The City of Fayetteville has lost
a giant. Richard S. Drake, former GRAPEVINE journalist and editor,
founder and editor-in-chief of THE OZARK GAZETTE and long running
host of Fayetteville's own ON THE AIR WITH RICHARD S. DRAKE, passed
away on 3/ 4/ 19 after a period of illness.
Richard has been a part of my
reality for almost a quarter of a decade...certainly not as long as
he looms with more old school Fayettevillians, but at this stage in
the game I reckon I can shed some of my “New Kid” sheen. I moved
here from New Hampshire in early Spring of 1996. I became involved
and aware of the close-knit community I adopted and eventually of
the little free paper, the OZARK GAZETTE, that could be found in
racks everywhere in town. It was a fun and acerbic little
publication, very in touch with its grass roots base. I became aware
of Community Access Television and the scene (somewhat symbiotic)
they had going on----many of my friends were poets and musicians and
most of them had appeared on CAT (at that time better known to most
locals as “The Open Channel” since that was the name of the
previous long-term contractor. I learned that the same passionate and
sometimes cranky GAZETTE editor who did a column called “Street
Jazz” was the guy behind “On the Air with Richard S. Drake”,
and on that access show he conducted intelligent and thoughtful
interviews with people of all stripes; activists, writers,
historians, artists, academics, musicians and many others.
My roommate had bugged me
several times at this point about the notion that we should hit the
Open Channel and see what it took to become producers and learn to
put out product ourselves. I had my own things distracting me at the
time----I was like, “yeah, okay, maybe we can do that,” the idea
pretty much remaining an abstract in the back of my brain. One day,
either toward the end of 1996 or very early '97, he told me, “I
went up to CAT and signed us both up for Orientation.” OKAY. I was
on board while barely aware of it.
We signed up and our package
covered Studio, Field and Edit classes, which still remain a crux of
the curriculum today, although the technology has changed a lot.
Studio Training was our first class, and I was blown away when we
went in and it was revealed that The Great Man would be our trainer.
“AW, NO WAY! The guy running
our classes is the Ozark Gazette guy??? I LOVE that guy!!! ” I was
starstruck.
Richard not only taught us the
basics of studio production, from set building to interviewing to
punching a show in the studio, he gave us an overview of Public
Access Television, its history both nationally and locally, and why
it was there. Over the years Richard's history with Public Access and
his knowledge thereof, as well as his passion for it, would be a
constant source of inspiration to me. Having come out of the
xerographic zine scene, I found the independent, radical aspects of
Public Access very accommodating and very close to home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZOvfItiS3M&index=42&list=PL0cs_SrWxKfUXOl47_dVnqPfM7nrvNehFFollow this link to watch ON THE AIR featuring Film Historian Frank Scheide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czAufQWhJh4&index=26&list=PL0cs_SrWxKfUXOl47_dVnqPfM7nrvNehF
Follow this link to watch Richard's interview with "The Last American"
We got our Access Producer stripes and went off on our own, helping out Richard and other producers in volunteer gigs but also began forging our own path...and our path (believe it or not, it isn't like we walked into this gig with anything resembling a PLAN) wound up becoming Fayetteville's most controversial public access show. EVER.
In this capacity---and he might
have, at varying junctures, been either a dedicated public volunteer,
a member of the City's Telecom Board or a member of CAT's Board of
Directors.....and he might not have always liked what we were doing,
but he frequently found himself in the position of having to defend
us, and he did so all the time, like a good First Amendment trooper.
At one point, following our
perseverance after a trumped-up obscenity charge in 2003 (wherein a
few journalists friendly to the City Administration at the time wrote
some conveniently-timed hack jobs on us), Richard (who was writing
for the Little Rock Free Press at the time) told me, “I want to do
an interview with your cast. I want people to see that you're serious
about what you do.”
In many ways Richard became our
greatest champion, interviewing us both in print and on television.
And he may have even occasionally ribbed us for our lowbrow approach,
but he always stood by our right to do it.
Follow this link to watch Richard interviewing Shannon X. Caine about Obituaries
I found myself working with
Richard on many fronts...I wrote occasionally for the Ozark Gazette,
penning anything from letters to the editor to guest articles to
poems. When the Gazette fell into trouble I found myself invited to
brunch at Uncle Gaylord's, for a meeting of writers, supporters and
other hangers-on, to brainstorm and be part of a kind of “owners'
co-op” setup to save the paper. Nothing panned out and the Gazette
did ultimately fold.
After illness and a coma
(which Richard himself has referenced many times on multiple media
platforms) Richard was anxious to start doing television again and
put “On the Air” back together. He called on me, and I became his
cohort, director, chief editor and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer (as I
used to call myself) and he and I kept “On the Air” going.
We faced some interesting challenges in production in the ensuing years. At one point many of the flats, backdrops and other setpieces were jettisoned by the station. Forced to improvise and evolve, we opted for more of a minimalist, "Charlie Rose" look for the show going forward.
By the end of the oughts I was
probably one of the most prolific producers at Access TV,
commandeering a number of shows, including “On the Air”, our own
long-running show, “The Abbey of the Lemur”, “Intellectual
Property” (a questionable show featuring local political meetings),
“The Caine Interviews” (another talk show that was a spin-off of
TAOTL) and some random other projects, as well as assisting on my
wife's show, “Mondo Pazzo”. I had spearheaded two independent
film festivals. When my roommate came to me in 1997 and said, “I
just enrolled us in orientation at CAT,” I never envisioned all
that, even less that I would eventually find myself working in
television professionally.
Throughout all of this, Richard
remained a constant, providing me with guidance, a conscience and a
wall to bounce ideas off of. He taught me a lot of lessons---not to
preach to the choir, how one should never accept civility over
victory, not to take oneself too seriously and to never condescend to
my audience---to enter into any project thinking of my audience as
intelligent people capable of critical thought.
A notion that won me some
friends but also got me into a lot of trouble----but that's another
story for another day.
Richard was a wellspring of
historical knowledge, of both Public Access and its various
contractors over the years, but also Fayetteville in general...he
could tell you about anything from the divisive Incinerator Issue,
which galvanized a lot of activists in the community but also set the
tone for those activists' relationships to the local newspapers (who
sneered at them as “Aginners”) . Those relationships never really
changed. He could also tell you about the woman the city had hired at
one point to play violin to the flowers growing on the town square at
night.
He also frequently found himself
in the position of playing Cassandra on the walls of Troy, screaming,
“don't bring that horse in here!” Only to be listened to by no
one. He shot (and I helped edit) a documentary called “The Death of
the Fayetteville Open Channel”, which covered the Great Access War
of the early '90's. He detailed how a rogue faction of the Open
Channel's Board of directors (of which he freely owned up to being a
member) broke off from the main board and wound up losing the Open
Channel its contract with the City. The contract was later awarded to
Access 4 Fayetteville, who would eventually be known as Community
Access Television. A lot of people complained over his constant
references to it, saying Richard was “living in the past”.
Follow this link to watch "The Death of Fayetteville Open Channel"
He wasn't. He was urging people not to
repeat his mistakes.
It fell on deaf ears.
Fortunately, he was still
with us. When a rogue CAT Board began violating its own by-laws,
engaging in intimidation and harassment and trying to access
personnel files they had no actual right to, Richard threw in with
VIPA (The Producer's Group I was, at the time, President of) and
after a long public struggle we forced a slew of resignations.
Another Access War was cut short and the contractor (known today as
FPTV) still exists and is flourishing, thanks in large part to
Richard's efforts.
Life went on and we kept
doing what we were doing. Richard on some fronts tried to embrace
new media but by and large things like YouTube and Podcasting seemed
to mystify and alienate him. He mourned the loss of the local
newspaper, a point on which he and I agreed to disagree. What good
was local journalism if its prime function was to side with regional
oligarchs and degrade and demean activists and the disenfranchised?
My attitude was (and still is) good riddance. Richard, however, still
mourned the death of localism, such as it was.
As he got older he developed
more of a curmudgeonly attitude, sometimes coming over like a grumpy
old man yelling and shaking his fist at the rain---the thing about
Richard, though, is there was never a time when he couldn't step
outside himself and see the humor in all of this. This played into a
lot of the comedy vignettes he and I put together in the later years.
Sometimes the pieces had some heavy, intense meaning going
on---sometimes it was just a fun story. Either way we had a ball
doing it.
Follow this link to watch "Richard S. Drake's DVD Commentary" (short comedy bit)
For the most part 2018 saw “On
the Air” go on hiatus, with only one episode being produced as both
Richard and I endured health problems.
Follow this link to watch "On the Air: The Willow Heights Controversy"
Right up until the end, we were trying
to pull it together to start producing new shows. And I mean, right
up to several days before he died. His wife, Tracy, informed my wife
and I, on March 4th, that he had passed that morning.
We were very intimidated going
into last weekend---this idea of doing a televised memorial had blown
up and we were all kind of swept up in it....in the end I think it
went well. As daunting and discomforting as it sounded, I can't help
feeling that Richard wouldn't have had it any other way.
Special Thanks to FPTV and Tracy Reeves Cutaia
Copyright 2019 Molotov Editions
