Printer Friendly
Use Print Command on your Browser
Monday January 26, 2004 Volume VI Number 4
Argus C3
by Ken Kemp
r. Stephen Maturin and Captain Jack Aubrey teach us something about partnership. Any of us who have attempted a working relationship with a peer have learned something about give and take. Business partnerships are not marriages, but there are similarities between the two. There are phases, cycles, in the working relationship and more often than not, such attempts at a shared destiny end badly. Sometimes, they last – like the captain and the surgeon. Often, the difference between success and failure amounts to a shade of meaning, a nuance; not a bomb blast.
The best kind of success is not the sort that’s inherited through bloodlines or collected as lottery winnings or the big strike at the casino or some other wild stroke of luck. We may envy the big winner or the giddy heir, but we don’t really admire him. We simply do not respect a wealthy person who was given the wealth. And further, if one acquired his net worth by breaking the rules and ruthlessly exploiting, hurting someone else in the process, well, we put those guys behind bars (if possible).
But on the other hand, we do admire one who earns his wealth. Especially one who battled against the odds and by sheer grit built something of substance – those who created something that contributes to the good of all. We celebrate that kind of success.
I’ve always been interested in these stories. It’s why I like Biography on A&E. By the time we know the name of a famous person, he or she has already overcome the odds. There’s a story there. Long hard nights. Rejections. Disappointments. Failed relationships. Financial hardship. Predictors of doom. Doubters. Cynics. Distractions. Personal demons. Peel back the layers, look a little deeper, and you’ll find something of the stuff of human achievement.
Horatio Alger, trained at Harvard College and then Harvard Divinity School, became a Unitarian minister about the time of the Civil War. He moved to the big city of New York – just after the war it was a rough and tumble city in perpetual conflict. In 1866, he became a Chaplain at a large lodging house for newsboys. After a long day peddling newspapers, these young, homeless, energetic, streetwise boys found a bed and a hot meal and a Chaplain who cared about their future. Alger began writing stories – stories of individuals surrounded by opportunity and temptations and distractions, who found a focus and built a life. His first collection of short stories was called Ragged Dick. Then Luck and Pluck. Then Tattered Torn. The books were modest, as best sellers go. But they struck a chord with the newsboys. They inspired many to take their intelligence, their street sense, their curiosity, their imagination, and build a career. He wrote hundreds of stories. None of them classics. But the collection became synonymous with the American way. The individual matters. Initiative counts. Anyone can do it. Opportunity abounds. They became known as the Horatio Alger Tales.
To this day, I’m drawn to such stories.
There are many ways to describe the American way of life. But one of the essentials is this emphasis on the rights and the privileges and the potential and the responsibilities of the individual. There is something un-American about entitlements. There is something unpatriotic in the notion that someone else should take care of me. We affirm the whole notion of individual responsibility. And while rugged individualism has its flaws, its shortcomings, its limitations, our whole society would quickly unravel without it.
So that’s why these stories always grab hold of me. They remind me that every day is a new beginning. That it’s not over yet. That we’ve still got a shot. That I’m not alone in the battle.
That’s what drew me to the thirty year old story of a little mutt named Benji.
* * * * * * *
Joe Camp and his wife Kathleen moved into our town a couple years ago.
It’s not surprising that they chose the rocky hills of our country neighborhood to make their home. They would have picked the Rockies or the hills of the Smokies if they could pull themselves away from Hollywood. But they needed proximity to the heartland of cinematic entertainment. So they stayed in Southern California. They bought a house on a hill with a panoramic view of the ridges and groves and valleys.
I remember the movie. And I remember some of the conversation the 1974 film generated. Benji was considered a ground-breaking film because it starred a floppy-eared dog who did not speak, was not enhanced by animation or other special effects – he was just a dog. And he carried the whole story. There was conflict, love, fear, heroism, humor, and all the things that make for winsome, engaging story-telling, but all from a dog’s point of view.
There was no narrative. The camera angles came from ground level, about eight inches high, about where a dog’s eyes travel and observe the world. And the movie was so convincing it sparked the question – how human are animals, anyway? Benji persuaded the audience. This was a thinking, feeling, clever, actor this dog – Benji.
But it was a long time ago. And as Kathleen and Carolyn and I chatted about the Benji phenomena, I asked, “Where did Joe get the idea? How did it all start?”
Joe Camp created, wrote, produced, directed and marketed the original film by the sheer force of his belief and determination and I wanted to know more.
“You’ll have to read the book,” Kathleen smiled.
So she got me a copy. And I did.
It’s an amazing story.
Joe is a writer. A story-teller. He started with a fascination for movie-making. He was enchanted by the whole process. You put a crowd of people in comfortable chairs facing a blank screen, and with lights and shadows and color and sound, you transport them to another world. You inform. You entertain. You disturb. You hold them spell-bound. He became obsessed with the technique, the technology, the art. Some films are a monumental waste of time and money, he concluded. Some relay values that are harmful. Some emulate villains who ought to be disdained. Others communicate wholesomeness. Instill character. Teach morality. Sharpen a focus on the good and the right. He was repulsed by the former and drawn to the latter.
He set out to make movies. He began in the only world that would give him work – advertising.
It was there he learned the power of the written word. Here’s how he describes his first real writing mentor, Dolores Williams – an editor on the staff of the agency –
She exploded all the myths and showed me that writing is labor, not magic. And that if I worked hard enough, that I, even I, on occasion, could put a few decent words together. She also taught me that the written word is where everything begins. Every advertisement, every radio commercial, every TV spot starts with the same piece of blank paper. Nothing happens until somebody writes something. “If you want to have any degree of control over the work you do, and thereby your destiny,” she preached, “then learn to write.”[1]
So Joe did. He learned to construct sentences in an interesting way. He learned to hold his readers in suspense. To create curiosity. He learned to capture not just your interest, but your concern. Your care. You tell a story that causes you pause, you want to know the rest. All this in the time frame of just seconds – expensive advertising time.
The idea for Benji came one night watching the Disney classic – The Lady and the Tramp. The Disney animators masterfully captivated children and adults alike. As the film rolled, you suspended common sense. Dogs engaged in conversation. Their lips moved in synch with human voices, but you didn’t dismiss it as impossible – a con. You believed. Why? This is fantasy. Maybe the fantasy opened you up to emotions you’d closed out in real life. The script is aimed as much at the parents as the children. You want to share the moment with your child. Disney gave you that forum.
But Joe wondered out loud. Would it be possible to communicate the same warmth, the same engaging action, the tension and the love and the hopes and dreams of full animation in a film starring a real dog? No special effects. No tricks. Just a real dog?
Joe believed it was possible.
Even though no one else did.
He set out to convince them all.
Ultimately, it wasn’t Joe who did the convincing.
It was Benji.
* * * * * * * *
I knew Joe was a kindred spirit when I read and contemplated the following choice paragraph –
It seems I’ve spent a good deal of my life on that particular precipice; being pulled and torn by opposing forces. Fear and intellect saying, be careful, be sane, be one of the group. Stick with something sure, where you will be judged by what you already know, not what you have yet to learn. Countered by the passion to strike out alone, to create and see the results of creation in the faces of the audience, to feel it in their hearts. To take full responsibility for the work created and have such direct contact with its effect that there can never be any doubt about how it’s going because it is there to see and feel and measure..[2]
A preacher knows when his sermon is working. And when it isn’t. He sees it in the faces of his congregation. So with a comedian his audience. A painter, too. A musician. A writer. A poet. A movie producer.
It’s risky business putting your creation out there for general consumption. Most people, for fear of rejection, keep it to themselves.
But then again, there’s nothing more satisfying than watching your creation work. When it serves its intended purpose. It is enough when it happens just that way.
That’s why Benji IV will be released in the Spring of this year. Joe Camp did it again.
I had the privilege of a pre-release screening, along with some of my favorite people. We all agree. The first was worthy of all its accolades and awards and box office success. And this new Benji is even better than the first.
* * * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Horatio Alger taught the world to pull itself up by the bootstraps, and if you think about it, well over a hundred years later, it still works.
I’m not talking about the ultimate dependency, here. It’ll never really work for you if you don’t first depend on your God. Joe believes it. He talks about that very thing in his book. It’s a light touch, but it’s central to the whole story. This isn’t the cliché – “God helps those who help themselves” drivel either.
If we are made in his image, and He is Creator, then we should be, too. Creating takes energy, courage, skill, discipline. And not everyone will value what you create. Some will consider it sub-standard. It’s a risk. Take it.
So today, just for today, go ahead and take that risk. Put it out there. Get it on the page. Make the call. Take the initiative. Persuade the doubters. Energize the complacent. Pull the team together. Let Benji set the pace.
Make it happen.
It really is up to you.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2004
Send FEEDBACK
Click here to SUBSCRIBE
To UNSUBSCRIBE, click the link at the bottom of your e-mail alert.