It’s a lazy Saskatchewan summer day. Through patio doors long and tall, a morning sun bathes. Three teenage boys. George Basu, Dave Gaffney and Chris Vermeulen are laying around at the Basu Residence staring at a console TV. It’s a weekday ‘cause Wheel of Fortune is on. The world, the whole world is right outside our door ripe and fresh like a juicy fuzzy peach but who cares? We’re busy sinking into the corners and crevasses of these A-1 leather couches, our socks half off Deedle-Dumpling-style and scratching our teenage balls. We’re passing around a bag from a box of Old Dutch chips and barking out wrong answers to puzzle solutions on Wheel of Fortune. It’s around 10AM. There’s not not a parent or figure of authority in sight, and there won’t be for some time. George’s Father is a cardiologist and his Mom is a psychiatrist, so not a lotta “working from home” going on. George’s older Bob brother saunters through the throw pillows and chip shrapnel. He’s a Senior at Campbell, and at least to Dave and I, he is the hero of our young lives. Always getting laid, drives a cool car, plays the drums and has abs. An aside here: I have a series of tales I’d love to write about my misdirected worship of this teenage dirtbag. He walks into the midst of us with a peeled banana. Takes a bite, chews and surveys the scene. “You guys are such fucking loooooosers” he whispers incredulously. George rolls his eyes, while Dave and I both think, in unison I’m sure, “You’re absolutely right, Bob.” And meaning it. Bob heads back upstairs. There goes my hero. My attention is back to the TV.

One contestant picks a vowel, Vanna spins the letter and host of hosts Pat Sajak intones, “E… The infamous ‘E’”. We laughed. WTF is that supposed to mean? Didn’t matter that we didn’t know. We kept saying that all morning. E! THE INFAMOUS E! Repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. By noon, it sounded for all the world like the name some Bond villain. By 2pm we had a rudimentary storyline down, wardrobe sorted and George’s dad’s shoulder mount JVC camcorder out. For the next three days we would be making a movie called “Indiana Jones and The Infamous E”. 

The “Infamous E” was a some faceless supervillan no doubt bent on global domination. The film would really just shots of us jumping off of roofs, skateboarding and careening through the streets on the hood of Kirby Walkers car. 

Indiana was played by Dave in a fedora with, I think, a length of rope or a black extension cord for a whip. Yours truly played Indy’s assistant, Carlos. With zero idea of how to make a movie and even less of an idea how to edit VHS footage in 1986, we shot it linear. What I mean by that is, act 1 act 2 act 3 and all of the scenes within those acts had to be shot in the order they appeared in our script, which appeared not on paper but only in our collective teenage minds. We had no choice. OK ROOF SHOT. JUMP! OK NOW RUNNING PAST THE CAR. OH WAIT THE ROOF SHOT I WASN’T RECORDING. BACK UP TO THE ROOF. It really was ham-handed by today’s standards. We didn’t miss these new technologies or lament their absence because they didn’t exist. Hell, we were just elated to have a camera to use. Over the course of the next three days, this shooting format inevitably led to continuity issues and errors. Weather changes, dentist appointments, my shirt from day 1 in the wash on day 3. We lost Dave’s fedora somewhere too. There was also my character, Carlos, getting killed off. Think Alfred Molina in “Raiders”. I was never gonna be around for long, so this wasn’t gonna be a problem… Then Dave’s MOM wouldn’t let him jump off the roof! Can you believe that shit?!? Look, I have no ill will here. Beth KNEW we were rarely supervised over there (that’s why it was the place to be). Their house was right across the street from George’s and all she’d need to do from time to time is look out her front window and see one of us hanging on to the roof of Kirby’s car at 35km to know that it could get dangerous. She drew the line at her boy free-falling into the Basu’s backyard rock garden. And so, we had to resurrect Carlos. No problem. There would be no practical or fancy special effects required (or available, on this budget). We simply had my character appear from around a corner. Dave as Indy yelled (for some reason) with a Spanish accent—“CARLOS! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!” 

That utterance has echoed and rattled around inside my skull since Day 4 of shooting. Now, we didn’t actually shoot anything on Day 4.  We just sat around and watched that scene five thousand times. We laughed at its absurdity. We laughed that we thought we’d get away with it when the final film screened in Cannes. We laughed because we didn’t know what we were doing. We laughed because we were laying tangled up on a couch in a basement, be-kinding-and-rewinding a 5 second scene from almost 90 mins of footage. We laughed because we were teenage boys with the whole world right outside our door ripe and fresh like a juicy fuzzy peach.

My good friend David is gone and I miss him dearly.  Whenever I don’t hear from someone I care about for a few days… If I don’t see ‘em on social media and if noone else has heard from ‘em… When I finally DO get back in touch with them, blood still warm etc etc… I’ll whisper, bellow or text, “CARLOS! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!”