Post
by claptrappers_union » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:36 pm
Over the years, I've made independent films with an artist. 'The Artist' is much older than me and we've travelled around the world making his vanity films. What started as an ordinary professional relationship, we've have grown to become good friends over the years and he doesn't pay me a lot of money for the work I do, he just 'bungs a contribution' into my bank account to 'grease the wheels' because his projects often tend to blend into something bigger. But I'm ok with that.
We travelled to the Middle East on a Christian Missionary ship (don't ask) from Cyprus, the film crew on this trip is made of seven people, including the Artist, me and my friend (and work colleague) as cameramen with the Artist's father-in-law playing a starring role as a Sea Captain.
To describe the father-in-law (who the purpose of this thread I'll call 'Bill') is an 80-odd Yorkshireman - your typical hardworking, no-nonsense, 'spade is a spade' type Yorkshireman with an accent so thick it even took me a few days to 'tune in' to it. It was my unofficial job to be an interpreter to the American Bible-bashers who we were sharing the ship with.
Other than making a film, we all had to muck in - prepare food, clean the decks, scrub the toilets take shifts as night watchman etc - it was hard graft to someone like me to be fair. Not for Bill though, he was first up every morning, no complaining, he got stuck in. He was the hardest working person on the vessel, performing all the tasks wearing his full 'period-drama' costume... Bill also had terminal cancer. "It is what it is" he used to say. That's where we all bonded.
He had stories to tell about everything, puts this thread to shame - he was hilarious, friendly, generous and inspiring... I didn't know him very long, but he was a friend.
A few months after our adventures, we went to visit him with the Artist. He was bed-ridden, weak, but in high spirits - he was a shell of the man he was at sea. He knew his time was up, but he was comfortable with that. When we left, we knew it was the last time we would see him. Bill died a couple of days later, surrounded by the Artist and his family.
Between Bill's passing and his funeral, my friend and I were doing some video work with a youth organisation in Rochdale, it was our job to film young people presenting their ideas for a Youth-driven political manifesto. I picked up my friend from his home and he seemed 'off'. I asked him what was wrong.
He smiled and said, "Oh, nothing...I've just seen Bill, he's dead"
The Artist asked him to back-up his mobile phone onto a harddrive. It's something he does for him on a regular occurrence. Never anything ropey on there, mainly just pictures from the work we do together and he'll then arrange them into folders and stuff. While checking if everything had been copied over, he clicks one of the recent files... its a dark, grainy, close-up photograph of Bill's corpse-face.
It was just a glimpse, he closed it straight away, but the image was already burned into his retina. Bill's yellow face tilted upwards, his eyes rolled to the back of his head with a wide-open toothless mouth. It said it was traumatic because he didn't expect it. We agreed that if the Artist wants (for whatever reason) to take pictures of his father-in-law's dead face, then that's his prerogative... but the Artist should've warned him.
We both have a dark sense of humour so we'd make light of it. I poked a bit of fun at every opportunity when we were alone together during the filming - so for example, while there was a change of subject, I'll bring the dark topic back to the forefront of conversation just to remind him of the picture. I was being a bit mean. But we were both OK with it really, but I had the upper hand because my final memory of our friend was quite a nice one... for him, it was horrific!
When we got back, it was my job to edit the 8 video manifestos by the young people, my friend said he'll edit the pictures we took of the candidates. When he finished them, he asked me to jump on his computer to double-check all the candidates were there.
I should've seen it coming...
I opened file 0001.jpg, good, 0002.jpg, good, 0003.jpg, good, 0004.jpg, good, 0005.jpg..... he got me... the sick ******* got me. He slipped in Bill in with all the smiley, happy fresh-faced teenagers. I stood up and walked away slamming the door behind me. I was devastated, I was angry... but I deserved it... I was also annoyed at myself that I fell into the trap too! Also, how could he utterly disrespect our friend like that?! But it was darkly-funny... I had a mixture of feelings. What a *******.
Don't know if I should've shared that story...
