Wrapped and processed, it was time to edit. I have no idea why, but ex-student turned lecturer (and savant genius) Michael Bladen decided to edit my footage.
The great feminist filmmaker Lina Wertmuller came to the college to visit us. She was a very famous Swiss director and I liked “Seven Beauties”. I chased after her up the stairs of the AR building and gave her an orchid. She was only 53 years old, but she looked 70. She accepted my posy with grace, and made Brian Robinson’s day.
During a year of not attending the film course, Paul Goldman worked on my film and Lucy Mac’s, while he and Evan continued making music videos like “Shivers” for The Boys Next Door.
Paul was escorted off campus by staff and security on a number of occasions. He had shot some footage for his own unfinished student film “My Style Of Digging Makes Very Little Noise”.
Paul gave me the footage, and Michael made it part of my film. The boy is the sixth character, the one I never wrote nor cast. He is the special effect in fact, the spirit of Janus that survives.
A POSTER OF PHOTOCOPIED POLAROIDS TO CELEBRATE THE WORK PRINT
It took 3 days of editing to achieve what Michael considered to be a rough cut. There was no more time and I wanted to get it finished, so with no finer cut I did the final mix. Michael had produced a special sub-aural rumble for an earthquake effect, and he volunteered his invention for the sound mix.
Everything was turned up quite loud, including music by Hugo, Robin, Brian, David and Frank, in their band “Plays With Marionettes”.
I couldn’t afford the artwork and animation for credits, so Hugo Race read out a list of names very fast, and I added panting and Frank saying “Do it again, do it again” right at the very end.
The following year, John Hillcoat liked the idea so much he used it at the end of his film “Frankie & Johnny”, which he made with Evan English.
Mark did the neg-matching and the sound transfers and somehow retained the use of his hands.
We had a wrap party for “Meanwhile Elsewhere” and I built a scarecrow out of the seaplane model and some costumes and we set fire to it, tall flames licking the second floor guttering of the pharmacy, almost engulfing it.
The fire brigade arrived and I got off with a warning from a man dressed in bright yellow. It was a great party with lots of friends and quite a few strangers, but a premonition of things to come.
Brett Ford introduced me to a girl called Liza.
Liza was a veterinary nurse who stole bottles of ether from the clinic where she worked. We’d go to a farm in Eltham and stand around outside and snort the ether on a rag. We’d get intense sonic and visual effects, black out and fall over, stone cold to the world - only to stand up covered in grass and immediately do it all over again.
If William Burroughs' bug powder is a “Literary High”, then ether is an “Elvis Has Entered The Building” rush that goes somewhere I don’t ever want to go again.
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