07- A Brownie Hawkeye And A Whole Roll Of Film

A BROWNIE HAWKEYE AND A WHOLE ROLL OF FILM

Carefully crafted shots from my first roll of film.

I’ve always been drawn to cameras. My earliest memories include flash bulbs and snapshots and funny faces on photo booth strips. Growing up, there were lots of pictures. My Mom gave me a Brownie Hawkeye and a whole roll of film to do with as I pleased when I was 6 years old. I had no problem exposing the 12 frames on my toys, my little brother, or our neighbors. There was a lot to shoot and I chronicled my childhood from grade school through high school.

The Byrds
1966 Memphis State
Chris Hillman-David Crosby-Mike Clarke-Roger McGuinn

In collage, I took courses in darkroom editing and photography, hung out with some of the staff at the school paper and yearbook and got pretty good at getting backstage to shoot stills at rock concerts and local TV stations. I took film courses in graduate school at Memphis State and SMU but never completed my Master’s Degree. My SMU classes in Dallas, however, produced a job lead at Parkland Hospital.

It was 1971 when I began my journey as a paid cinematographer working for Southwestern Medical School. Mike Lorfing, head of the Medical Arts Department, hired me to photograph training films ordered up by the school staff, which I shot in the emergency room of Parkland Hospital.  If someone requested a film about, say, intubation or chest tube insertion, I waited in the ER with my 16mm Arriflex until the procedure happened. I did what I could to improve the odds of getting the shot by planning my strategy. For the general public, Friday was payday, and if Friday hit on the 1^st or the 15^th it usually meant a shorter wait, if it was raining, shorter still. More accidents meant more procedures. But, despite the best of plans, I spent many hours there waiting in the emergency room, receiving an unexpected education in human psychology. On my first night, I watched as a man was rolled into Trauma Room 2 and swarmed over by the ER team. It seemed he was barely conscious but an ambulance crew member with a clipboard hounded the man for information. “What’s your name?” “Where do you live?" he shouted over and over. It seemed cruel. I later learned they wanted the patient to be alert as possible and this, gathering of information, was actually part of the evaluation. They say the quiet ones lay there and die. I had lots of time to read the police reports and, early on, saw the benefits of wearing a seat belt, at that time not standard equipment in a new car. To me, it was as clear as day. Seat belts saved lives and reduced injuries. It began a habit that would, years later, save my own life. I saw the best and the worst of people while shooting my movies. A newborn on one night; a man with an ax imbedded in his forehead on another; the incredible heroics of the ER personal, all just part of the humdrum on a rainy Texas night; lots of people under lots of pressure, living their lives, doing their jobs. It was fascinating to be so close to it and, not just be allowed to watch, but expected to watch. It was a requirement for the job. It was exciting. I don’t think I ever got tired of it. Trauma Room 1 sat mostly unused just across the hall. I was standing in it, mostly to get out of the way and take a short break, when one of the staff mentioned it was the room where President Kennedy was pronounced dead. I didn’t see any markers then, nothing to commemorate that grim day. I guess the blood from the 1963 assassination was still too fresh in Texas to publicly point out such a place. I would have never known it was this room where he died. It gave me chills just like the time I first heard of Kennedy’s shooting on that November 22^nd over my high school’s PA system as we rehearsed the Hallelujah Chorus for the approaching Christmas concert. I still get chills, having nothing to do with the holidays, every time I hear it.
I also worked for Dr. Charles Baxter who pioneered new treatment for burn injuries using pigskin. In the 1970s Parkland Hospital was one of the largest burn centers in the country. I was almost late for my new assignment. There was no time to lose. I was there to shoot a skin graft, already in progress. I quickly changed into scrubs and hurried into the OR to set up my camera. This was my first operation and it really took me by surprise. With a deep breath, I absorbed the bloodiest scene I had ever witnessed. It looked, for the entire world, like a medieval torture chamber. The patient was face down; his arms and legs spread out, with several people attending him. Burns, covering his back, arms and hands, were being “roughed up” with brushes to make the new skin attach better; the freshly scrubbed wounds now enlarging into one great bloody mass. The medical team, working on his unburned legs, were shaving and lifting away, long patches of very thin skin leaving pale, but quickly oozing red, trails behind.

Running a little late that morning and missing breakfast had turned out to be a good thing. The long strips of skin were fed into a machine that sliced them so they could be stretched, like a net, to cover a much larger area. It formed a pattern of small diamond shaped spaces where new skin could grow and fill in. There would be other skin grafting operations but this stage of treatment meant he was nearing the end of a long healing process. Up until now he had been kept alive by dressing his burns with thin, specially treated, pigskin every three or four days to prevent infection and water loss but the old pigskin had to be removed to keep it from incorporating into the body. That was a slow and very painful process. I documented 5 or 6 patients in the program, including a child, as they went through the various stages of recovery. Each time they endured this procedure I filmed their progress. I had to be careful with my lights as the burn patients sometimes felt the heat, even at several feet away. Most of the patients I shot were young men with horrifying stories about carburetor backfires or stove fuel explosions. Some of them cried and all of them trembled as the nurses worked on their wounds. It was hard for everyone in the room but the results were miraculous. New strides were being made daily. By 1973 the developing techniques were saving lives like that of an 8-year-old girl, burned over 92% of her body; as large a burn injury as anyone had ever survived. By this time I was working at WFAA-TV but I still filmed stories about Dr. Baxter and the Burn Center for the news while I was shooting at Channel 8. I’ve taken every opportunity over the years to work on medical stories whenever I can. I find them fascinating. I’ve shot everything from brain surgery to transsexual operations, from hip replacements to early defibrillator testing on live patients. A couple of seasons with Animal Planet’s “Emergency Vets” provided a real eye opener too; same stress, but animals present a whole different set of problems. You can’t simply ask where it hurts and how bad? End of life situations are very different and always heartbreaking. There were some great moments and funny ones as well. I remember shooting with Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald, the standup comic and popular Emergency Vets veterinarian, when a lady came in with a shoebox containing a turtle. She said she and her husband were getting a divorce and wondered if Dr. Fitzgerald would put the turtle to sleep? The camera was rolling on all of this, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud, but Kevin never cracked a smile. He put his arm around the distraught woman and consoled her. “We won’t put your turtle to sleep but we’ll find him a good home”, he said.  After she left, Kevin jokingly wondered if the couple had any other lose ends to tie up, like kids. Wonder what the husband thought of all this?

Pema

As for the turtle, Kevin gave him to me and I named him Pema. It was definitely a step up for Pema. He went from a cold shoebox to a heat lamp and a small, fresh water, pool with occasional strolls in the backyard. 
I kept that turtle in a comfortable landscaped aquarium for 10 years until a visiting little boy convinced me Pema and the aquarium would be happier with him. Seemed like a win, win for everybody.
Not all stories finish with a happy ending but it’s nice that some of them do.

06- ROK-TV **A Brilliant Bit Of Enlightenment**

ROK-TV

       I left KUSA on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1989, after almost eleven years at the station; a double reason to raise a pint every year on that fine mid-March day.

Channel 9 had been a big part of my life and, even after I began freelancing, I continued to work with the station on various projects. One was ROK-TV, a dance show appealing to teens and 20 somethings shot at Club LA, a hip Arvada nightspot.

       I was 44 and normally wouldn’t be hanging with a crowd this young but I knew and liked the music so I didn’t feel entirely out of it, the beat, I suppose, smoothing the age factor.

My camera was hand held for the live-switched show, using what was, then considered, the new MTV style; never mind that MTV had been around for 10 years. Clients asked for that new look for years to come. Low, wide angle, Dutch angle and shaky-cam shots were in.

Jeff Wilkins was on the level above me, also hand held. Gunnar Blanke was running the jib, soaring over a couple of hundred writhing dancers dispersed on various levels around the club; spotlights bathing us in pulsing, colors.

     Music videos played on giant TV walls and flashed on  monitors throughout the room. The show had VJs, Christelle and Scott Patrick, introducing the music videos, enter-cut with the kids dancing.
I was on one of the larger floors, surrounded by dancers who obviously liked being on camera.

One attractive, and very young, lady in particular was relating unusually well to my lens. I’d drop to one knee and shoot up at her as she seductively swayed her body back and forth.
Occasionally Duke Hartman, the director, liking the shot, would ask me to hold it until he could work his way around the room with the other cameras. So there were times when I stayed on her for quite a while. She obviously liked the camera. And it sure liked her. The fantasies running through my head would make Jimmy Carter blush. She had to be at least 20 years younger than I...at least... but I wasn’t thinking about that then. I mean I didn’t lose it or anything. I knew this was just a job, and all that, but there were no rules saying I couldn’t enjoy my work. We were very creative. This lady was smoking. It was good for me and I wondered if it was good for her too? When the show finished, the house lights came on and reality reinserted itself.

       I was putting my camera away when I saw her coming from across the room. Oh, my God. There went the fantasies again. “Hi” she cooed. I was intoxicated.

“Tell me something. Are you married?” I nearly dropped the camera, unable to say a thing as vivid images ripped across my imagination.

“Me? Oh...” hesitating ever so briefly “...Yes” I stammered, “Yes, I’m... I’m married.” “And very happily.” I laughed grinning sheepishly.

She looked disappointed. My heart was going pit-ti-pat. She really wanted me. What a guy. My ego was in the stratosphere.

“That’s too bad.” she said looking up at me with these huge blue eyes.

“My Mother would really dig you.”

Like they say, it’s not the long fall that gets ya.

It’s the sudden stop.

I hope I never forget that moment.

There was a brilliant bit of enlightenment in that exchange.

There just had to be.............

I‘m still searching for it.

05- The Man On The Bloody Red Ground

                           THE MAN ON THE BLOODY RED GROUND

“Is he shot?” I asked the grim faced officer who was only now lowering the revolver he was gripping with both hands. “Yes,” he exhaled as the crimson shadow began to expand beneath the crumpled man on the ground….

We were returning from the mountains with a story for the 5 o’clock news. Neal Brown and I had been to Copper Mountain shooting interviews with tourist about the holiday ski business. It was still early in the afternoon when we started back down to Denver.

The roads were dry but covered with sand and grit left by the snowplows. We were eastbound on I-70, just past Idaho Springs, when we saw a white pickup with a camper shell in the opposite lanes racing uphill ahead of several police cars, red lights and sirens, in full pursuit.

We looked at each other briefly as I swerved onto the approaching off ramp at Hidden Valley for a quick turn around back to the westbound, uphill lanes.

I’d learned long ago as a member of the media not to expect any favors regarding speeding tickets  from the local police organizations but figured with all those flashing lights in front of us, there wouldn’t be anyone left to clock me, so I got on it. We closed on the convoy much faster than expected because they were barely doing 50 miles an hour. It was a slow speed chase on a four lane highway bounded in places by drop offs and cement walls.

We pulled up along side the last police car and rolled down the window. Neil asked what was going on and the patrolman yelled back, it was a DUI. This was a day or so before New Year’s. Drunk driving was topical because of the holidays, so we decided to stay with the chase for a while. We might come back with two stories instead of just one.

Falling back into the column, I noticed several other lawmen now joining in behind us. We seemed to be picking up reinforcements as we passed each new mountain jurisdiction but I held my place in the line. No one tried to pass us.

Even at the slow uphill speed, the Colorado State Patrol cars behind the white pickup couldn’t get around to cut him off. Whenever the CSP attempted to pass, the truck would swerve, trying to drive them off the road. I suppose the PIT maneuver hadn’t been developed at that time so they just stayed back and followed. We guessed they’d stop him up ahead, at the Eisenhower Tunnel, with a roadblock.

By now the procession had grown to more than a dozen vehicles; all, but our news car, with blasting sirens.

Neal reached into the back and grabbed my camera. He shot as best as he could from the passenger side but was blocked by the police cars in front of him. I shot a little of the swerving back and forth from my position behind the wheel with Neal trying to steady the camera on my shoulder. But the large awkward Beta Cam made that pretty scary for both of us. This wouldn’t be the best place to lose control of the car. The hand held video was shaky but I thought it would be pretty compelling. Combined with the upcoming arrest, it would make a strong statement about the consequences of drunk driving. The tunnel was coming up as we planned how we would shoot the approaching confrontation.

The white pickup surprised us and took
the ramp heading toward Loveland Pass

Just a few weeks before I had witnessed a very similar situation in Denver. A motorist, who turned out to be an elderly man, would not stop for a traffic officer and, at speeds under 30 miles an hour, continued to drive. I heard it on the police scanner and headed in that direction. The officer’s voice on the radio became angrier with each report of their position. I was within a block when he said he had him. I could see an altercation up ahead as I pulled over the news car and hurried to the back to get my camera. By the time I ran the 50 yards or so, the gloved police officer was straddling a man on the pavement who was bleeding from his mouth and attempting to retrieve his dentures lying on the ground beside him. It became quite an incident. If I’d have gotten there 30 seconds sooner there would have been video and it would have been an even bigger incident. Luckily there were witnesses. 

With this policeman’s overreaction still fresh on my mind, I thought there might be a similar situation building again. It was pretty clear the law was not happy with this guy. When they pulled him out of the car I wanted to be ready to tape whatever happened.

With one exit to go before the tunnel, the white pickup surprised us and took the ramp heading toward Loveland Pass. Within a half mile the truck stopped abruptly in front of the main entrance to Loveland Ski Area nearly blocking the highway as a state patrol car sped around to box him in.

The man held the long gun with
both hands in the ready position

As skiers looked on from the slopes we, and the local law enforcement with their sirens blasting, came to a screeching halt, fanning out in all directions on the crowded roadway. My camera was already fired up as I opened the car door. I never took my eyes off the man in the pickup once he pulled over. His truck was about 30 yards in front of me when he stepped out of it holding a long barreled gun. I froze.

He appeared very calm in the mist of this chaos as lawmen screamed from every direction to drop the gun. He slowly rotated his head surveying the very tense situation and turned to the State Patrolman who had rushed past, spun his car around, and was now standing outside leveling a shotgun over the roof of the patrol car.

The noise was deafening. Everybody but me had a gun and was pointing them, God knows where. Like I said, it was very tense.

I ducked back behind my still open door and shot from there. The man held the long gun with both hands in the ready position, keeping the barrel up, and walked slowly from the door of his truck toward the State Patrolman with the shot gun. There were no fast moves but the man could have fired the gun in an instant. I could see the officer shouting something at him but he kept moving steadily closer anyway. As the man closed in on the rear of the patrol car there was a boom, which I assumed was a shot, but nothing seemed to change for a few seconds. Then the man slowly dropped to all fours, laid down on his right side and rolled over on his back like he was surrendering. Nothing like I’d seen a thousand times before on TV and the movies where bodies are thrown violently backward by a bullet’s impact.

Skiers looked on as the lawman pulled the gun
from under the man on the road and tossed it aside.

Everyone rushed forward as the lawman with the, shotgun still in his left hand, pulled the long gun  from under the man on the road and tossed it aside. We quickly formed an uneasy circle around the still form. Except for my question about the man being shot and the affirmative answer from the officer beside me, everyone was quite. The sirens, wailing all around us, seemed strangely in the distance. I could clearly hear a final soft cough and see the last breath of the man lying at our feet in the spreading pool of blood. As my camera rolled and my mind recorded it all, he slipped away.

Why did this happen? Who was this man? What were his stories about? Who would care?

Left in the pickup, beer, whiskey and "Vengeance".

Later, as I was gathering other shots for the story, I photographed a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels next to a book titled “Vengeance” on the seat of the pickup. By then Neal was putting the pieces together as the information came in. It was the first time I’d heard someone call it suicide by cop.

The white pickup had been pulled over in Golden on a traffic stop. The officer saw the gun when he approached the truck. As he hurried back to his patrol car to call in, the guy took off. The man had  been released from a federal prison in Oklahoma just a week before. He was 57 years old and I guess he didn’t plan to go back. So a few days after Christmas, with a bottle of whiskey and a gun in his truck he took off for the top of the world with the law on his tail as he searched a final, certain end.

No innocent people were hurt. We got our story. And maybe someone out there remembered something about a guy they once knew. A guy who took a wrong turn back there a long time ago before winding up there, in front of my camera on the bloody red ground.