It's shortly after 3 A.M as I write this. I am in a very nice and comfortable room at the GreenTree Marriott in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania attending a small horror convention called Genghis Con. It is run by a couple of good friends, and although it has been a small show in terms of attendance, it has been large in enjoyment and good will amongst friends.
I know I haven't posted on here for some time now. Things get missed. Things get overlooked. It has been a year for things missed and overlooked.
Some of what I am about to write may not be terribly appropriate for this website's blog. A lot of what I am going through now is hardly professional, though some of it is. Perhaps it is all related somehow, I don't know.
I sit here a few days away from discovering if two significant job opportunities are going to either go my way or disappear into the ether. And if the unthinkable should happen, I will have a difficult series of choices to make regarding my immediate future, both personally and professionally. I have every reason to believe that one or the other...possibly both of these potential career steps will happen, but over the last two years I have learned to take nothing for granted.
It's funny. I don't think I was ever meant to have or could have ever believed in a career outside of filmmaking. It has been engrained in me since I was 8 years old. Until that time, I remember movies as a fun pasttime. Something to do for fun on a weekend afternoon. But then my father got the bright idea to drag me to a Saturday morning screening of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in the early summer of 1981, and things changed. I didn't want to see it. The poster hanging in the lobby of the now-defunct La Mirada Mall Theatres in my old hometown of La Mirada, California did little to peak my interest. Instead of spaceships and laser blasts, I saw a sandy looking world full of old costumes and historical blather of little interest to a young kid weaned on flashy explosions and space battles.
Two hours later, it would be me trying to drag my dad back into the theatre for another showing, and over the course of the next year (back when movies stuck around for more than a couple of weeks) I saw RAIDERS nine additional times in that theatre, and once at the local drive-in. It was the first film that flipped the filmmaking switch in my brain. Along with the wonderful ride it provided, I began to notice the artistry of film...the lighting, the music, the editing...everything.
Of course that was many years ago. Twenty five of them in fact. And since that time, I have been lucky enough to find films and especially filmmakers who have taught me the value of such seemingly forgotten art forms such as character development, plot coherence, and artistic integrity.
My first filmmaking exploits began in high school where I and several of my friends from the drama department there engaged in the creation of short video projects that were quite the epics in their own way. Some clips of these mini-masterpieces appear on the Red Shirt Pictures website under the Projects section. Wonderful titles such as RETURN OF THE LIVING DOUGHBOYS and THE BREAKFAST CLUB GOES TO HELL. Subtle they were not, and equally unencumbered by budgetary excess, but they were mine. Not to imply that I did them alone, but they were mine. And I remain as proud of those efforts as with anything I've ever done.
When I would show those projects to my family, they would invariably enjoy them to varying degrees. My interest in horror films didn't exactly thrill my mother, but she never did anything to dissuade me from pursuing that passion. My dad's reactions were more to my immediate liking in that he would notice the very things that I was most proud of. A slick edit here, or a carefully composed shot there. Although tales of doughboys being splattered on the pavement or high school students being offed gruesomely one by one were most likely not his cup of tea anymore than my mother's he could see that this wasn't a simple pasttime with me. He would quiz me on how I achieved certain effects or even offer gentle advice and/or criticisms to help me along.
You see my father was an exceptional producer/editor/director in his own right. When I lived in California, his job entailed the creation of creative slideshow and multimedia presentations that he would use for various and important board meetings and sales presentations all around the west coast and sometimes further than that. I can remember many nights hearing him out in the garage of our house, studiously putting together the scripts and the timings and most importantly the music. Sometimes he wanted to be alone...other times he'd let me watch or even help out to whatever small degree I could. And I would notice so many things...how he would find music cues and lyrics that matched the story or stories he was trying to tell or how would he would link photo after photo together into a narrative that had not existed in anywhere but his mind. He was a thoughtful and quite frankly brilliant master of this art form. One that hardly anyone remembers these days. I can recall him proudly showing slideshows based around my adventures on local soccer teams and various other functions, and I would delight at how he told his stories.
I still delight in them...even if my memories have faded somewhat.
Several years after high school, I found my dreams of filmmaking derailed by a couple of ambitious projects that either foundered in development or crashed in post-production. I spent most of my twenties wasting time in bullshit jobs, seemingly lost and completely despondent over getting back to filmmaking. I didn't even pick up a camera during that time.
Of course I always intended to get back to it. But I didn't, at least not then. And my dad never mentioned my filmmaking days to me during this time. I thought maybe it was because he was disappointed that I had apparently lost interest, but now I think it was something else entirely. I think he saw that I wanted it still, but that I couldn't find my way back to it yet and he didn't want to put any pressure on me to come back to it any faster. He simply gambled that I would rediscover it on my own terms and in my own time. He was right, and in a way tragically so.
My father was a king. A huge man both in size and appetites, who at times I felt enormously close to and sometimes worlds apart both emotionally and intellectually. He was the smartest man I ever knew...or will ever know. He suffered from many of the same demons that I currently find myself plagued by today, even now in this early morning state.
He was a big man. Overweight to a large degree. And like any good son, I followed into the family business so to speak. My weight ballooned even past his level many years ago and has now arrived at a most unpleasant state...one that has me worried for both my health and my happiness.
My father's weight, as well as his decades long smoking habit eventually caught up to him in a variety of ways, including a car accident that he had trouble recovering from and a heart attack that resulted in a multiple bypass operation. Slowly but surely, the fire within my father that I had both admired and feared at points over the years began to flicker and die. Although he remained a vital presence in my life for the years following his heart surgery, he never seemed the same to me.
And what made it harder in a way was that I had finally started to come around career-wise. I had moved away from the family in Charlotte, North Carolina (where we had moved to in 1985 from California due a job transfer for my dad) up to Detroit, Michigan to take a job with then-fledgling home video company, Anchor Bay Entertainment. My efforts in creating a sort-of fan website for the company, who at that time did not have an official internet presence, had led me to an exciting opportunity to work my way back into the film business...and in a creatively exciting way.
So from July 2000 on, I found myself in Detroit. I still live there today, though an impending relocation is in the offing. After nearly 5 years with Anchor Bay, I found myself re-engergized creatively and wanting to get back into filmmaking finally after so many years. The time away from it had seen a unique and vital series of changes in not only the technology used to create films and video projects, but the outlets for them as well. Now this new fangled format called DVD was requiring more and more companies to produce video interviews and documentaries for their titles, and a new industry was seemingly born overnight. Being a massive film fanatic and an aspiring filmmaker, I saw this as my immediate calling. The perfect opportunity to re-launch myself.
I took it upon myself to film my first all-new video short in over a decade in early 2004. It was a short 15 minute interview piece with cult actress Linnea Quigley about her experiences making the film, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS back in the late 1980s. It was rough and full of mistakes, but thanks to several friends helping me out...the same ones currently running this show I am attending this weekend...it got done, and I edited the piece and presented it to Anchor Bay. They were surprised to say the least, especially since this was not exactly in my job description.
The piece ended up on the official DVD release of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, but the unfortunate reality was that my job was never going to evolve into the production side of things. They already had talented folks handling the interview duties, and my services would have been superfluous. This was no one's fault really, just a reality of the business. In April of 2005 Anchor Bay and I parted ways amicably and I devoted my career full time to the pursuit of producing, editing and directing documentaries for other companies.
My father never got to see that happen. On the day after Thanksgiving in 2004, he sat down that morning at his computer...something he did every single day and began to putter about the internet. At some point shortly thereafter, he suffered a massive heart attack that apparently came about so sudden, he had no time to even react. He passed away quickly, most likely before his body even found the floor.
Knowing the slow decline I had witnessed in my dad over the years, I had been preparing myself for the possibility that would not last as long as he should have. When I heard the solemn voicemail message from my brother later that evening telling me to call home and nothing more, I knew right away. My father was gone, and that was all there was to it.
Parents are not supposed to outlast their children, and I've come to grips with the fact that at one point or another I was going to to have to deal with my dad taking off for pastures unknown. We had no unresolved issues between us, and his death, though sudden, was apparently a painless one all things considered and one that, quite frankly, he would have wanted for himself and for us too. No wasting away in hospital beds. No slow irreversible decline. In a way, I will always be grateful for his the way he left us. No time for him to regret. No chance for him to fear what was about to happen.
Of course it has left me with a enormous sense of regret, albeit a selfish one. My father never got to see me re-embrace filmmaking to the extent that I did. Oh, he saw the Linnea Quigley piece, and he knew I was beginning to re-awaken inside creatively, but he never saw me start my own business or see the creation of my first truly substantial longform documentary, AFTEREFFECTS in early 2005. He never saw me hustle my ass all over hell and creation for work which led to my recent success with the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE documentary, FLESH WOUNDS or achieve the victory of producing my first DVD project from soup to nuts with MGM's impending TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 DVD.
He never saw me on the big-screen as a zombie extra in George Romero's LAND OF THE DEAD, though he did live long enough to hear about my experiences on the set a few weeks before he passed away. These of course, are all selfish laments. My father feels none of these regrets now...wherever he is, and would undoubtedly not want me to feel them myself now. But dammit, I would give anything in the world to see him watch me work today. I wonder if this is how he felt in that garage, with those slides so many years ago. Could he possibly have known how much he inspired me?
I don't know. Maybe he did. Maybe he always knew, and we just never had to speak about it.
Two years have brought me to places I never imagined. In September of 2004, I was living in an apartment, working for Anchor Bay, had one small scale video project to my name, had never been on a movie set, and had two living parents. Now I have a house, work for myself, have created over a half dozen succesful documentaries and featurettes, and only one parent left to me.
I should mention that my mother, who after being married to my father for decades and never having a life alone for any point in her existence has proven to be a vital source of inspiration for me in many ways. In the weeks following my father's death, I feared she would simply shrivel up and wither away in the family house, slowly losing herself amongst a sea of memories of times past. She had few close friends, and little or no activities that didn't relate to my father or the house, and after my dad was gone, I honestly believed she would not be able to recover. It wasn't because I didn't think she was strong or smart, but that she wouldn't be able to see any light at the end of a very long tunnel.
Two years have proven that fear wonderfully incorrect. Although the absence of my dad in her life is still a pain she deals with, my mother has shown a resolve and determination to continue her life that makes me smile every time I think about it. She has a new cadre of friends, a healthy series of outside interests and is now doing for herself things she never thought she'd be able to do. My father would be proud of her, and I believe that whatever existence he now occupies is made just that much easier because of my mother's spirit and determination since that fateful day in November 2004.
It's really something to see the changes in her reality and in mine.
And my reality is about to change once again.
The potential events of this week will determine the short term future of my life and business. And I'll take the results, whatever they may be. In the interim, I've made a crucial decision to address some health issues that I have been ignoring for too long. I'm surprisingly healthy, even at the weight I am at right now, but that won't last forever. In fact it won't last much longer at all. I guess I've finally decided that if I am going to achieve my goals with my career and my particular passions, it's time to face the hard choices and fight a few uphill battles. I have a feeling that I may actually surprise myself.
And if the unthinkable were to happen, and I were suddenly hit by a crosstown bus, or run over and trampled to death by a errant ox cart, or even simply failed to wake up one morning, I think it would be alright. At least in the sense that I will have left this Earth making a positive effort to treat myself better. Cause fuck it, I deserve that much. I have finally come to grips with the fact that I actually like myself. I'm pretty funny, reasonably smart, and I have a good creative mind..in my humble opinion. I don't beat people up and I don't kill pets for sport...so hey, I may be worth some positivity these days!
And for now anyway, I'm leaving my regrets and my sad wishes off to the side of the road. I can afford them no further attention. My dad left my life before he should have, and I will always miss him. But I will not mourn him, and I will not mourn the time I cannot have with him now. What I learned from him and the passion I saw in his creative life is what will continue to inform and drive my work for the rest of my life, and in the end, that is his undying gift to me.
I look forward to tomorrow. What will happen next?
Sincerely,
Michael Robert Felsher
