What Cooperage gave us

As you can imagine, we were pretty hot in Vancouver; the two guys who failed at a well-known arts school in the Rocky Mountains. We really didn't fail as this course was not for competition. We just had shorts that nobody liked. But I like to say I failed, along with Phil. Above were me on left and Phil with his bag in Seattle where we played Cooperage for the Northwest film seminar, of which we attended often even when I had left Vancouver.

We were hot for awhile but short films have short memories. I was still working as an editor in Vancouver and Phil and I started to work on projects that we wanted to do. Phil did two more short films and won two more. 

Since I didn't have any stories to sell I kept hanging around with Phil and a lot of friends that I still keep with. 

There's a lesson there with us, we wouldn't have done well without each other even if we were doing different things. I was still editing and tired of it until I saw a notice for a TV station in Regina, Saskatchewan, a small city mostly for the provincial government. I knew a little of the city, certainly not Vancouver.

But, the real thing was -- the job was a writer/producer. A lot different than editing old movies. But one more thing - Regina is in the middle of nowhere, on the prairies. The closest town was called Moose Jaw with population around 40,ooo people. Far from the beautiful climate in Vancouver, on the ocean.

Writer/Producer hammered at me. It's a job, I knew that part of Canada, I was raised a hundred miles away. My home town was 895 people in Manitoba. Even though I lived in Windsor/Detroit, my heart was and still is my home which now is around 50 people. In fact it was where I fell in love with a young teacher and kept in touch with her until even today. I was 12 years old. 

I'll tell you more later.

As I was flying to Regina it was winter and coming over the flat prairies was a memory as I grew up like this. It was also white, snow white, winter. I landed and met the boss and two other producers at the TV station a mile outside of the city. The boss already knew of Cooperage and the festival wins.

The meeting was quite short and I had the job. But as I looked outside in snow around, I realized that Vancouver was a long way away.

I came back to Vancouver as a real writer/producer. I would miss a lot of friends and Vancouver was now booming with filmmaking from Hollywood. A lot closer than Regina.

Goodbye and welcome.