TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
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.