My Career in Movies

Back in the 70s Stephen, Randy, and I would make super 8mm films. Stephen began it. He made friends with a pair of brothers who were doing that. He told me of a film they made based on an old gas station commercial in which it appeared people were driving without vehicles. The brothers did that on a dirt road, shooting one frame at a time and kicking up dust behind the people to simulate movement. They even included a wreck.

Stephen and one of the brothers teamed up to make what Stephen always felt was his crowning achievement in film: Fate. Randy was given a bit part in it, but he got killed right off. It was a snowmobile film in which a hunter mistakes Randy for a deer and shoots him. They put ketchup on his face. They only got about five seconds of film because Randy started laughing. The rest of the film was about Stephen trying to exact revenge. The musical score was the Theme From The Exorcist.

Well, after Fate, Stephen wanted to make more movies, and he included me. Unfortunately, Stephen's idea of making a movie was much like Paul McCartney's. He just wanted to take a camera and film whatever happened. Like Magical Mystery Tour, nothing ever did.

I wanted a script of some sort, but Stephen insisted that would stifle his creativity. (He starred in fate, but he didn't control the production.) In the end, I got him to compromise. Mainly because I had come up with an idea he thought was fantastic. We would do our own version of - The Flintstones.

My sister, Judayl, had once owned a Ford Falcon. She drove it thirty miles while it was overheating in order to bring it to Daddy d to fix. I remember her diving into the yard, the car gasping, and then shuddering, and finally going silent. Daddy went out, opened the hood, and declared it dead. Judayl sold it to Stephen for ten bucks.

Stephen's dad worked at a Ford dealership. He would bring home parts (I'm sure he paid for them [grin]) and together, he and Stephen put the car back together. Eventually, Stephen sold the car to Randy for $100. Randy eventually parked the car in a field because it had rusted out so bad he was afraid he would fall down on the road while driving. That was my plan.

We would take the car, kick out the bottom, and then tow it behind Randy's new car. Filming from the side, we would show the feet running and the arms hanging out the window. It would great. I thought so. So did Stephen. Even the stoic Randy considered it a good idea. All we had to do was get one more group on board and away we would go. Unfortunately, that group happened to be a nest of yellow-jackets which had taken up residence in the Falcon.

Using his superior intellect, Randy had already made one attempt at evicting the mighty stingers. Knowing that honey bees go docile in smoke, he decided to light a fire under the car. It was a brillliant idea. Lit up the entire sky when the car itself caught fire and burned. When we came to take the car for our film it was entirely burned out, except for one section at the right front fender. Guess where the hornets were nesting?

We tried various methods to get the hornets to depart, but none worked. Then, I offered a new suggestion. It had been my experience that hornets weren't that keen on rain. What if we flooded them out? So Randy got the hose and began showering the car with water. The hornets didn't like it and chased at us, but wouldn't come through the water. After a half hour or so, they left. The car was ours again.

I remember walking to the driver's door and looking inside. What had been a pile of dusty ashes on the seat was now a mess of sludge. Nobody wanted to sit in that. We had no ideas about the cleanup. Besides, we'd exhausted our day getting rid of the hornets. So, giving up all ideas of making a film, we went to Keno's Pizza and ate.

This was a fight to make any military historian proud. A tremendous battle of forces over a small piece of property. And after winning, walking away to let the vanquished return and lay claim to it once again. That's kind of how it works, isn't it?

The beauty of war.

I still feel bad for those hornets. That was their home.

NOTE: Before the Falcon died, I got to play the hero in Falcon Man. A film that would have been good had Stephen just relented and used a script. Alas, my film career came to an unhearalded early end. Sigh.

Autographs are ten dollare apiece.