(Guest Column from Canadian Writer, Director and Producer Allan Eastman)
This tremendous
photograph of a Canadair Water Bomber fighting the horrendous Ft. McMurray
conflagration of 2016 invoked a sudden wash of memories having to do with 2 of
the great Canadian cultural institutions that I had the good fortune to be
involved with and a bizarre set of circumstances that led from a burned out
forest to a literary heritage.
The first great
cultural institution was The Littlest
Hobo TV series. I directed 44 of those over 5 seasons in the early 1980s as
a young filmmaker learning his chops and building up his bag of cinematic
tricks. All the crew was pretty young as well so we had a tremendous time
together shooting the show out in small town rural Ontario over the warm summer
months.
Rarely has wholesome family entertainment been made by such a
collection of sex and drug crazed reprobates. At one of our wrap parties at an
isolated hotel, I woke up the next morning in bed with 5 people, all of whom
I’d had some kind of sex with.
Hobo was great fun
to make – a new story and a new cast every week in a new situation set in a new
environment. Lots of action. Many tremendous actors to work with – classic old
Hollywood pros like Keenan Wynn, John Carradine, Henry Gibson, Patrick MacNee,
James MacArthur and the cream of Canadian talent from Lynne Griffin to Jim
Henshaw to Sean McCann and Karen Kain. Out in the woods on a sunny day, telling
a tale. The crew called it the story of “A dog who traveled around from town to
town paying off crew mortgages.” We didn’t know how good we had it.
We were doing a
2-part episode with the SARTECHS at Trenton Air Force Base. These Search and
Rescue Technicians were the guys that flew missions looking for the wreckage of
missing aircraft out in the wilds or ships in trouble at sea, then parachuted
in to rescue the survivors or collect the remains. Our story was about a small
plane crash in some remote hinterland and was both a drama with the survivors
and a procedural about the SARTECHs search and rescue operation.
The Air Force gave
us tremendous support – the free use of big Buffalo search
aircraft and Huey and Chinook rescue helicopters, numerous parachute jumps and
the run of the Trenton base. For me, it was like Orson Welles’ description of a film set
being the best electric train a boy could have.
We did lots of aerial shooting
and excellent action with the SARTECHs rappelling out of helicopters or hitting
a precise mark in their glider parachutes. It turned out to be one of our best
shows ever.
I was much taken
with the 8 or 10 SARTECHs we were working with. They were all long term
enlistments and pretty well all Sargeants, you know, the guys the Officers go
to to find out what is going on or what they should do. They seemed to me like
a group of John Ford cavalry picture heroes - deadly serious about their work
but tremendous fun after hours, boisterous and full of jokes. I was so
impressed that I wanted to develop a movie script about them. Their lives and
their work certainly deserved the big screen treatment so after Hobo, I went
back to Trenton and spent many enjoyable, well lubricated evenings interviewing
them on tape, pumping them for their best stories.
They had many epic
adventures to relate and many amazing tales to tell. How they generally chuted
into plane crash sites up North with shotguns because they often had to fight
off huge Grizzly bears who were trying to make off with the human remains. How
a climber who fell down a mountain was usually stripped naked by his clothes
being ripped off by obstructions. How to airlift survivors off a blazing,
sinking ship in an Atlantic gale. The strange things that cause plane crashes,
like the pilot getting a raisin stuck in his throat and choking to death at
8000 feet.
But the most
incredible story was about being called to the site of a major forest fire in
BC by the firefighters, after the flames had been largely extinguished. They
were led into the heart of the burned out woods, the ash still smoking and
small brush fires still being put out. The lead firefighter came to a stop and
pointed up at the top of a blackened cedar tree and there, 40 feet up, impaled
in the branches was a fully accoutered frogman – wet suit, dive mask, scuba
tank and one flipper – dead of course, and all scorched and roasted by the fire
and the steam. Sgt. Kelly said it was probably the most surreal thing he’d ever
seen, and that’s saying a great deal, based on some of the other experiences he
told me.
Well, the story was
reasonably easy to figure out, finally. This poor bastard had been scuba diving
in one of the local lakes, had been scooped up by a Water Bomber skimming
across the surface, taking on a fresh load and had then been dropped into the
fire itself on their fire-fighting bomb run.
I’ve thought many
times over the years about this unlucky guy’s experience. There he was,
placidly scubaing along. There would have been a strange noise, suddenly
building up to a gigantic roar and then, he would have been tumbled around in
extreme turbulence. What the fuck!? Then, he would have found himself in
complete darkness, encased in a great pool of water but on investigation, he
would discover that he was entombed by steel walls above, below and all around.
Did he figure out what was happening to him? There would be the muted rumble of
the plane’s props but the water in the hold would be calm.
But then, Suddenly
- Light would begin to appear below him, the water would abruptly start to
drain away and he would be swept out in a rush with it. He would find himself
falling through the air from great height into a massive raging wild fire directly
below.
One can only hope
that it was all over for him quickly.
I’ve told this
story many times over the years, usually as an example of the kind of freaky
things that can happen to Human beings. The sly Greek Philosopher, Heraclitus
always said that it was the things that we could never think of that would do
us in.
In the long run,
the movie never happened. We wrote a decent script but had trouble getting the
money together before another big project took us elsewhere. Every filmmaker’s
epitaph should read “Films I Never Made.” Later, we did do another SARTECH
script for the Danger Bay series and
that turned into one of their most celebrated, most popular episodes, nominated
for many awards.
Now, the 2nd
great Canadian cultural institution. About the time we were working on the
SARTECH movie script, I was having dinner at the Windsor Arms one night with
the powerful Producer, Bill Marshall. Bill and I worked together over the years
and he was always the best of company, funny and entertaining to pass an
evening or a plane ride with. His signature line was “I give you my word as a
Film Producer!”
At some point, a
familiar looking, rumpled little guy passed by and stopped to talk with Bill.
Bill invited him to join us. It was Mordecai Richler, considered by many –
myself included – to be the greatest Canadian Novelist ever, despite claims by
backers of Margaret Atwood or Robertson Davies. I’d never met him before so it
was a big thrill for me. I had all his books on the shelf at home. And loved
them.
We three talked
about all kinds of different subjects for hours, as we worked our way through a
bottle or two of Chivas Regal. Mordecai was killer smart and the ironic black
humor so on display in his writings was delivered in a quiet sardonic voice for
private consumption at the table. At some point, I told them the
SARTECH/Frogman story. I don’t remember their reaction but no doubt it was the
general head shaking amazement that its telling usually provokes.
Jump Cut a decade
or so later. I am shooting something in Vancouver and have just done my
Saturday morning book store run, the prize acquisition being the hot off the
presses hardcover copy of Mordecai Richler’s latest (and sadly, last) novel, Barney’s Version. I dive right into it
and spend most of the rainy weekend devouring it.
A key storyline in
the novel is Barney being suspected of murder over the mysterious disappearance
of his best friend, during a weekend up in the woods at the cottage. Barney
always proclaims his innocence and eventually gets away with it because no
corpse is ever found. Until of course, years later when a hiker in a new growth
forest comes across charred human remains.
Yes, the strange
sound that disturbed Barney’s post lunch nap was a Water Bomber vacuuming up
his friend who had gone for a dip, to eventually deposit him from height into a raging forest fire.
At first, I was
shocked when I read this denouement but then, I had to laugh. Yeah, Mordecai
knew a good story when he heard it, made a note probably and when it didn’t
show up elsewhere, he used it as a major plot device for his new book. I
resolved to give him some good natured ribbing about stealing my material the
next time I ran into him but alas, I never got the chance. Mordecai died a few
years later.
But
retrospectively, I am proud of my part in passing along this extraordinary tale
from the SARTECHs to our greatest Author to be recorded for posterity in his
final novel. All Human art begins with our ancestors sitting around telling
stories, which then get passed on to the generations. So let it be with this.
And anyhow, it
makes for a good story too.
