I gave RP his first movie camera for Christmas in 1971. I bought it in a drug store in Portland, Oregon, just before returning to Kennett for the holidays. I can’t remember why thought RP would enjoy a movie camera.

This is another part of The Basement Diaries that should be written by someone else. RP should be telling his own story here but that’s not likely to happen so I’ll try to explain his/our fascination with home movies. How amazing that we had so much time and so little inhibition. RP loved directing us to do ridiculous things and having us do them.

Sniper

“Okay, Mays…you’ll be a sniper. I want you to take this rifle and climb out onto the roof. Joe and Charlie will be coming down the sidewalk…”

I don’t know that RP ever titled this grisly little piece but I always thought of it as Sniper. The shooting schedule took up about half an hour one Saturday afternoon. RP handled the camera while writing and directing on the fly. Mays landed the title role and the victims (in order of appearance) were: Joe Browning, Charlie Peck, Otis Mitchell and Aunt Kay. Location: the Peck’s roof and front yard.

Otis’ appearance in Sniper was even less planned than the rest of the project. He just happened to drive up in the middle of shooting…saw Joe and Charlie on the ground…and raced into the shot before RP could shout “cut!”

I don’t remember how –or why–Aunt Kay came to be in Sniper. Like Otis, I think she just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

No script. No costumes. No make-up. No plot. RP’s forte seemed to be video improvisation. Because there was no sound, RP enjoyed the creative freedom of shouting directions as he filmed the scene. Oh, there might have been a few minutes of discussion by a member of the cast before the Super 8 began rolling, but it was usually RP’s show to make up as he went.

RP’s movies are rare examples of deferred gratification by our group. Camcorders and VCR’s are still a few years off so it was days or weeks before we saw anything resembling a finished product. And then only after RP had worked his editing magic. And what a nasty business that was. Scissors and tape and splicing… it was an analog world with no PC-based, digital editing.

RP approached his moving making the way he built bookshelves or an entertainment center in his shop. Some vague sense of where he wanted to end up but unencumbered by plans or drawings. I’ve always thought RP actually “sees” things differently than the rest of us. When I look back at his Super 8 work or his still photographs, it seems RP is trying –with only a little success– to get the camera to see what he does.

And why did we bother? Who did we think would want to sit through these home movies? Well, that’s the easy part. We did it for ourselves. We needed no other audience. Cared about no other audience. I think that notion runs throughout most of The Basement Diaries. We entertained…ourselves.

West Side Flasher

RP describes the filming of West Side Flasher as a “hangover project.” As he remembers it, we were sitting around the Peck’s TV room on a Saturday with nothing else to do. No one seems to remember who came up with the idea or who directed. As far as I know, no one was a big fan of the musical. It might have been that Charlie was feeling a little Jet-like. Or maybe RP wanted to to take a stab at remaking the Jets-Sharks dance-rumble.

[The video clip from Westside Flasher got lost along the way. If it turns up we’ll post it here.]