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| Guitar Pete and Movie Pete. Just another wild and wooley night at the Duke of Connaught Tavern, Toronto, May 16,1994. |
Like other artists who've led an interesting, full and active life living somewhat on the 'edge' of it all, I managed to record much of it. The people, the parties, the never ending nights that turned into dawns, the rought and tumble, the highs and lows, the energy of doing it night after night for decades all added up to a rather interesting array of snaps, videos, stories.
So in my elder years i've been reviewing some of that stuff. sort of cleaning out the basement of my life's informal work one might say. Coming up with stuff that was never seen or seldom seen by others. For example, i've recorded much of the life of a wild and woolly 96 year old man, GERRY who was and still is to some degree the most active 'old timer' i've every known because his mind has always whirled from youth thru middle age into his elder and now his old age. His feet don't move him fast anymore by his mind moves his as fast as ever.
He's one of the few males I know who have walked thru manic depression without treatment/meds of any sort. His bipolar-ness was never diagnosed because in those days he was simply called 'moody' sometimes very moody. So moody that he sort of had to leave home in southern Saskatchewan and strike out on his own from coast to coast to coast in this country ending up in Toronto 60 years ago when he was almost 40 (yes today he's 967 alive and living on his own albeit with home care, a walker and almost blind. )
So over the past 25 years, Gerry, is one of the amazing people that i've been recording over those years and last year i started to collate the material i had on him and realized that this man was much to interesting, now that i lead a much more boring life than i ever have led, to let this material linger and turn into dust.
This meant that last Spring/Summer I started to get more footage on his present life and ideas to augment what i have to bring that archival stuff on his early days into the 21st century. After all in only 3 years he'll be a century old and one of those rare individuals, like Napoleon, Lincoln or Churchill, who have never been treated for an mental disorder we not call bi-polar.
This is one of several docs i'm now working on with footage shot over years on very interesting people who have rather remarkable stories to tell and lives to show ... at least I think so and my present dull life only reinforces that these individuals are really startlingly unique...
Peter Evanchuck
