Kickstarter

Well, we’re now officially 9 years in the making, still a 2-person crew, 2/3s of the way to the Kickstarter finish line, only 137 backers, 46% towards the stated goal, and probably need several times that to ensure a living, breathing end-product. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy.

“What is it about Joe Meek? What is it?” That’s what my mother used to ask me after finding out that I had quit my job teaching film to immerse myself in this production in the fall of 2003. “What is it?” “Well… I don’t know yet.” And that’s how it was for a long time. I didn’t know. You can figure some people out the longer you spend time with them, but we weren’t exactly spending time with Joe Meek. We were spending time with impressions, memories, successes, tragedies. But Joe is long gone – 45 years now. So we know all that, but we still don’t know him. The idea of being so close to a person and still so impossibly far from ever really knowing him is a hard one to consider – especially in observance of his youth, his innate ability to innovate, his unique surroundings, his extraordinary cast of peripheral characters – all components conspiring to intrigue. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy.

Since I was an infant, films and music were all I cared about. For my second birthday, I got a Fisher-Price movie camera and a GAF 3D Viewmaster, a portable Victrola and a handful of 45 rpm records. From that point on to this day, I have not stopped collecting music and films. I blame my mother. She always encouraged and enabled my obsessions with no restrictions. When I would beg her to take me to certain X-rated films (back when they were “legitimate” mainstream films like MIDNIGHT COWBOY or END OF THE ROAD or LAST SUMMER or A CLOCKWORK ORANGE) – she would repeatedly get into arguments with the theater managers who were terrified of being arrested for allowing a 5 or 6 year-old into such a film. Over and over again -- she would always win because her defense was strong: “if he’s old enough to be interested, then he’s old enough to see it.”

So I had no boundaries with my mom and we both liked that. She got to watch her boy grow up understanding the world as it is and how it could be and I got to see a lot of movies with my mom. We both loved story and authors and images and sound. Our life together was of deconstructing what was in front of us – movies and music were so miraculous to us and we loved to figure out, not just how they were made, but the thinking – the psychology and inspiration behind them. It’s what bonded us together. A shared appreciation and awe for art. Why do I see a film as reality? Why do I imagine images and stories and emotions and smells from a song? What made the director, composer, performer create the way they did at the moment they did? How does what they’ve made effect me and everyone else around me? What does what they’ve created mean? Questions always complex, answers never simple nor definite. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy.

So when it came to quitting my job to make a film with only one other person and the only financing coming from personal savings to make a film about a guy I didn’t know and couldn’t ever know (because he was dead) in a form I wasn’t familiar or immediately comfortable with (documentary – I was weaned, primarily, on narrative fiction), my mom’s response was predictable and, by this point in my life, comforting: “Nobody ever said it was going to be easy”.

My mom had suffered from cancer and my father from Alzheimer’s for years before they were diagnosed - and the documentary’s production would constantly be delayed as I found myself returning home for months at a time to help my parents go to doctors and do housework for them as the diseases progressed. During those long periods home, my mom would always ask to see the latest cut of the project and much of the raw interview tapes that Susan and I had shot. As she became weaker and less mobile, Joe Meek’s life and our chronicling of it became 2 separate adventures for her imagination to experience vicariously – with 2 separate rewards. She could “live” Joe’s life, for better or worse – and experience the extremities of Joe’s world and excitement of discovery and calamity of scandal – and distract herself from her own diminishing existence by immersing herself in Joe’s struggles for acceptance and communication (her favorite sequence was the one detailing Joe’s childhood and his early obsession with sound). The other reward was that I was sharing my own journey making the project, which was shaping into one that reinforced the philosophy that my mom and I shared all our lives.

On the one hand, (consciously) she was terribly unhappy that she was pulling me away from finishing that doc; on the other, I’m sure she was (subconsciously) hoping that, if the story took longer to reach its end, that her life would hold out long enough to see it through. 

The day before she passed away, my mom requested that I show her the rough cut again. We watched it straight through and as we did we talked about all the people who were in the film who had died before seeing the finished work. We talked about where Joe’s career could have taken him had he not gone out the way he did. We talked about Mrs. Shenton, the woman who died at his hand, and the impossible sadness of that moment. We talked about the endless nature of a project like this and, even though Joe had died, how his craft, art and his mysteries still wield impact and inspiration. We talked about us and our future and our past. Then she asked to watch it a second time. And we did.

My mom died 18 hours after we finished the second viewing, in my arms. She resisted, which was expected. That’s just the way she was. Life was just too interesting for her and the film represented all those open ends that kept making it interesting for her. This was a little over 2 years ago. For a long time, I found it impossible to even think about getting back to work on the project, let alone watch it. But slowly, things began to take shape and clarify themselves for me. Even though I was creating it with Susan and it had always been our adventure… I realized that it was my mom’s adventure as well. This is when I came back at it with the strength and determination that, hopefully, represents itself with this Kickstarter campaign.

This past Wednesday would have been my mother’s 82 birthday. It was also the day that Indiewire announced that A LIFE IN THE DEATH OF JOE MEEK was their “Project Of The Day”. Aside from seeing this Kickstarter surpass its intended goal several times over and being completed and distributed the way Susan, I and my mom have dreamed about for the past decade, THIS was possibly the best birthday gift she would have wished for. And I know she would’ve been the very first person to cast her vote for it to be “Project Of The Week” this morning. 

For the next few updates, Susan and I will be sharing our memories of those who’ve helped us with this project that is so close to us, who we’ve recently lost. These were people who believed in the messages in this film and felt that, in some way, it could both validate their own contributions to this world and also inspire others to contribute. 

Thanks again for all you have done and for all you can do for us over the next 18 days and beyond. To quote the very last thing my mom would say to me, “Nobody ever said it was going to be easy”.

They certainly didn’t – but I’m saying that, if and when we succeed, it’s going to have been worth it.

All good thoughts,
Howard