The Gun Lake Years 1977-1984

I mentioned earlier (in these bizarre blog chronicles) of the sudden disappearing act the brothers Doug and Rob performed on the street around 1975/76. It wasn't due so much to a misunderstanding or disagreement with any of the remaining original Blazers; it was more that they just started 'hanging out' in weird new social circles.

I had to wait until the summer of 1977 to get reacquainted on any regular basis with Doug; and it took yet another summer to do the same with his big brother Rob. It is from that golden summer of 1978 that our film today hails, featuring rare footage of the now married brothers (not to each other) with their wives, their creepy new friends, and what would turn out to be a frequent and seriously life altering destination for me in the late 70s/early 80s - Gun Lake.

The Fifty Dollar Tip

It seems that 'Blazer Don' owns the dubious honour of starring in both the LONGEST and the SHORTEST of all the home movies I managed to direct during my movie making mania years of the 1970s. The epic tear-jerker: 'In Search Of Esther' ran close to a full half hour (when not detached from: 'Esther, Teenage Runaway') while the not-so-epic: 'The Fifty Dollar Tip' ran about 29 minutes less.

On display here today then (for a very limited time) is the feel-good story of ownership and reward; of redemption and repayment. Filmed entirely outdoors in Blazerville on a cold December day in 1974 (I see a Christmas tree in a front window) and employing an establishing shot from the nearby Little Mountain Park (before the trees completely blocked the view), we find Don and Dan performing their photoplay for the camera in flawless one-take scenes that still dazzle the eye. (Try to ignore the bit where Don looks directly at the audience.)

Not That It Really Matters - Updated Yet Again

Feeling the need for a mind-altering change of pace around here at Blazer Central, the time seemed right for raiding my big, shiny collection of Blazer photo albums - for to be picking out a few dozen Blazer pictures - for to be making a big Blazer blog entry - about the Blazers.

After only one photo album of skimming and plucking, I was quickly approaching picture overload. There was no need to make this exhibit a three hour tour, so I stopped at the hefty batch I'd already collected and threw them all down on the scanner hither/dither and let the scanning begin. The short video (below) is the result of all this madness.

With more than two dozen photo albums left unexplored on the shelf, this slideshow break in our regular meal of super 8 movies could easily become a twice monthly alternative for the next 4 years. Not that it really matters. Nobody's actually tuning in to see any of this blog nonsense anyway. Blazers Schmazers, they'd probably say. Oh well, at least Bartholomew's out there watching. Gotta keep my one viewer happy.

I had already uploaded this little projector show earlier in the week but I didn't care much for the music in the background. So now I've gone back and redone the whole assignment from scratch and I'll be hoping for a better mark from the instructor this time round.

Bystanders And Lookeeloos

There's a couple of interesting shots in this otherwise unspectacular collection of old films. Whenever my super 8 camera and I needed to go out on location (as we did with the 'Farm News' movie) I would often have to deal with nosy bystanders and lookeeloos who simply HAD to know what was going on; what the heck I was doing; and why the heck couldn't THEY be movie stars too.

Dan and I were lucky to get out of Gastown with all our belongings when we filmed a few scenes down there in the mid 70s. It's probably even worse nowadays (wot with the Downtown East Side right next door) but back then, we only had to oblige one homeless vagrant/fan by allowing him a few seconds of stardom holding a prop. (Clip included in this video). His contribution to that epic movie of 30+ years ago has been sitting on the cutting room floor until this special blog moment came along. (I should probably clean up the cutting room floor now and then.)

The only other scene of interest today features Paul walking left to right down the middle of the street. What's not immediately clear to the viewer, is that everything was shot with the camera upside down and then the film was reversed after processing. A rather brilliant twist in film making (if I don't say so myself) that was unfortunately never really utilized in any dramatic fashion for my story movies. The only adjustment the actor had to make for the gimmick to work, was that he/she had to walk backwards in a casual, lifelike manner - traveling right to left and landing toe-heel rather than heel-toe. Another look at the 'screen-grab' (provided) will show that Main Street is now apparently situated to the west of Don's house, when we all really know it's to the east.

Other than those two scenes, there's bloody little else to bother watching here. A gang of thugs (led by Big Al) gather around Bartholomew's Bert puppet. Rob and George play miniature soccer in the middle of a table hockey tournament. Randy loses a tennis match to Bart. And Doug's camping trip with Paul comes to a sad and dirty laundry end. Yup. Pretty dull batch of films overall. The next collection should be better.

Tiny Snippets Snipped Off From Better Snippets

Before the next batch of DVDs roll in here (any day now) from the transfer shop in Richmond - filled with more super 8 memories than you can shake a stick at - and before I stack the DVDs we've already examined onto the 'done' shelf in the storage room, there's at least one or two blog posts left if we use the scratchy remaining bits from each disc. These would be tiny snippets that were snipped off from better snippets - including one last sad snippet of Don's final super 8 appearance on the street (ever!) before he hit the road for Australia in September '75.










Life on the block was different after 1975. Most of the 'big budget' home movies (with acting & stories) had come to a sudden halt. I began to focus my attention (and my camera) on family members and vacations to Hawaii, Disneyland and Birch Bay. In the spring of '77, I met up with Sandy L. at Gunn Lake and for the next 5 years most of my 'on location' filming was dedicated to her.

Yup, the old Blazer gang was slowly drifting apart, and it was getting harder to find more than one or two Blazers together at the same time anymore. The early scenes in today's video will reflect that. If I managed to film any of the boys at all, it was just for a few solo scenes. Just enough footage to show how the passage of time was ravaging their bodies. But for good measure, there's still a few pre-75 moments sprinkled in here too - including, ironically, another short scene from the very first ever roll, shot back in '73 with my very first ever movie camera, starring Paul and Fred. Or Fred and Paul. (They were obsessed with top billing.)

The Oncoming Quiet

By the time some of the scenes in today's video were shot, fellow cast members from the street (and brothers to boot) Doug and Rob seemed to have more or less vanished from the familiar landscape of Blazerville. At least as far as being captured on super 8 film was concerned. No one is exactly sure when the pivotal moment occurred, but at some point in 1976 the brothers quietly made their exit from group activities and we all somehow understood that they just wouldn't be hanging around as much anymore.

By that same year (1976) Don and Evert had also decided to leave the old neighborhood behind and were seeking their fortunes elsewhere. (Out of the country completely for Don.) Soon, Blazer wannabees Paul and Hanklin would add their footsteps to the mass exodus by choosing to become less frequent gang regulars; so that, as the dust settled in early 1977, our once upon a time, action filled base of operations that had helped to define the Pepsi generation, was clearly beginning to dry up and wither away.

However, for our purposes today, the oncoming quiet is still mostly waiting patiently in the future beyond most of these filmed segments. Yes, there's a noticeable calm in the air now and then; a hint of obvious change approaching in the background; but for the most part, life was still pretty good down on the block in the mid to late 70s and we weren't quite ready to hand it all over to the likes of 'Big Al' and his pint-sized cohorts yet.



Song: Changes On The Street

A Slightly Different Order

There is no theme for today's video. Unlike the last post ("Sports I Tell You") which highlighted the sports angle of being a Block Blazer, there is no explanation for this collection. Being the first day of June might be enough for this blog video to be uploaded into existence. While it covers the same ground that the other videos did, everything is now presented in a slightly different order. And why is it I keep finding all these 'out-takes' from the 'Farm News' movie I shot with Dan. Was it originally going to be a weekly series?

After compiling all these films into little blog-worthy features for the past 4 months, I've come to the daunting realization that in the near future, I must sit down and re-edit everything all over again; arranging them into a more organized presentation for a multiple DVD archive project. It's fine to throw out these 90-second slices of a bygone era every few days for the world to see, but for my own personal library, I'll need a more full length production. A dedicated series of discs with less random subject matter.

For example, one DVD could be used exclusively for all 'Farmer Dan' nonsense - the full feature film in its 'released to the public' condition; plus the bonus throwaway farm footage I keep rediscovering. Another disc could be used only to hold 'Big Al' footage. (That could then be stored separately from the rest of the collection.) I think it's clear that there is no other option before me than to quit my day job and begin the in-depth restoration work immediately.