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.
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.
Paraphrasing here. As Stanly Motts, the producer character in Wag the Dog, said sadly,: Just as you are starting to understand how to make a movie and how the industry works they lower the curtain on your career.
I am a movie director, damn it. Specifically a low budget movie director. Give me Bowfinger’s budget and I will give you a movie. That’s what I have done during my long career. Obviously not as much as I wish I had done, but that’s it. I put the money on the screen.
Anybody can make a big budget movie. That’s a snap. That’s easy. It’s making a movie with no money that’s the trick.
I don’t know how I became a low budget movie director. It’s a lot more fun to hose the screen with millions of dollars from people who don’t know dick about making movies, but to be a director I respect you’ve got to be Bowfinger.
Something I heard through my entire directing career went like this: He’s never made a big budget picture. Do you think he can handle this much money? Handle it? Fuck, I’ll roll in the dirt with it and deliver far more than anybody has any right to expect, dance with whatever devil I have to dance with, and put the money on the screen.
I came into directing up the rat lines. I came into directing after serving an apprenticeship as a writer, soundman, editor’s assistant, sound editor, editor, cameraman, production manager, and… fucking creator. A creator. The author of the picture, whatever the picture might happen to be.
Most people have no idea what a director is, or what he does. Take them on a film set and they might think the assistant director, the AD, the guy giving directions, is the director. Not even close. Peter Coyote was not the director, micro-managing the scene with impossible instructions to performers. Not even close. Or the guy telling the actor to pick up the salt shaker on such and such a line. The guy, now as frequently the woman, giving directions. Isn’t that person the director? Not even close.
The only real depiction of a real director I ever saw was Peter O’Toole in “The Stuntman”. The guy desperately trying to find his movie amid the clatter and noise on set, and in his head. Now, that was a director. That was Francis Copolla trying to find it, to figure it out while he went way over budget in the Philippine jungle with the suits back in the studio screaming at him and throwing scripts at the wall. A guy, increasingly a woman, who can see the big picture, who is so close to the big picture he can almost taste it while the chitchats climb on his ceiling and fall into his tea cups.
And who was it on set when the suit’s representative came to tell him that he was twenty pages behind or fifty pages behind who tore that number of pages out of his script and threw them in the trashcan, announcing, “There. Now I’m on budget.” Money? Fuck your money. I’m making a movie.
I was hired by Canal to get “Wiseguy” under control after the prima donna director of the pilot went so far over budget that they couldn’t do turn around. Zale, Alex Beaton said to me, you are going to bring in the same quality without going a penny over budget or a minute into overtime. And I said, “Sure, Alex. Whatever you say.”
We were shooting outside St. Paul’s hospital on Thurlow Street when a grip went charging past me, a hundred pounds of cable on his shoulder. I gave him an encouraging slap on the back and the sweat sprayed off his t-shirt. I watched him run with it. Run with it, not saunter along. The guy was charging. For me. Because I told him what I expected of the crew and they were all set on delivering.
I think Rob Young was the soundman. Or maybe it was Larry Sutton. No matter. I asked him, “Larry, this is not a slacking crew. This crew is humping it. So what the hell went wrong with the pilot?”
“They set up the camera three times and lit the set four times before they shot an inch of film,” Larry said, almost apologetically.
Well, you can’t do that on episodic television. Not unless you are the precious prima donna director in a sinecure of a position. Then you can do it. Then the studio will eat the overtime and you can keep working while you piss millions down the drain. But that’s not me. I come in on schedule and on budget.
Larry, or was it Rob, explained it to me while he quietly moved my coffee in the styrofoam cup away from his Nagra IV. (Yes, they were still recording on Nagra IV’s in those days.) I said the camera goes here on a fifty, and if I didn’t like the shot we’d shoot it anyway and I’d have to eat it in the editing room. I set a pace. We got the shot and we moved on.
I had a standard speech at the beginning of a shoot specifically for the script assistant. It went like this: Don’t talk to me about axis. I’m not going to discuss axis on my set. If you think I’ve got the axis wrong and the shots won’t cut together, you just make a note in your notes and we shoot the shot. If I’ve got the axis wrong, if we’re crossing the line and you think it will be a problem in the editing room, make a note on the script and keep it to yourself. I’m the director. I’m never wrong about the camera axis. But if you open up a discussion about eye lines or camera axis then the DOP is going to chime in with an opinion, and then the actors will have an opinion, and pretty soon I’ve got twenty minutes of my day and more down the rabbit hole of eye lines and camera axis, while not one of my crew members has ever cut one of my pictures. So they have no right to an opinion of camera axis. It’s my job as the director to choose the shots, cover the scenes, and make sure everything will cut together. Nobody is going to blame you if my shots don’t cut. Make the note and shut up about it. The whole thing about setting the pace is choosing the shots, lenses, eye lines, and then making sure the actors know where to look to match the action. Sometimes it may feel weird to them. That’s all between me and the actors. I’m not going to cover anything two ways, and we’re not coming back for a reshoot.
If you really think the editor is going to come back at you over eye line or axis issues, whisper to me that you’re putting “Shot under protest” on the script. Then get out of my way. We’re moving on.
A director is very vulnerable. His reputation is what gets him or her their next gig. All it takes is a dismissive sneer and comment at the wrap party of another show when their name comes up and it can cost them big time. Real money. I remember in the production office of “Danger Bay” listening to the production manager disparaging Phil Borsos as the director of “One Magic Christmas”. She had worked on “One Magic Christmas” and that gave her real authority when the producers of “Danger Bay” were listening to her. “Phil Borsos didn’t direct that picture,” she was saying. “Borsos was hiding in the production honey wagon shoveling coke up his nose. It was Frank Tidy, the DOP, who directed that picture.” And I had to intervene. “That’s not true,” I said.
“Were you there?” the production manager said.
“No,” I said. “I wasn’t there. And I don’t know what problems you had with Phil. No doubt he’s not an easy director for a production manager to work with. But if you look at his films, going back to Cooperage and Spar Tree and The Grey Fox, all the movies that preceded One Magic Christmas, you will see a visual connection through all the movies he made before he made that last picture. Phil was a visual stylist. I don’t care if he was snorting coke off a stripper’s belly while he was making “One Magic Christmas”. I don’t care if he never showed up on set. He made that picture. Don’t ask me how, but the proof is in the pictures. What’s more, while he was shooting that standard Hollywood action movie in Florida, and pissing off that Hollywood established producer, One Magic Christmas was dead. The powers of the industry had decided that Phil was too much trouble to work with. He was Hollywood Poison. His career was over. But Phil took the picture to Disney and performed CPR on it and showed his commitment to the movie that had been his dream for years, the movie he wanted to make so that he could join the ranks of directors like Frank Capra with It’s a Wonderful Life. Without Phil Borsos, One Magic Christmas would not exist. He brought it back from the dead through shear salesmanship and force of personality. So don’t tell people, especially a room full of producers, he didn’t direct it. It’s a Phil Borsos picture.
By the way, I was recently very gratified to hear one of the culture commenters on CBC radio this past Christmas talking about his admiration for One Magic Christmas. I know that movie had a lot of trouble finding its audience, but I personally loved it. It shows Phil Borsos maturing as a director with a real talent for working with actors. Such a tragedy that Phil died so young. He had more films to make, films I would really want to see. I always admired the man and felt that he should have had some of the attention that landed on me by default.
To say it again, a director is terribly vulnerable. All a director has is their reputation. That’s what gets them their next pay check. And their next chance to direct something significant, to practice their craft as a director.
I traveled to Seattle once, years ago, to take a meeting with a producer for PBS, the people who were making the very few television shows I’m interested in directing. At some point in the meeting, he said to me, “I hear you’re hard to work with.” and I knew exactly where that was coming from. It was coming from Nelvana in Toronto who were upset with me over giving them a hard time shooting The Edison Twins, of which I was one of the two startup directors. It had nothing to do with my directing. It had to do with them showing my work, and the work of my crew, to the Disney brass in the basement of their production offices because they wanted to save a few bucks by not renting a screening room at the lab. We had all been breaking our hearts trying to make a wonderful TV series and we were actually proud of our work, but they were going to screen it on a Siemens double system projector with too long a throw for the lens and wow and flutter on the sound track. The director of photography had come to me and begged me to do something about it, as had the sound man. Both said they wouldn’t attend the screening. I joined them in solidarity, and that cost me at least this one job that I knew about. The other startup director had more political sense than I ever had, and, I think, managed to keep the situation from costing him work and money.
I’m going to name names now. Well, one name at least. Because I’m dying and I’m never going to work again and I don’t give a fuck. Ken Jubenvill, that’s a name for you. Ken Jubenvill, you are an asshole. I thought you were a friend of mine. But an episodic director has no friends on an episodic set. It got back to me, you see. Of course it did. In a conversation with producers Ken said “Oh Zale. (dismissive shrug) Zale plays at being a director. ” What an asshole thing to say about me, Ken. And to producers yet. That may actually be the moment when the scales fell from my eyes and I started to admit to hating being a director in the fucking industry, while loving being a director in the real world. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. Yeah, right, Ken. As Ron Orieux said about you, you tiny, perfect, director. I let it ride. The next time I saw Ken I smiled at him and asked how his family was doing. Was he any closer to making his tiny, perfect movie. Probably not. Give me a moment to check in to Almighty Voice on the IMDB. That should tell me. Did Ken ever get to make his little movie….
And there you have it. A shipload of TV movies. An equal number of episodic shows. One hell of an impressive director’s show reel. Looks like you had one hell of a lot of fun, Ken. I could almost envy a show real like that one. But no. I don’t see your movie on the list. You never got to make it.
And now I feel shitty, because revealing this about Ken makes me as big an asshole as he is. But of course I knew this already. There’s something about the movie industry, the industry, not making movies, that brings out the asshole in anybody.
But I will tell you who I hate. (Whom I hate?) I hate those who punch down. I hate the First AD on Kung Fu the Legend Continues who called a certain woman “The set bicycle.” Thinking it would make me think less of her when all it did was make me think less of him.
And even he is not the biggest asshole to infest the television movie industry. To see that asshole, all I need is a mirror.
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.
Being left handed has had a profound affect on my comfort in social situations, an affect perhaps equal to starting school at the age of five instead of the usual six, which meant that I was constantly comparing my abilities to children often a year or more older than I was. Sometimes these influences worked in tandem. I’ve only recently come to understand them.
Decidedly right handed elementary school desk.
I started school a year or two after converting left handed writers to right handed went out of fashion. So I was allowed to use my natural, preferred hand to write with. I suppose this was considered a kindness, but like many well intentioned educational changes, it had unintended consequences for me. Desks were designed to be right handed. Such desks were entered on the left side. Support for the right arm was provided on the right side, which widened to form the writing surface. Each of my first school classes began with a search for a left handed desk for me to use. This, along with constant remarks on my left handedness, caused me to feel that I was somehow different from the other students, somehow unusual, somebody who didn’t really fit in.
A telephone desk, right handed as most things in this world are.
This was brought home to me a few years ago. We had purchased a telephone desk that sat by the door. It had a seat and a seat on the right on the side, with the table for the telephone on the left, situated so that it was natural to pick up the receiver with the left hand, leaving the right hand free for writing notes. It was very awkward to pick up the receiver with the right hand so one could write with the left. I was sitting at this desk one day with the phone in my left hand, and began casually doodling with my rright hand on the note paper we kept beside the phone. I started writing cursive letters, and realized how easy it would have been to learn to write right handed since I can do most things easily with either hand. (Technically I am ambidextrous, not mixed-handed, since I do everything with my left hand unless I was trained to do it with my right: mixed-handed people use the right hand for some things and the left for others, whereas the ambidextrous can use both hands equally well for most tasks. I learned to roll a coin across my right knuckles because the script required me to teach this trick to a right handed actor. Now I can do that with some facility, but it would take hours of practice to learn to do it with my left hand.) The realization that I could easily have been converted to writing with my right hand hit me with an emotional rush, almost bringing me to tears. The thought that came to my mind was “And then I’d be normal”. Until that moment, I had no idea how abnormal being left handed made me feel. Explains a lot.
I suppose I should be grateful that the social prejudice against left handed people is pretty much a thing of the past. In the middle ages, when lefties were referred to with such pejoratives as “cack handed” (shit handed) or “sinister” and assumed to be allies of the devil, the unfortunate lefties were often driven from their villages by the taunts and slurs of the ignorant bastards they had to live with.
This caused my favourite, and most ironic, result. Left handers became the traveling minstrels and entertainers, moving from village to village performing and bringing the news. They are the ones who developed virtually all of the stringed instruments – violins, guitars, mandolins, lutes, and all the rest. Now, if you think about those instruments, the left hand does almost all of the heavy lifting, the fingering of notes, stretching to make chords and, in the case of fretless instruments, developing perfection of intonation and vibratto. It’s only after the performer has developed considerable sophistication that the right hand does more than strum or saw across the strings with a bow, easy tasks compared to what the left hand must learn.
Right handers naturally assume that all these instruments are right handed, since almost everything else in this world was designed for their use. But no. The stringed instruments are naturally left handed. Many left handed but essentially ambidextrous people have been convinced that they need to reverse the strings on a guitar or violin to learn to play it. Not true and so sad.
Zale on the fiddle.
I play guitar, mandolin, banjo and violin the way they were designed to be played – left handed. It’s the right handed musicians who should be reversing the strings. The jokes on them, eh.
So, being left handed made me feel like a misfit, weirdo, oddball in school. But now that I’m an adult, how do I feel about it? Mostly I couldn’t care less. Aside from my wife wanting to sit on my right side at a dinner table, or taking care to seat me on a corner when we dine with others, it really isn’t an issue in my life. I once owned a left handed can opener, and had one heck of a time trying to figure out how to use it, just like my right handed friends. Since I’d never held a left handed bolt action rifle, I recently bought one out of curiosity, a left handed Savage 300 Winmag. Worst gun I’ve ever owned (for me). Kicks like a bastard, and the knob on the bolt tends to bash into the knuckle of my trigger finger if I’m not careful. I never resorted to handling a right handed bolt action rifle the way the sniper in “Saving Private Ryan” did, so such rifles never gave me any trouble.
Apparently being left handed is associated with creativity and a greater ability to visualize in three dimensions, which fits. Recent studies show more lefties in the arts, and among architects. Lefties also have %15 greater lifetime earnings than the right handed. But these are just statistical averages and don’t mean much at an individual level.
I’ve come to accept that there is no such thing as normal. If being left handed messed up my childhood, it hasn’t messed up my life. Being proud of being left handed is as silly as being proud of being white, or tall, just another accident of birth. I’m proud of accomplishments, not of things I had nothing to do with.
UPDATE: I am now ready to reconsider my theory that all stringed instruments are left handed, having recently become acquainted with the lyre harp, one of the earliest and simplest stringed instruments which probably predates the guitar and most certainly predates the violin.
The lyre harp in one of its simplest forms, with no resonator chamber.
The lyre harp is held by the left hand and the strings are plucked with the right. So in that case, the right hand is doing all the work and the left is doing nothing but holding the instrument.
I can see how the lute, guitar, mandolin, and eventually the violin could have evolved from this instrument, with the expectation that the right hand would pluck the strings. It might have been an afterthought that eventually gave the left hand more to do, to the extent that the left gradually assumed the more difficult role.
Well, it was a good theory. The jury is still out. Whatever the origin of the instruments, switching guitar strings for a left handed player still makes no sense at all.
This is a question that is very hard to evaluate. I seem to have quite a few fans out there, both in the industry and in the greater audience. But I know there are many people who think my work sucks, and at least one Youtube troll who was very happy to tell me so.
On one metric I’m terribly deficient. A good movie director is a person who directs movies. I haven’t been on an industry film set for over twenty years. So maybe I was once a good director, but now I’m, at best, a has-been. A washed out old man reveling in past glories and successes while still tortured by the many moments that didn’t work out as I might wish.
So, in developing an evaluation, let me start with my deficiencies. I am a political idiot. I have never paid attention to power or money, or the people who control power and money, to the people who can give me work, or have influence with others to get me work. This is complemented by amazing arrogance. Just one example: On the day before our first shooting day on my second made for TV movie, “On Thin Ice, the Tai Babalonia Story”, the producer, Janet Faust, a highly experienced and quite brilliant woman, said, “I’ll ride to the set with you in the morning.” To which I said, “No you won’t. I ride to the set with my first AD. (Assistant Director, my main support on set.)” Can you imagine anything more stupid than that. Is my firsts AD ever going to give me a job? Hell no. I have worked with some truly supportive Assistant Directors, many of whom went on to have directing careers themselves. Including David Warrysmith, my AD on that picture. And that alone should tell you something. If any of them ever put my name up for a directing position, I didn’t hear about it.
Kenny Wahl in “Wiseguy – Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. Not happy with his director.
Another painful example. On the last day of shooting my episode of “Wise Guy”, the star woke up to the fact that it wasn’t his scene. Maybe he finally got around to reading the script. It was a wedding banquet scene which culminated in Ray Sharkey garotting an enemy while the undercover cop, surrounded by twenty or thirty armed goombas, looks on helplessly. Kenny Wahl came to me just before we started shooting the scene to complain that his character was a cop. He had to do something. I explained that the whole point of the scene was that he couldn’t do anything. “You’re surrounded by armed goons, Ken. Anything you do is going to blow your cover and get you killed.” Kenny was insistent. Telling him I’d been prepping the show for two weeks and would really like it if he let me just follow the script made no impression on him. So I called Ray Sharky over and said, “Ken says he has to do something in this scene. What do you think.” Ray asked Kenny, “What do you want to do?” a good logical question. Ken said, “I have to at least stand up.” I said, “Ray, Ken wants to stand up. What would you do?” Ray said, “I’d push him back down.” I said, “Ken, you’re going to look like an idiot. Please just let us go with the script as written.” Stephen Canal, owner of the studio, happened to be visiting the set for that scene. Kenny went to him and complained, and Stephen came to me and, very respectfully, asked, “Zale, can you shoot it two ways.” Now, a director with half a political brain, would have said something like, “He’s got a good point, Stephen. I’ll shoot it his way.” Because Kenny Wall is going to be back as the star of the show for however many shows the series runs. I’m just the director du jour, canon fodder, and they don’t need me to come back ever. So, what did I do? I wasted the expensive crew time and shot it two ways, pissing off the crew who just wanted to get the scene shot and go home for the day. Which version did came out of post production? Kenny’s version of course. It looked fine. I never directed another episode of “Wiseguy”. I’m an idiot.
One final example. I was the startup director on “The Edison Twins” at Nelvana in Toronto. The crew, actors, and I had all been breaking our hearts to turn out a good show. We were all proud of our work. But the producers had been showing us our rushes in the studio basement on a double system Siemens projector. The DOP (Director of Photography) had been complaining that the forty foot throw was washing out the images and his work looked terrible. The soundman had been complaining that the projector was adding wow and flutter as well as drowning out the sound. Then we were told that the executives from Disney were coming up to Toronto to see what we’d done. The producers were planning on showing our work on that crappy makeshift projection system. Both the camera crew and sound crew came to me and begged me to do something. Both said they weren’t going to come to the screening. So I told the producers that I wasn’t coming to the screening unless they held it in a proper screening room at the lab. I presented this as an ultimatum, rather than a polite request and suggestion. Idiot. Maybe this explains why, at a job interview for PBS in Seattle, I was told “I hear you are hard to work with.” Ya think?
Soon enough this kind of behavior was thinning down my work assignments. I was starting to get hungry. When the school district in Gibsons, after some lobbying by a parents group, APEC (Association for the Preservation of English in Canada, as if English was a threatened language in Gibsons, B.C.) voted to end early French Immersion in the public school system and bring in late French immersion, for grade threes, we French immersion parents decided to send our kids to Quebec for a few months in a French language school. This would qualify us for something called Program Cadre, which by law meant that they would get French immersion anywhere in Canada. We organized a fund raiser, a silent auction, to help cover this expense. One of the items donated for the auction was an hour of personal counseling by a friend of ours, a professional counselor. I knew her regular rate was $60 per hour, and nobody was bidding. So I bid $30 and won the hour. I had asked her previously what kind of a counselor she was, whether a Freudian or a Jungian or whatever. She told me she didn’t follow any particular style. She simply listened to her clients and told them what they had told her, to help them get a different perspective on their problems. This sounded good to me. So when I went for my hour of counseling, I gave her a “core dump” on my life and career. When I was finished she said, “So…you have told me that your failure to get as much work as you would like is a result of failing to form relationships with people who could give you work.” Well, duh. That was damned obvious. I know that….. Of course… I know that. The thing is, I came at directing from the film workshop at Simon Fraser University. My friends there were film makers, cameramen, editors, soundmen, all of us funding our own projects and working on each other’s little films. They are my kind of people, and I love working with actors, especially amateur actors. And none of these people could ever give me work. I do not relate well to producers, suits, clients, or money people. Truth is, I have authority issues. Those people intimidate me, and I tend to avoid them when I can. I decided right then that I can be friends with anybody, and without becoming a sycophant or compromising my personality, if I pay attention. I read “How to Make Friends and Influence People” as a teenager. I know how to do it. But by then it was a little late to get started. My reputation was well established.
So this is my biggest failure as a director, my failure to direct. Does this mean I’m a bad director? Not at all.
I have moments in my body of work, going all the way back to my very earliest films, that stand up favorably against the giants of the field. I have directed scenes that look as good as anything the big names of the A list have done. There’s a lot of stuff in my filmography that I’m very proud of.
But this is enough for one post. Maybe next time I will talk about those moments of triumph, the times when I organized chaos into something emotionally powerful, the moments when I made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. That’s much more fun to talk about than this has been.
