My life has been propelled by stories and storytellers. I have learned much from others, among them John Huston, David Niven, Isabella Rosselini, George Plimpton, masters of the craft. In the great bazaar of Marrakesh, the Jemaa el-Fnaa, I made a beeline past the snake charmers, to listen to storytellers and to study the faces of rapt listeners.
Stories make us human, help us understand others, give meaning to our lives and make us feel safe. Stories have driven my career, style, and passions.
In Africa I have found the best stories of all. I first set foot there at the age of 16, and have returned repeatedly, searching for stories, following stories, making stories. Some might suppose I am drawn to the continent because it is the site of the oldest and foremost human story of all. They are right.
And what I learned in Africa, I have taken elsewhere, even to Montana which I now call home.
For five years at Montana State University’s Film Department, I taught a course about wildlife documentary storytelling. A new generation of filmmakers are now making a difference.
Click here to see John’s MSU honorary doctorate speech in 2016.
In 2005 John, his wife Kathryn, an art adviser, and daughter, Lucia, settled in Bozeman Montana. Today, Lucia works in New York at a contemporary art gallery.
I have been giving creative support to three distinguished writers who have adapted In Full Flight as a screenplay:
Kevin Hazzard and the team of Brett Baer & Dave Finkel.
Kevin is a paramedic turned author. He has written A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic’s Wild Ride to the Edge and Back, American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics, and the soon-to-be published, No One’s Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns To When There’s Nowhere Else to Turn.
Brett and Dave are known in Hollywood for: New Girl, Bad Sisters, United States of Tara, and 30 Rock.
Their excellent adaptation of In Full Flight, begins with these words, “This is a true story.”
In Full Flight is being represented by our team of agents.
At present, I am in the early stages of a major international wildlife film with two British partners.
Between film projects I am writing a book, inspired by these words of mine, written on board a battered ship in heavy seas between Tristan da Cunha and Cape Town, South Africa:
“I have become a missionary for my cherished continent. I believe there is no sickness of the heart too great it cannot be cured by a dose of Africa. Families must go there to learn why they belong together on this earth, adolescents to discover humility, lovers to plumb old but untried wells of passion, honeymooners to seal marriages with a shared sense of bafflement, those shopworn with life to find a tonic for futility, the aged to recognize a symmetry to twilight. I know this all sounds a bit too much, but if ever I have seen magic, it has been in Africa.”
I am mining the contents of journals first begun in 1970 to see if these sentiments, founded in the belief that Africa is the most important continent of all, still hold true.
Stories that inform, entertain, enhance and disrupt.
