Can you write?

I really enjoyed the first year where I went from mailboy to film editor. Every day would have something new to learn. I would hang around with the radio DJ's and watch how songs were presented to the woman who would listen and decide. She had one of the best feelings to songs I ever heard. Whatever you've heard from the 70's rock and roll would have some of her stamp on it. Once when I was in radio news, one of the news "jocks" asked me if I could interview some rock guy from Detroit, across the river. He didn't understand the singer.

Being younger I knew who exactly was -- Alice Cooper. I "interviewed" him. There was a lot of Detroit white music, more harder than Motown, although I love both.

So, it was a miracle place for me. I loved it so much I would stay around after and watch the single news film camera (we weren't a big news outlet) rather we hung around with the American camera films, they even shot in color! We still had black and white.

Then, one day the newsman (only one) came to me and asked if I could write.

I couldn't believe it. I can write?

I said I could. What he wanted was someone to write news for our nightly news program on local and Detroit news whenever we needed. The reason was that his news writer was going to the hospital for a surgery and nobody else was around.

So I entered the small news office, two chairs and a desk. And an outside news outlet wherein I could read news all over the world.

But I wondered if I would really be able to do TV news. So I started after finishing the film work. I was actually doing two jobs. But I loved them. It would only be a month. I went upstairs to the TV newsroom and looked around. Nobody was there. I pulled out past news scripts, read them and figured I could do it.

So I was working two jobs, of which both were in my sights, 9-6 for camera crew and watched the cameraman edited the news and that was it. I was a full news person in a news world. It wasn't really hard as our news was mostly local.

I took to writing news as fast again as all of the other jobs I had. The studio camera guys enjoyed having me around, I would stay as long as a could, just to watch how they worked. Cameras, audio, special effects (very poor) and anything they taught me. Some of them laughed and showed me more.

I had left the radio news now, staying with writing and news. Well, writing until the real news guy came back. Four weeks came by fast. But I was still working news film work, processing film and using audio sound for the newsman. And even had a shooting under my belt.

Then something else I discovered. One of the women in the music side of the building and I began to become friends. It changed my life, and we got married.

And both of us took some time from TV news and spent two months in Banff National Park in Alberta. Besides the magnificent scenery, the town had a world famous arts school and this year, a film school.

That's why I was there. And my wife took a photo class. It was incredible, and even now my ex and I still think it was the best time ever.  At least it seemed.

I actually knew a lot more than any of the other "students", with ages from 20's all the way to a man in his 60's. And I kept it between my wife and me. We had an instructor from an eastern European country who was very proper and giving us some good information. I connected with a who saw the world much like me.

However we all made short films and a Chinese girl won our "awards", and who made a good film. But for my friend and I, and my then-wife, it was all a great summer. And he and I were the only students who failed.

We didn't care that much but my new friend Phil connected, in fact a few years past, I moved to Vancouver and lead to more. But there was one great moment. It was when we won a short film called Cooperage. My friend Phil had always seen the cooperage (whiskey barrels primarily) and wanted to make a film on it. So we started our company called it Rocky Mountain Films. Our film wasn't good enough for the National Film Board of Canada but it found it's home with winning the Canadian Film award for short films and ended up as a finalist at the 1976 Academy Award.

Besides the Canadian award it also had awards in Athens, Sydney, Yorkton, Chicago and the American Film Festival.

And everything changed again.