicted about the table saw purchase, and decide to sleep on it overnight and return it the next morning. The following morning I decided to keep it. It is a beautiful piece of equipment, amazing engineering with a system that locks the blade in a millisecond on contact with skin. If I’m going to get this pain under control and live past my announced date for requesting MAID, May 15, 2023, I will definitely want this saw. It gives me a glimmer of hope.
This saga of pain and suffering has become tedious and boring. Sorry about that. I’ve skipped the part about seeing a chiropractor, or battling constipation.
And my life still goes on. Maybe. It all depends on the pain control, eh. Dying is a process, not an event. I shall try to make it as good and easy as possible. One way or another, this cannot continue.
Stay tuned for updates as they happen.
UpdateFebruary 22. Evening.
Yesterday I was in panic mode, the first day following a long weekend and I was I was down to my last, my very last, few tablets of hydromorphone, the only chemical between me and another pain crisis, another visit to the emergency department at the hospital. I needed to see a doctor. The word “desperate” was shaping my mental reality. I don’t like being desperate. Desperate people make very bad decisions. Desperate people are not cool. Desperate people are the very opposite of cool. Desperate people rob banks, or pharmacies, or buy street drugs of unknown provenance, adding their name to the long list people who have died in the past year from the ongoing overdose crisis in this part of the world, a list that includes my daughter’s fiance who died a few years ago from this very crisis.
My first call to the clinic attempting to get an appointment with a doctor, the automatic answering machine voice informed me that the queue was full. Please call again later.
I tried again at noon, and got through to a real live human after only a twenty minute wait. This was a real live human who was willing to listen to my situation, sound sympathetic, and yes, invest some time into trying to solve my problem. While my doctor wasn’t available that day, the receptionist could squeeze me in to see him at noon today. This was cutting things too close for comfort. Frantically calculating my pill usage, I agreed that I’d have enough to make it until noon today. Okay. Success.
And even further success. A glance at Ruth’s schedule, posted in her office (brilliant woman) revealed that she was free to attend with me. I like that because as I mentioned, my doctor has an accent and, just maybe, my hearing is not what it used to be.
We woke up this morning to four more inches of wet snow. Since we’re only five minutes from the clinic, I assumed that we’d have plenty of time to free the car and be mobile by eleven forty-five. There was ice under the snow. The charging cable was frozen into the charging port. We hadn’t lifted the windshield wipers before turning in for the night last night, so of course the wipers were frozen down. You would think that with the urgency of my situation I would have allowed more time to get ready. You would think. But there you go. The little EV has great thawing ability. Despite tension and fear, we were on our way a mere five minutes behind schedule. Plenty of time for the drive. No problem finding parking a mere ten feet from the clinic door. No problem with masks or antiseptic gel. No problem anywhere.
The appointment itself was… pure wonderful. Dr. Olivier seemed a different person once I told him I’ve chosen a date for MAID. He gave me time. He calculated dosages. He accepted my requests without any argument. Unlike previous visits, he even seemed sympathetic. I think I even caught a smile.
We left his office comforted and I felt assured that my pain would be kept under control. Maybe I’ll even be able to postpone the May 15 death date by months, maybe even by years. Maybe the zoom celebration of life party can be postponed by the same amount.
Maybe I’ll get to live long enough to do a few things with my new table saw.
I took Ruth to lunch at the nearby sushi restaurant, our favourite, while we waited for the prescriptions to be prepared. Ruth dropped me and Enzo at our door before she went off to do some banking. He immediately went hysterical barking at the dog down the street and trying to pull my shoulder out of its socket.
Life seemed suddenly back to normal. I have no pain. Like Bill Hicks said, it’s just a ride. Ready for tomorrow, eh.
Thanks for reading. A comment would be welcome.
UpdateFebruary 22. Morning.
And I’m up. As instructed by my doctor, I had one each of the timed released tablets of hydromorphone (one 12 mg and one 6 mg to reach the required dosage) before bed last night and one each of each this morning before coming up for coffee and breakfast. One thing I noticed last night when I awoke to pee: in the past I would wake up with my legs and groin soaked in sweat. A most uncomfortable situation. Last night and this morning? Dry’z a Bone, as the wet weather working gear was labeled during my teen years. (No boner, sadly. But I will take whatever I can get now.) It’s something. Now I’m off to Google to find out whether hydromorphone would kill my puppy should he ever manage to get his teeth on a stray tablet. (No way would I ever get it out of his mouth should he get one. It would be game on, for sure. He’s not named Enzo Ferrari for nothing. ) And whether Noloxone would be an appropriate emergency treatment.
And again, thanks for reading. A comment would be welcome.
UpdateFebruary 24. Almost Noon.
Dag Nabbit. I missed Danny’s call last night. It’s 3:20am there and Danny and his beautiful girlfriend are out singing karaoke. Maybe he can call me when he’s home again. Really would like a game.
I’m awake and close to pain free. Wonderful. Woot woot.
Update February 27, 8:45pm
I have no idea why, but somehow the process of dying doesn’t seem to be as smooth as I hoped. It seems I can expect good days and bad days. Yesterday was not exactly a bad day, but not a good day either. Today was not a good day. I’m taking far more of the hydromorphone than I want to be taking, with diminishing returns. Google has made everything confusing. I don’t really know which account I am in, what my user name should be, or which email address it will accept with associated password.
I’m constantly being told that I’m logged out, but I have no idea which program I was logged in to.
I’m too tired to work this out right now, so I’m off to join Ruth at the widescreen TV.
I learned the basics of Chinese chess (Xianqi) while in China. Now I still play regularly with my friend Danny, an American living in Shenzhen. I also play almost daily against Chemist in the U.K., losing with disturbing consistency but still enjoying every game. Here’s where our latest board stands.
I find Chinese Chess much more interesting than International Chess. This board is particularly delightful. It’s Chemist’s move but he’s been sitting on his hands for several days now. Soon he will emerge with a counter to my threatened mate, and no doubt will defeat me yet again. But this position is just so much fun. His Pao (canon) on D8 is in position to take my Zhu (chariot), usually the most valuable piece, on F8, but he will know that doing so will give me a mate with my Ma (horse) saying check on C9 followed by mate with my Pao on B9.
I expect him to counter with his Shi (adviser) from F10 to E9 but from there it’s anybody’s guess. I await his response with ‘bated breath.
It’s getting late to wish you a Merry Christmas, but still on time to wish you all a Happy New Year.
We’ve had a great Christmas this year, full of warmth and affection and a certain acceptable amount of gluttony. I bought Ruth a rowing machine to replace our elliptical trainer that had finally burned out after years of keeping us fit. I started with five minutes on it and have been increasing by a minute a day. Yesterday I rowed for seven minutes and it left me with very sore quads and biceps, so I know it’s working. I have been far too inactive over the past year, and it takes very little to tell me I need regular exercise.
Ruth bought me a new laptop. I’m not sure how I will like Windows 11, and I am sure I’m in for at least a week of computer hell as I get used to the new machine. But my old laptop, running Windows 7, just can’t handle the video editing programs I want to use. I really miss Final Cut Pro and am frustrated by the learning curve of Adobe Premier Pro CS6. As a result, I skipped the refinements I would have given to to this video I made for the grand kids and just slapped it together to get it off in time.
There’s lots going on right now, mostly good, often frustrating. My quail egg hatching project has come a cropper with only four chicks hatched and none surviving after trying with two batches of eggs. I’ll try again in the Spring. The operation on my right hand, involving cutting off the arthritic bone on my right thumb and gluing on a tendon from my forearm, has been remarkably successful and I can now practice the violin again without immediate pain in my bow hand. Instead I have immediate pain in my right shoulder from the rotator cuff repair. I’m hopeful that the rowing machine may also address that problem.
“Whiskey Before Breakfast” almost up to speed with J. Douglas Dodd on piano.
I keep promising myself not to take on any new learning curves, but I’ve just purchased a new grinder and polisher and will shortly dive head first into knife making. The very last thing I need is a new hobby, but here I go again. There’s always something causing pain, much an unavoidable part of getting old but also self inflicted like running a finger into the band saw just before Christmas. It will heal, and hurt like hell until it does.
I’ve never been one for New Years resolutions, but I do intend to gain some consistency in my exercise, my music practice, and the projects I pursue, including more frequent updates to this personal website.
For you, my presumed reader, I wish the very best in 2023. Stay interested. Carpe the fuck out of each diem. Enjoy another ride around the sun on this amazing spinning globe. As my friend Danny in China would say, love ya tons.
