Moments with George: A Memoir

Rosenthal, Alan, 1936-

Wide Angle, Volume 21, Number 2, March 1999, pp. 41-45 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/wan.1999.0026

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Moments with GeorgeA Memoir

by Alan Rosenthal

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 terri-

bly 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 tele-

phone number and said I could try him for a job. So began a wonderful life-

time 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 com-

pleted my Stanford education. Only later did I realize how privileged I had been

Alan Rosenthal is a writer-director of documentary features for English, Israeli, and U.S.television.

WIDE ANGLE NO. 2 (MARCH 1999), pp. 41-45.V O L . 2 1© OHIO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FILM

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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 fin-

ished Foxhole, but kept in touch. This could

mean a hasty lunch in Montreal, a lazy after-

noon 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 televi-

sion 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

Fig. 1. At the Great Wall of Chinawhile making In China Family Plan-ning is No Private Matter, August 1977.(GSPC)

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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 can you get?” It was only then that I realized

George would probably be in his element in the Hindu Kush doing operations

on the tribesmen with his penknife.

The third integral element of George is his kindness, compassion, and support

of his students and friends. At various times in my life I turned to George for

help and advice. His response was always fast and total. I needed a letter for

faculty promotion. It was written immediately and I blushed when the copy

he sent me showed how supportive he had been. I needed a blurb for a book

jacket. Again he wrote in the most gracious terms imaginable. There were the

sadder letters he wrote. He had a good friend in Kibbutz Ein Dor whose son

had been killed in the Israeli wars. The result was constant letters of support,

Fig. 2. George Stoney with cameraman Bil Godsey and editor Joan Williams. Ca1964. (GSPC)

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and George never stopped asking me if I had seen the friend and how was he.

Again, if a student or an associate of his made a film he always wanted you to

know how great it was and that you had to run, not walk, to see it.

All this stems from the tremendous generosity, which lies at the core of George.

And it is this generosity which led to my only falling out with him. We were

both at a Flaherty Seminar and had seen a film, which I thought was puerile,

suffered from too many politically correct attitudes, and was overall pretty awful.

In the post-film discussion, at which the filmmaker was present, I stated all

this in no uncertain terms. George was appalled. Why had I been so cruel?

Where was my tolerance and compassion for the filmmaker? Where was my

understanding of what he was trying to achieve? George was right, and after

the seminar I wrote him a letter trying to heal the breach that I feared my words

might have caused in our friendship.

Yet, in the end, one thing above all else characterizes George, and that is his

sense that film has a mission. Films can do good. Films can and must change

the world. The good fight must be remembered and continued whether it is

the fight of the unions, the oppressed, families in Quebec, Indians in Montreal,

or blacklisted singers. A very small incident characterizes that for me. One of

George’s students had made a small film about the shooting of Godfather II in

New York and how it had upset street residents. The student knew he could

sell the footage to Hollywood, but George pressed him to leave that and use

the film as a tool to organize the street residents in a protest.

One of my friends once, jokingly, referred to George as “St. George.” I under-

stood what he meant. George has to be in there fighting, urging, encouraging,

and above all, leading the way. For me, and countless others, he showed and is

still showing the way. George taught me that films must be made with passion.

That you can’t sell out. He taught me that films can be a tool to a better world.

He once put all this to me very succinctly, “The good film is the one that

rocks the boat.”2

I last saw George a few months ago in New York. He was rushing. He was off

to South America to film, there was another film in New York he had to do,

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there was publicity screening by his friend Judy that he wanted to attend, and

there was also this student film he wanted to look at. The pace that would have

exhausted someone thirty years younger was still relentless. The passion was

still there. Above all the fire was still burning.

Footnotes

1 . George Stoney, interview by author, on Cry for Help, in Alan Rosenthal, The NewDocumentary in Action (Berkeley: University of California, 1971).2 . George Stoney, interview by author, on You Are On Indian Land, in Alan Rosenthal,The Documentary Conscience: A Casebook in Film Making (Berkeley: University of Califor-nia Press,1980).