On the set of "Kate & Steve"
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.
I've completed a half dozen of the things in the last couple of years including Cruising For Croissants (a 10-day canal boat trip in France) Sailing with Bees (a bee infestation in Sabbatical's mast) and The Whales of Banderas Bay. (Can you guess what's the big feature in that one?).
All of which leads me to the wedding I shot a week ago when a second cousin of Admiral Fox was married and I spent the entire afternoon filming and interviewing the participants, interspersed with a little eating and drinking of course.
Not many of our class got married by the time I did - Dec. 23, 1969 - and I left that next August for the west, so I missed a lot of champagne punch and toasts and garters flying into the crowd.
But one wedding I did attend in the late 60s I was reminded of while filming. It was when Merle Butler was best man at a wedding of a woman from the Class of '67 (all I remember is her name was Jody) who married a fellow from Egypt. I remember that Jody's intended had sandy blonde hair, but definitely sported Arabic-Middle Eastern features and his accented English was fascinating to listen to. I attended the wedding with Sandy Carlson (Class of '67 also) who was one of Jody's good friends. I went wherever Sandy asked, but that's another story.
Merle was serving in Vietnam at the time and suggested that I should do everything possible to avoid going over and get shot at. He was killed a few months later. But that's another story, too.
At the time, I didn't think anything about the racial and/or cross-cultural elements of that wedding at all. I just remember Jody's father being fairly beet red most of the wedding and at a hastily arranged dinner right afterwards. I realize now that he was not a happy camper - and it wasn't bourbon that was bothering him. His little girl was likely to be going back to Egypt, though that wasn't certain, and, well, her husband was definitely not your average Jamestown boy. (I remember wanting to ask him a question about the pyramids and Sandy cutting me off before I could say a word. She had a lot more class than I did.)
At the wedding last week at the gorgeous Fontainbleau Inn on the shore of Cayuta Lake, my wife's mid-20s second cousin (who grew up in rural Hector, New York and holds a degree in genetics from the University of Connecticut), married a sophisticated architect (also mid-20s) who grew up in Indianapolis and it was the wedding of the summer for the east side of Seneca Lake, with people who hadn't been invited calling up the week before the wedding begging to attend.
The sophisticated architect (and now husband) is African-American, the second cousin (and now wife) of English and Irish background. But in a some measure of change from the 60s it was one of the happiest weddings I've attended in my life. There was singing, dancing, and a ceremony that was heartbreaker. If there was any tension about this architect marrying a geneticist, I didn't see it. And my right eye is still sore from the filming and my jaw weak from talking with everyone I could.
This is one rockumentary I am really looking forward to pulling together. I've even installed some new software on a second dedicated movie computer - Final Cut - to do it justice.
Now if I could just find someone to teach all my university classes this semester...
Any volunteers?
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