The DECLINE FALL & RISE of PAYNE - notes by docMAKER PETER EVANCHUCK

Making a doc. on a rather famous, homeless poet, ROBERT PAYNE is NOT all a bed of feathers. I've known ROBERT for decades thru thick, thin and the ups and the downs of his and my life. We've managed to remain in contact sometimes with difficulty and sometimes with much difficulty over those decades. Driving 5 hours from Ottawa, or 17 hours from NB isn't the easiest way to make a doc. on a very money-poor, self-financed movie. Recently, ROB's home of 4 years got closed down and one a recent trip down to get some 'pick-ups' i was confronted with a 'No Trespassing' sign where his blue tarp 'cocoon' used to be tucked alongside the wall. So i went looking for ROB but without success - he was no longer at his usual haunts .... so i returned home. Then after an email hiatus, ROB communicated with me again and eventually we managed to hook up and i managed to get my pick ups but his clothing had changed and his appearance had changed so that required a major shift in how the doc. would be structured and that caused some real concerns since the new footage would not be inserted at various points in the doc. as anticipated but would have to be cut and placed as a complete scene and that means a new opening which just isn't working out as planned since we had already structured a rather good opening and closing of the doc.... now as the saying goes, 'what to do; what to do'

The DECLINE, FALL and RISE OF PAYNE is slowly moving toward it's completion and i'm slowly learning more and more about FINALCUT pro 6 and 7 since I do believe that all moviemakers or as we used to call ourselves 'filmakers' should know about camera/editing to make their movie THEIR MOVIE and not the cameraman's or editor's movie ... more on this later...

ROB tells me that that someone somehow wants to take my title and put it on their doc. mmmmmm now that's a no no, guys!!

GERRYlive - the life and times of a man who at 96 struggles to live fully and for himself

Sophia and Gerry McCord at the Paddock Tavern on Queen W. in Toronto, 1991

I met GERRY McCORD decades back when i rambled along biking up and down QueenWest in Toronto's 'art&create' district - back in the 80's into much of the 90's it was the 'Main' of Toronto where dozens upon dozens of very talented and wild real people, freaks, doppelgangers and the like hung and hugged and embraced the creative live full out and high throttle - nights never ending 'till dawn - night after night after month after years. Away from most of that stuff were the normal or near normal regulars who lived in the area sort of not even aware that it was taken over by creators of creations - artists who always look for interesting cheap places to live, love and linger. For many of them it was a bit run down, cheaper than living elsewhere and right downtown in the heart of everything that was anything.

GERRY was and is one of those normal citizens who lived in the area in the senior citizens aparatments. He was always out and about always walking, checking things out paying attention to things that inerested him which were very unusual.  The locals knew him as the man who was out every day and night wandering in and out of places. He was a man who was then in his 70's who loved geometry, who actually met and spoke rather often with world famous, projectile geometer, Coxeter. GERRY would bring his geometric ramblings into the Paddock tavern at Bathurst and Queen and amid the BOPkids on BOPnight would want to go thru his endless meanderings of point a, point b and so on. He was wild about geometry, women and life and, he was and is, an undiagnosed bi polar who is now at the age of 96 still filled with the fevour of the mania but settled in his senior citizens apartment and with failing eyesight and failing health finally calming down fearing that a fall on his replaced hips might cripple him for life and that he says would mean suicide, 'No point living like that .. in a chair!'

I have been recording bits and pieces of my encounters with GERRY over those decades, sometimes nothing more than notes on a pad, other times photographs, sometimes video or film but always memory placed his personality into my movements thru life -

As my life took me away from Queen west, I never forgot GERRY and still, when in Toronto, go see him and listen to his hours and hours of thoughts of his life, his actions, his way of living those many decades as a single man attached only to himself and as he says, 'I'm always in love... in love with myself.'

An odd way to sum up ones life but an honest one and i do believe after those decades of listening to GERRY and watching his life unfold, that he really does mainly care for himself more than any other person and admits it openly; whereas, most people do that but few admit it so boldly...

At the present time when i'm in Toronto i record his life and thoughts and may one day put them into some form of a document that will reveal his life to others - there's only one GERRYlive, believe me!

Peter Evanchuck Looking for MOTION MAGAZINE!

Co-op Members PETER EVANCHUCK and HELENE LACELLE have spent part of their hibernating winter months building new websites/blogs - in particular, EVANCHUCK, who originated and was the publisher and editor of MOTION magazine, figured it was important to gather together all the issues of MOTION and exhibit available copies on line since it's probably one of the important pieces of Canadian Film/Theater/TV history - 'We would like to make the contents of MOTION available to all interested organizations/persons so figured the best way would be to put them on line.' - and so they've been worked at it and now slowly but surely, it's appearing on line.

Articles on probably all the the early flim/theatre/tv personalities up to 1980 were probably in one or many issues of MOTION - this could range from very popular persons like Alan King, Claude Jutra, Pierre Berton, Don Shebib or Donald Sutherland to lesser known ones like Peter Pearson, Michel Breault, Richard Leiterman or Daniel Pilon. 'MOTION was the only national magazine of it's sort before and at that time and perhaps still is the only one. It was such fun looking at all those old articles. Nostalgia just poured out of me as i recallled those days. We were 
all so very hopefully that somehow the Canadian 'scene' would blossom, bloom and explode but unfortunately then, like now, it was held back by bad political decisions and the force of Hollywood.'  

Since they are missing some issues anyone who may have knowledge of those issues to sell (we'll pay up to $50. for pristine copies) - "It would be mighty fine to have a complete set of all the issues but so far we're still missing about a dozen."

u can either go to our web site at www.movieshandmade.com and click on MOTION or click the links below

A life of recording each and every week of it - sort of that is ...

Guitar Pete and Movie Pete. Just another wild and wooley night at the Duke of Connaught Tavern, Toronto, 1994.

Like other artists who've led an interesting, full and active life living somewhat on the 'edge' of it all,  I managed to record much of it. The people, the parties, the never ending nights that turned into dawns, the rought and tumble, the highs and lows, the energy of doing it night after night for decades all added up to a rather interesting array of snaps, videos, stories.
  So in my elder years i've been reviewing some of that stuff. sort of cleaning out the basement of my life's informal work one might say. Coming up with stuff that was never seen or seldom seen by others. For example, i've recorded much of the life of a wild and woolly 96 year old man, GERRY who was and still is to some degree the most active 'old timer' i've every known because his mind has always whirled from youth thru middle age into his elder and now his old age. His feet don't move him fast anymore by his mind moves his as fast as ever.
  He's one of the few males I know who have walked thru manic depression without treatment/meds of any sort. His bipolar-ness was never diagnosed because in those days he was simply called 'moody' sometimes very moody.  So moody that he sort of had to leave home in southern Saskatchewan and strike out on his own from coast to coast to coast in this country ending up in Toronto 60 years ago when he was almost 40 (yes today he's 967 alive and living on his own albeit with home care, a walker and almost blind. )
  So over the past 25 years, Gerry, is one of the amazing people that i've been recording over those years and last year i started to collate the material i had on him and realized that this man was much to interesting, now that i lead a much more boring life than i ever have led, to let this material linger and turn into dust.
  This meant that last Spring/Summer I started to get more footage on his present life and ideas to augment what i have to bring that archival stuff on his early days into the 21st century. After all in only 3 years he'll be a century old and one of those rare individuals, like Napoleon, Lincoln or Churchill, who have never been treated for an mental disorder we not call bi-polar. 
  This is one of several docs i'm now working on with footage shot over years on very interesting people who have rather remarkable stories to tell and lives to show ... at least I think so and my present dull life only reinforces that these individuals are really startlingly unique...

Peter Evanchuck

Just when u think u know enough BANG and FCPro tells ya 'Learn more'

 So i'm setting up a new project on FCPro so the first thing I do is click on file and select 'name new project' which I do then I name and date that project then I set the scratch disc which can be a tricky enterprise since some say make a folder for all ur docs and others say save it to the Desktop - as usual one determines what they prefer and that's often the answer when one gets to learn say a little more than a little in FCPro - each editor i've talked with to help me understand FCPro over the past year has his or her own way of arriving at the time line finished movie - overall i prefer the drag and drop method whenever possible and seldom use the keyboard but use the top menu tabs and scoll down for many procedures but sometimes the movement of the timeline, the ins and outs, the increase or decrease time line length and so on i don't use the menu tabs but use the keyboard soooooo the 'pint is' my dear amigos is that as one learns;  one learns what suits their character in the 'making this damn thing' work well so that one spends most of their time in the creative work of making their movie rather than spending time wondering what the hell went wrong... and that sort of 'what the hell went wrong' was half of my work day today ... I'm going to say my prays tonight and light a candle ... wondering if that'll help my poor aging brain work more effectively. see u in the morning ... perhaps

Peter E.

Cooking is like Movie Making says chef Peter Evanchuck

'Cooking is like Movie Making' - Hard to believe that comparison ... let me explain further...

Recently (end of November) and for the past 5 years, i've been co-host and chef of the ONE&ONLY art/craft show in Ottawa. The  show and my buffet are well attended by about 1,000 guests - the food is appreciated and many compliments flow to those of use who make it.

This is seldom the way it goes with Canadian movies - there's no happy commerical outlets with happy customers for our directors/producers and their work. The usual reaction of the movie goer /american run theatres is that if it's 'Canadian' then it can't be good ... unless of course it's a Canadian making movies in Hollywood then we're lauded. So another James Cameron block buster gets all the compliments while another from Bruce MacDonald or Atom Egoyan gets little notice by the commericail theatre nor the movie going public


The disparity is in the market outlets - it's much easier to get ur creative work to the public if u're a chef than it is to get ur  creative work out if u're a director/producer. The outlets for Canadian food product are welcoming; whereas, for movies it's basically closed. Try to get a Canadian movie into a Canadian movie  house and i'll wish u all the luck 'cause the American product has it all tied up.


Years back Hollywood would send Jack Valente to Ottawa to make sure any change that would benefit Canadian movies would be stopped or hindered by his lobbying. Our politicians did not and still do not stand up for our movies and demand that the theatre chains in Canada show our movies as they stood up for our music and made it law for commerical radio stations to play Canadian music and that's why our musicians have thrived .. they get played and paid in prime time.

The Harper government does not wish to enhance or increase our culture - they prefer to have us bland with American culture - so the Harperites are doing what they deem necessary to realize the Americanization of our Culture'

Of course Quebec is giving them some problems... Bravo Quebec !!

Trying to find that right reality in a well shot, unscripted Doc.

I prefer to shoot unscripted docs... what they used to call CinemaDirect or CinemaVerite. A technique well used by such great cameramen/director's like Richard Leiterman for Alan King and Quebec film maker Michel Brault. This is where the reality of an event is captured on film/video then the story line, the content line is made in the editing room - the footage determines the direction of the story/the theme. The footage is there and then the director sets out in the editing room to find the sequence of events that best tell than story - there is no script to follow except 'reality'.

Well i don't want to get into 'does anything have reality' arguement but let's say that the most reality of how the story is 'in the footage' is closer by far to reality than a scripted doc. where one has to 'make' the events fit the script. That's false sort of a Michael Moore way of making entertainment dramas wrapped in the wool of 'real docs'. Or the highly stylized techinque of Guy Madden in his 'doc.' on Winnipeg which isn't a doc. at all but a personal view of the drama, the fiction, surrounding his Winnipeg.

For this director/cameraman much of recorded reality depends not only on the camera's ability to capture the best reality but on the subject to be 'real' oblivious to the camera... Neither is an easy task...

Peter Evanchuck