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Wide Angle 21.2 (1999) 41-45


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Moments with George A Memoir

Alan Rosenthal

[Figure 1]   [Figure 2]  

I met George for the first time when he saved my life in 1960. I had come to New York from Stanford to take up a film apprenticeship with Shirley Clarke. When I met Shirley for breakfast in the Chelsea Hotel she said, "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. There isn't a job. Did you really come 3,000 miles to work with me? Pity! I guess I should have told you. Sorry again!" I cursed Shirley for her thoughtlessness but she did me one immense favor. She gave me George's telephone number and said I could try him for a job. So began a wonderful lifetime friendship.

George was then making sponsored documentaries, and I worked with him as camera assistant on a movie called The Furlined Foxhole. It was made for an insurance company, and is not one of George's best. But it helped me to get to know George, and also his crazy, superbly talented cameraman Terry McCartney- Filgate. Together they made a great pair: George, fastidious, meticulous, and great on script; and Terry, iconoclastic, acid-tongued, devastatingly brilliant, and very funny. Both taught me the rudiments of filmmaking.

Life with George never finished when he called "cut." You were welcomed at his home, treated to drinks at New York's Irish pubs, and more important, made welcome at his lectures. At that time George was teaching at Columbia, and I was invited by him to sit in on the screenings and discussions. I marveled at his technique. His lectures embraced you, seduced you. It was a friend talking to a friend. So, as I saw All My Babies and other films of George's, I gradually completed my Stanford education. Only later did I realize how privileged I had been [End Page 41] to meet George at such a pivotal point in my life. He showed me the way. But more on that later.

I left New York a few months after we finished Foxhole, but kept in touch. This could mean a hasty lunch in Montreal, a lazy afternoon at a Flaherty Film Seminar, coffee in a Greenwich village eatery, dinner in Jerusalem,vodka in Moscow, celebrating his birthday out on Long Island, or hearing from him about a problematic faculty situation at New York University over a Chinese meal. We talked about everything, especially the new frontiers of film. And gradually I got to know him in depth and learned to appreciate the full range and depth of this gifted teacher, filmmaker, and human being.

His enthusiasms were invigorating and stimulating. Video cameras could change the world. (This when no one knew what a video camera was.) Access television could change education. Everyone had the ability to become a filmmaker. Filmmaking shouldn't be confined to an elite, and (years before Challenge for Change) communities should make films about themselves rather than leave their portrayal to an outside elite. Teacher, preacher, prophet--he was all these rolled into one.

I've written elsewhere on his films so I want to use this space for two or three reflections on what has stayed with me about George over the years. 1 First there is the humor. It is sly and unexpected. Sharp, cutting, but never unkind.Second there is the trimness, health, and vitality. The constant running up and down the stairs to his apartment is probably the secret that keeps him looking young. Or is it those power breakfasts of oats, nuts, and orange juice? Or maybe exercise. I remember being at a Flaherty seminar once and had risen at 7:00 a.m. to try a swim in the lake. George was the only other person out. I tried the water. It was straight from the frozen Arctic wastes. No problem for [End Page 42] George. He was in there frolicking away to his heart's content. When I refused to follow his example he looked at me with disgust. "I thought you English were strong. How mollycoddled...

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