Monday, September 22, 2003

Froggish Behavior

A member of a mailing list for Russian movie camera fans describes the behavior of the
"bereaved" relatives of a deceased French expatriate cinematographer:

I was looking through the material left over
after the estate of a French DP had been (for
want of a better word) plundered by his family.

In the "trash" pile there were some French "Cine
Techique Reguard" (spelling may be off for the
reasons later listed)-- and in one of them was
the article and picture about the 16mm gate and
magazine. I asked if I could have the magazines
since they were in the trash pile, and they were
ripped out of my hands. After a few moments of
angry discussion the family switched back from
French to English to inform me that I was no longer
welcome, please leave, and keep my hands off of
everything as I left.

He had not been on speaking terms with the rest
of the family, and had moved to the US twenty five
or thirty years ago. Within hours of his death in
Africa (on a shoot) the family had hired someone to
make sure his ex-wife did not "get away" with
anything, and within a month had flown over, packed
up almost everything and was preparing it to go back
to France,

In the back yard was a large pile of "trash" that
they were planning to burn before they found out
that we had a no-burn because of air quality order
in effect. (And they took that personally, too.)
After I asked about the magazines they picked up
the trash, putting it into bags.

And then they have the bloody nerve to call us barbaric.

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