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I have learned to hate driving a taxi, more because of dispatchers than the people riding in them. Most dispatchers are former cab drivers who basically hated humanity in the first place and their light shined through to the people who run the cab companies who hate humanity also and see the value of hiring a dispatcher who thinks like them. Every dispatcher aspires to be like Louie from the TV series Taxi. The majority of taxi customers are people who can’t afford cars and insurance, or are too drunk to drive, or lost their license because of not taking a taxi when they were too drunk to drive. In most cases taxi customers appreciate the service provided. It’s a job, but the hourly-wage psychotic control-freakish dispatchers and thieving cab drivers make it a war.

My laptop computer came by UPS at the same time I got the taxi job. I needed the axe and paid for it by descending into the lower realm of hell, driving a cab in a small town where you were at the mercy of the dispatcher to give you work. With a decent map, the town of Wilmington can pretty much be clocked in a day. It takes a little bit longer to learn the short-cuts and hidden neighborhoods, but on the whole it ain’t Paris.

I was put in training without pay under an old closet queen who drove as though his true calling was to be a security guard in an old folks’ home. He carried with him a general contempt for the people he picked up and delivered, even after they gave him money above the meter for doing his job. He was a good candidate for dispatcher because of his attitude, but the slothfulness of his thinking kept him out of the realm of being a master back alley manipulator, another quality of a sought after dispatcher. He had been driving much too long. I had blood on the brain and the last thing I wanted to have to do was drive a cab.

I spent two ten hour days with the queen, most of the time parked in parking lots waiting for a call. In real cities people put their hands up in the air and flag you down, you take them where they want to go and they give you money sometimes and then they get out. Then you drive where people are abundant until someone else puts up their hand while you work the radio bidding on calls in your immediate vicinity. It can be interesting, an adventure. In a small town like Wilmington for the most part you inhabit a zone in a pecking order until a call comes through to the dispatcher and then you’re at the mercy of how the dispatcher wishes to give out the call. On the whole, generally there just weren’t that many calls and dispatchers have been known to hold back good calls for a favored driver if they are not next in line for a call. When a less desirable call comes through, the next driver gets the call and the better job goes to the favored driver. That is the reason cab service is poor in many cities. It’s called feeding and it happens quite frequently with arrogant nonchalance.

I knew what I was walking into after the second day of training with the queen, but I had a ton of un-returned phone calls from the blood project to pay for. On my third day they assigned me to a cab. Being a new driver you are also assured of getting the worst equipment that the company can manage to patch together. The first day I had to switch cabs in the middle of the shift because the meter went out. In the three weeks that I drove I was towed in a half dozen times. I was more acquainted with the tow truck driver than with any of the dispatchers and they wanted it that way. It’s hard even for a dispatcher to constantly stick it up your poop shoot if they have to look you in the eye very much. They learn in the big cities to stick the dispatchers in a back room where they maintain some sense of anonymity.

I called Craig often to see how his health was. He was fading quickly but still willing to go on camera. I wasn’t sure if we could use him in the ten- minute piece, but with his knowledge of hemophilia and AIDS and his commitment to the project to lose him would be a travesty. I called the woman from public TV and pressed her.

“I’m working on it,” she said.

I didn’t understand that. She had suggested the short piece in the first place and asked for a script. I complied. I bought the tapes. This was a pattern with which I was becoming very familiar. You start out with a vision and someone says, “Give me this.” And you give it to them. They say, “Okay, now give me this.” And you do that. All the while they have no intention of holding up to their end of the bargain. And Craig was dying.

I mentioned to Craig that BG had stopped returning my calls, and he told me that she had cut him off also. I thought that she might be dealing with major depression as opposed to being a fair weather friend. But Craig really needed her, and she lived right around the corner from him. I had trouble understanding that. She had known Craig since he was a child at camp, yet she couldn’t be there. How deep was this depression thing? I didn’t know—I had to let it go.

I was fired from the cab company after having enough of being towed in and passed over one too many times. I delivered shiny new condoms to the dispatcher and bosses and said, “If you’re going to screw me, use one of these because I don’t want to catch anything you have.” I knew that I wouldn’t be running for mayor of Wilmington any time soon.

Christmas was coming, ho, ho, ho. I went to the other cab company in town and learned they had an agreement with the first that 30 days had to pass before one company would hire someone who had worked for the other.

The woman from public TV promised me a crew for December 28^th to video- tape Roscoe. He was dying but he really wanted to go on camera. I didn’t even have money for gas. There was one more cab company at the Beach that also covered Wilmington; they sat at the airport and waited for planes. In a town where you can watch from the bar when the plane lands and pulls up to the gate you can imagine the amount of traffic there is. I had been driving for them for a couple of days and on the Saturday before Christmas I had been waiting at the airport for an hour and a half. A plane was due in, and I got a call on the cab radio to go have tires put on across town.

“Huh?” I questioned.

“You heard me,” the dispatcher said.

“Okay,” I said. I left my spot, first in line, and began the drive across town. “Am I getting paid for this?” I asked already knowing what the answer would be.

“No,” said the dispatcher, “it’s going to be a busy weekend and that cab is unsafe.”

“I figured as much,” I answered, “are you going to pay for the gas?”

“We’ll give you a couple of dollars credit for gas.” he answered.

I went to the specified tire service center and waited for two hours on the Saturday before Christmas, while the tires were changed and re-aligned and so on. After the work was done I called in on the radio, “What do you want me to do now?”

“Go back to the airport,” the dispatcher said.

“10-4,” I answered. It happened to be the day I was scheduled at the plasma bank where I could pick up fifteen dollars for my time, and the plasma bank was on the way back to the airport. I pulled into the plasma bank parking lot and called in. “I’m going to check out for a while.”

“What are you doing?” the dispatcher inquired.

“I’m giving blood,” I answered. I turned off the cab and walked into the plasma center. While I was having my blood pressure checked the phone rang and it was for me.

“What are you doing giving blood on my time?” came the frantic voice from the other end.

“I’m taking lunch,” I said.

“You’re giving blood!” the voice shouted.

“Do you have anything against giving blood?” I answered, maintaining my blood pressure.

“You’re in my cab!” the voice shouted.

“Are you paying me for taking me away from the airport when a plane landed to sit me across town in a garage for two hours?” I said.

“Turn in the cab,” the voice said.

“Sure,” I said.

I turned in the cab and went back in the truck to donate plasma. I called Craig and told him I would call the day after Christmas to make sure he was ready to be interviewed on the 28^th the anniversary of my father’s death. Craig was in a lot of pain but he was still willing.

“My skin tone isn’t that good,” he gasped.

His family was with him. They didn’t need me there, so I figured I’d better go see my family. I had some decisions to make. I drove the truck up to Baltimore to spend Christmas, and shake off some of that Southern Style Hospitality I was becoming too familiar with. I called Craig the day after Christmas. BG was there with him and took the call. I gave her the number where I was staying. She called me the next day and said that Craig Epsom-Nelms had died. I passed the news on to the woman from public TV—the shoot was off.

I got my day in court with Muffy and her mom. I was networking again just pleased as punch, communicating with other people who basically wanted to kill me.

“Why are you here, young lady?”

“He owes me money.”

“She didn’t show up for work, anywhere,” I said.

The Judge threw the case out–Done.

Craig Epsom-Nelms was yellow the last time we had lunch with BG at a soda fountain in Carey. We had hamburgers and chocolate malts. He was still willing to go on camera. I had a part written which I had shaped to his background. I pressed the woman from public TV for a crew and post production. I told her time was running out. She told me to buy Beta tapes for their camera which I did. I wanted to shoot in film but she had only video to offer.

“This is a drama,” she said referring to the script.

“Of course,” I said. “What did you expect?”

BG went with me to interview a mother with a nine-year-old child for the short video. I had sent the last of my money to pay for the computer. We had our range of generations from the hemophilia community from the new generation to Warren Jewett, representing all the eras from pre-treatment to the present day. The entire history of hemophilia was a drama. That’s what drew me to the story. The fact that we could portray it in documentary style using very capable people made it all the more appealing. We also had Dale Brisson and Brent Runyon and Craig Epsom-Nelms from the North Carolina Hemophilia community, and Richard Atwood and Stephen Pemberton representing the history and treatment break throughs, and possibly a Clotter from Greenville who would be the white coat. After the meeting with the young mother and child BG, Linda Robertson, took me out for sushi, more like a last meal than a celebration.

“I go into hibernation in the winter,” she said over raw cod and ice cubes.

“Take a Librium,” I said.

I dropped in on BG when I returned to Carolina. She told me she was fascinated by suicides. I told her that perhaps this was dangerous for a manic depressive but she said it was only a hobby. After I told her about ritualistic suicides I had read about in Joseph Campbell, such as tying a rope around your head with the other end secured to a pliant tree and lopping off your head, with the honor in proportion to the distance the head flies, she never mentioned suicide again.

I confided that it didn’t look very promising for funding from the industry. She reminded me of the support letters from the doctors and the list of possible sources of money that the doctor had given me. I had been hoping for additional support from the Boss Mark Scudiery, at that time, but he also offered nothing more than kind words and a good rah rah. I even asked BG if she wanted to become more involved and she restated her limitations.

I got home to find a letter was waiting from small claims court setting a date for the confrontation with Muffy. I felt the buzzards gathering. No matter how much time, effort and personal money was going out the door, the bottom line was that nobody really cared. I had read a telling line in an interview with a songwriter—Julie Gold who had written “From a Distance”—“Nobody really wants you to succeed, and when you do, they all say that they knew you could do it all the time.” I still had some money left and Rhoda Apple up North had offered her old laptop for a thousand dollars as soon as she upgraded; I was completely out of touch with what was going on in the computer world at the time since my existing computer was a glorified word processor that served my needs at thee time. I put money for the laptop on the side. Above all I had to continue working as though funding would come and the film would be made.

I learned of an upcoming media arts conference in Wilmington and was given the name of a woman who might be helpful with the production end. I attended the conference and went after her to no avail since she was too busy and I had no money. The only memorable thing that I got from the conference was a speech a man from London, England who owned a camera supply company. Joe Dutton’s speech was casual and fragmented but he possessed a sincerity and love for film that went beyond material gain. He owned a camera supply company.

Back in the 1950s there had been a strong connection between Chapel Hill and Oxford, England with regard to hemophilia treatment and research. I thought that this might interest the Englishman since he stressed some historical spiritual connection between England and Wilmington. I passed the Englishman a proposal and hounded him all weekend for an appointment, stressing the scope of the story and practically begging for leads on funding. He finally gave in on the last night and we met for breakfast the morning after the conference at a local restaurant called Whitey’s. I told him the entire history of the project and we both cleaned our plates. That was it.

Another speaker at the conference was a woman from public TV who spoke of passion for the arts and film, something that she pointed out was beginning to wane in the quest for profit and prestige. She seemed sincere and I exchanged cards with her. I was surprised that Fabio wasn’t a speaker at the conference, since his Foundation was supposed to be a godsend to independent film makers.

I called Fabio shortly thereafter to see how supportive he still was. “You’ve got to kiss ass,” he said. “That’s the only way you’ll get any money.”

I told him that Brad had dropped out and I needed help in the fundraising.

“You mean you’ve lost your expert,” he said.

I thought this was a strange comment coming from a man to whom I had given constant updates about the contacts I had developed. I realized that he simply didn’t pay attention and was quite the asshole.

“I have more experts than NASA, motherfucker,” I said knowing that as a term that gets their attention every time.

“You called me a motherfucker,” he said with some excitement in his voice.

“I used it as a term of endearment,” I said.

“You called me a motherfucker.” he said.

I saw Fabio at a film festival and conference in Raleigh shortly after the conference and Fabio was there. The relationship with the North Carolina Film Foundation officially ended when Fabio treated the project as a joke and called the King, Dr. Brinkhaus a charlatan. He didn’t even know the man. I walked to the trash can and emptied a perfectly good cup of coffee, walked back to Fabio, patted him on his little bald head—expecting to find nubs of horns because I figured he had sold his soul—and said, “Good-bye, Asshole.”

I was finally realizing that these conferences were social gatherings more than educational events, places for networking—all well and good if you’re into that stuff. I had invested a month in conferences on hemophilia and film, spending money and schmoozing with more people than I cared to know. It all seemed more anti-art than creative, though the film festival did offer a showcase for works that never otherwise get screened. It was a political game. But I just wanted to make the film.

I called the woman from public TV and set up an appointment where I asked for help in shooting a short segment to demonstrate the ultimate goal. I told her I needed ten minutes of footage to show. She said to get a script together and she would see what she could do.

I wrote the script in a week based on information I had gathered, shaping it to the best possible combination of my contacts from the community, and began passing it around for factual content. In the meantime, Craig helped gather letters of support from the National Hemophilia Foundation and Hemophilia Resources of America. These were only words, but even an encouraging word is nourishing when the unreturned phone calls and rejection letters mount. A number of funding sources said it was a good project but it didn’t fit into their current line of interest. Dale Brisson procured a letter from the North Carolina Hemophilia group, and they became our new fiscal sponsor through which to channel funds if any funds ever materialized with the need of a non-profit benefactor. I followed up on even the vaguest contacts and faded business cards from the National Meeting with faxes and letters and phone calls and enthusiasm. Nada.

I called Susan Resnik and sent her the new letters of support and the script, explaining our need to produce a short piece with the North Carolina hemophilia community before we proceeded with the national story. She kept me linked in by introducing me to another one of the people she had interviewed, Larkey Deneff in Oregon. Larkey spoke of the blood shield laws in many states that prevented hemophiliacs from recourse against the fractionators, where blood products were treated as a service and not a product. This struck a nerve with me because at the plasma bank they told me I was being paid for my time and not my plasma. Larkey was another hemophiliac dying of AIDS who just wanted to get the story out there. The victims only wanted their day in court where the deck wasn’t stacked against them. Contact with Larkey also kept me focused on the shorter film, which would involve the North Carolina hemophilia community, as a stepping stone to the bigger picture.

I stayed in Craig’s room the last night of the meeting. He had a 9:30 a.m. flight out of Philadelphia airport. In the morning, after I was packed and ready, he was still ingesting his great abundance of pills with his factor nearby ready to be infused for the flight home. It was after 8:00 a.m.
“I don’t know if I’m going to make my flight,” he said looking at his watch. “Maybe I should just call and change it to a later flight.”
“Do you want to make your flight?” I asked.
“I would like to get home, I’m exhausted,” he said as he fixed his works for the infusion, “but it’s one of those things you get used to hemophilia and AIDS, there’s just so much to do.”
“Craig,” I said, “if you want to make the flight, be downstairs by nine and I’ll get you there on time.”
“It’s a big airport.” he said.
“Is this bag packed?” I said grabbing his larger suitcase.
“Yeah, but I still have to check out.” he said.
“Butt in line. I’ll see you at nine out front,” I said on my way out the door. I didn’t know where the airport was exactly, but I had time to find out. I took the elevator to the lobby where people were already checking out and shared the elevator down into the garage with others with baggage. I found the car easily and found that the gas gauge was on empty. I was relieved to see the sun shining when I pulled out of the garage. The top went down before I paid my way out of the hotel, filled up the tank and got directions, then headed back to the hotel. It was a few minutes to nine when I pulled up front of the lobby and Craig was right on time.
“Are you sure we can do this?” he asked holding his duffel bag like a baby.
I took the bag from him and heaved it into the back seat and he climbed in the front.
“Buckle up,” I said as we peeled away from the hotel and in no time were on the road, making every light on the way to the highway.
“Does this thing have air bags?” he yelled above the rock and roll music on the radio.
“If they go off in a convertible they become balloons,” I yelled looking up at the bright blue sky.
Roscoe looked up at the sky and grinned from ear to ear. “Yes!” he shouted.
By the time we hit interstate 95 we hit 95 and kept gettin’ up. We made the airport terminal by 9:15 and pulled to the curb near a skycap. While Craig pulled himself out of the car I tried to bribe the skycap to get his luggage to the plane.
“Stand in line,” he said. I looked back at the line with a dozen people stretching their necks to see that order was maintained.
Craig struggled with his duffel and I grabbed the suitcase out of the trunk. We left the Stang at the curb and rushed into the terminal to the first screen to see where his gate was.
“I sure am glad I infused,” he said.
After getting our bearings I grabbed the duffel bag from him and said, “Let’s go for it.”
We ran through the airport and got lucky at the metal detectors. Craig kept up the pace right behind me, hopping on his good leg with the bionic knee more often than not. I got to the gate only seconds before Craig hobbled up grinning from ear to ear and out of breath. Everyone had boarded but the gate was still open.
“I made it,” he said full of adrenaline and vigor. He took his duffel and a stewardess took his suitcase and walked him right on the plane. “I did it,” he exclaimed as he hobbled out of sight. I knew right then that Craig would be in my corner until the end.
I quickly made my way back to the front of the terminal where a dozen or so people were still in line for the sky cap. I climbed in the red Stang and headed South with a handful of business cards and no real prospects. It had been, however, my first personal pitch to the national hemophilia community. I was reassured that there was no other film in the works about the hemophilia community that wasn’t specifically targeted at the hemophilia community. But it had been an expensive weekend, even without the cost of a room. The entry fee, car rental, fuel, parking, long distance calls, copies of the proposal and letters, clothes, food and drink and tobacco all made it necessary to get back to the cave and dig in. I knew that I had to find help within the film community in Wilmington to help on the fund raising end. Gathering material and putting it together, bringing order out of the chaos was what excited me most, like plucking the prime fruit from an overabundant tree and creating a golden pie, not too sweet and not too tart. Dessert.