This first picture is of a teacher and friend who died the day before yesterday. I took it two weeks ago. Behind him a poster for The 400 Blows. Antoine Doinel, a character, he always saw himself in. (And wrote a book about.) I’m not sure I’d be a filmmaker if it weren’t for Ted Walch. I will never forget working on a play my senior year. I think it was our third play where I was his assistant. After rehearsal one day I told him I thought the last act was broken. He asked me why. I told him why. He said, “Tomorrow I won’t come to rehearsal. Fix it.” I showed up to rehearsal alone for the first time. We did our four (three?) hour rehearsal. We fixed the issues I saw, the actors listened. (I still remember my surprise that they did listen, it was no small act of grace from a group of teenagers.) Walch came in at the end of the day and we ran through it. I only saw my mistakes and expected to be told about them. (He was no stranger to honest feedback.) In front of everyone he said, “I have one big note.” Then he stood up and moved the rotary phone from stage left to stage right. “That’ll open up the blocking.” We finished the day. I waited for the hard feedback to arrive. “Good work.” The changes stayed. More than a decade later I’m surprised by how similar what I do now, is to what I did during that first after school rehearsal. His belief that I could do it, (and the belief of the group of children (I was one too) who listened that day), is part of why I still do it. I’ve been in that situation hundreds (thousands?) of times since then. But that was the first and without it, I’m not sure there would have been a second. Love you Walch. (The second photo is us, in Paris, maybe 2016? He’d just insisted on ironing my shirt before we went to dinner.) (The third is the seniors from that cast and crew. I wish I had a picture of the full gang but I’ve lost that to time.) (The last is a note he wrote me on an early draft of the book.)