Saturday, March 23, 2019

REMEMBERING RICHARD


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_dVnqPfM7nrvNehF

       Follow 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



        


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