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March 4, 2006
The Guy in the Back with the Glockenspiel
Before there was the a Dream Team per se, there was Kat with a dream and
Team Tommy. Team Tommy consisted of Thomas Hudson Reeve, Kat's husband
-- and I'm guessing plenty of tablets with 'to do' lists.
Tom first met Kat when she had left the commercial and fashion studios
of Chicago for New York. The year was 1981, and Tom remembers meeting
Kat: "She was getting her toehold on the isle of Manhattan in the
traditional way, working at a Restaurant."
He began helping Kat with photography for her paper greeting cards. At
first her photo greeting cards were all her own shots, but later she
developed card designs that featured photographs of herself as some
character, especially Shirley, and so at that point she enlisted Tom to
be her photographer.
Tom himself had studied theater, photography and filmmaking and began a
career in the film business where he has been for nearly 30 years. It's
been 30 years of learning everything he can, looking over everybody's
shoulder to see why they do what they do, preparing for that 'some day'
when he could make his own movies.
D. W. Griffith, the first great movie director, said "A painter needs
only a canvas and brush, but a motion picture needs an army", which is a
great quote, but I find Tom's account of film making more enlightening:
"As with any endeavor as complex as professional film production there
are hundreds of people for every one big name. Like a symphony
orchestra, a film crew has many artists, players and workers who all
contribute, but only in concert. If you are lucky enough to find a part
to play in big film production, you will also find that you must
specialize and dedicate yourself to that part. You will be smack-dab in
the middle of it all yet paradoxically distant from the dream of making
a movie that had started you down that garden path so many years
before. Mozart wrote it, Bernstein conducts, and the guy in the back
with the glockenspiel? That's me. But if the dream persists in you as
it has in me, you will never be completely satisfied to just settle in
to the specialty and leave it at that."
So as Tom works 60 hour weeks on the Big Show, learning all he can, Kat
works at building The Dream Team, "creating the opportunity for us to do
what you can't do by yourself: make a movie." And just because there is
a Dream Team, this doesn't mean that Team Tommy is without his 'to do'
lists -- Kat keeps crackin' the whip, err, making sure he's kept busy
writing scenes and dialogue. Tom's not complaining, "Even if it's a
'Concerto for spoons and kazoo' and not the full orchestra, it means a
lot to create something from your own thoughts for a change."
Tom's favorite project is always the last one he wrote, except at this
moment his favorite is one that he had little to do with: The Hip Hop
Happy Birthday card. This card is also a classic example of the team
effort or orchestra Tom described earlier.
"The card is the product of a give and take between Suzanne and Chris,
which then switched on Anders imagination with great results. Kat gave
some guidance, I may have nodded with approval once or twice, but those
guys inspired each other and the whole was greater than the sum of the
parts."
So here's to Team Tommy, the guy in the back with the glockenspiel,
assisted by the rest of The Dream Team, all working on concert to create
'Concerto for spoons and kazoo' -- sure to be shown at a theatre near
you in the not too distant future.
By DEANNA DAHLSAD
Posted by photocartoonist at March 4, 2006 7:27 PM