Don't make that right hand turn...

Winning an Emmy Award is very special as accolades go. For American television, it’s the Oscar. I have been fortunate to be on the first team for 10 documentary programs that received Emmy consideration and actually won several times.Our friends seem to enjoy it as much as we do.

Producer/Director Laszlo Pal has been my muse in most of these ventures.  We have spent countless hours ruminating over pictures, voices and music, trying to tell the story in just the right way.  When we do it right, we make people laugh and we make them cry. (Jane is Laszlo’s ultimate test for tears and for embarrassment…a bare bum or an f-bomb will set her off in an instant.) Making people understand what happened in a particular situation and why is truly an art.  I’ve learned from the best.

Last weekend’s Emmy Awards show brought back memories of the year that Laszlo and I decided we would actually attend the ceremony in LA. One of our solo sailing stories was nominated. We were in the “Network Specials” category, along with a couple of other documentaries and the likes of the New Year’s Rose Parade and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day celebration. Could we win? Hell, we were nominated!  Let’s go.

We got to LALA in time to have a little Hollywood fun, getting our palms read on Venice Beach (nothing but good news there) and having a real Jewish deli experience at Nate and Al’s. To my back at the booth was John Lithgow, who was presenting and not nominated for anything.  He overheard us talking about our project and as he left, he stopped to say he’d use whatever influence he had to see that we would win. (That’s called “Hollywood BS” in  most circles, but it felt good at the time.)

After some primping, we tuxed up and headed for the gala.  The budget got stretched a bit to make the trip so I made sure we had an economy car for all the freeway back and forth.  A Ford Fiesta seemed a lot cooler on the autobahn in Germany but it fit the bill for getting us around. As we approached the entrance, we easily slid into the line of towne cars and limos heading toward the entrance.

It’s here that I have to confess, out of an otherwise spectacular weekend, I made a big mistake. I saw the Red Carpet coming but somewhere in the back of my mind I thought, “We can walk down the carpet later, just not after this huge land yacht in front of us empties its passengers and Joan Rivers is faced with the Fiesta.” So I made the abrupt right hand turn into “Self-Parking”.

 

The sound that came out of the mouths of Jane and my cohorts was similar to that of the crowd in Mudville when Mighty Casey struck out.  “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” Clearly, the Red Carpet was more important than the red car we were in. Now my only hope to save the evening was to win the Emmy.

Drinks around the pool and Hollywood chitchat ensued. Finally, we moved inside to our table.  Oprah was on one side of us. The Macy’s gang and Ellen flanked us at the other two adjacent tables.  There was no pressure.  We were there and deservedly so, win or lose.  They flashed the category and then the nominees on the big screen. It was Leeza Gibbons who read our name and we were awestruck. We’d won and even Oprah congratulated us. Laszlo and I high-fived all the way to the photo session.

Several more stops were made that evening and each time we placed the Emmy in the middle of the table, the drinks were free. As we drove out of the parking lot, I had a small moment of redemption when I shook the Emmy in the attendant’s face and he waved us on through with no charge. We even got free hot dogs at Pink’s.

Say what you will about awards and their true value, it still feels great to win. We celebrated on the beach near the Santa Monica Pier the next day with Class A seats for the latest Cirque du Soleil show in the Big Yellow and Blue tent. What a time.  I highly recommend it for a good solid rush. But remember one thing…just don’t make that right hand turn.

Feelings 9/11

This morning was actually not much different than any other workday lately. Up early and off to the health club. When I arrived someone had turned on MSNBC and they were re-running the entire minute-by-minute coverage of September 11, 2001. Smoke was billowing from the World Trade Center tower after the first plane had struck. I had to sit down to watch. We were so innocent then. I couldn't believe how cautious the television reporters were being before making any statement about the incident. They were very hesitant to even call it a terrorist attack.

Later, an Army officer ran by a TV crew saying that a bomb had exploded on the heliport at the Pentagon. As we now know, only too well, it was the crash of another commercial airliner into the building exactly where Jane’s father’s Civil Defense office had been years before. Mobile phones were antiques. Social media didn't exist and there were no photos from iPads, cell phones or digital cameras to post on Pinterest.  There wasn't even a Pinterest, 12 years ago.

On September 11, 2001, Jane and I were in Sun Valley, Idaho. Just getting up for another beautiful day of hiking, fly-fishing and eating delicious fresh trout and lamb shanks.  However,the day turned very dark as the tragedy unfolded. I was glued to a phone and an ancient laptop following every new twist from the FBI and PD regarding my client the Space Needle as a possible target. It was exhausting. I go to the mountains for solace and that day I needed the mountains more than ever.  When Jane and I finally tore ourselves away from the phones and computers and television, we took a hike to get away. It had a different meaning that day and probably will forever more.

I try constantly to compare 9/11 to December 7, 1941. Ultimately, I feel like our parents were confronted with a problem they could actually solve. A war they could win. We’re not in that position and the entire world is wearing a mask that we can’t really see behind (take Syria and Russia, please). We truly have met the enemy and the enemy is us. Our world has not much more than a forced smile on its face today. Hope is our only ally.

A week after the 9/11 attacks, I wrote the words that follow.  There were no blogs then or twitter posts. I've always kept a journal and this was an entry that I sent to my close friends via email and hard copy. I found it buried in something called a pst.file that my friend Mark Clarke told me was the only way to really preserve this kind of document in those days. My thoughts are pretty much the same now but I know for certain that I am a very different person. Love those close to you, with all your heart. We’re in this together.

Dan Mc

Feelings

September 18, 2001

It's been a week since we experienced the horror of war closer to home than any of us could ever imagine within the borders of America.  Remember those emotions...disbelief, shock, fear, sorrow, anger and exhaustion. Just about in that order.  Hold those feelings of the past week close inside you because the world as we have known it in this country will never be the same again.

I was raised in a military family.  My father, a career Army officer, had two wars to fight first-hand--real wars with an evil enemy that we could see.  Then came my war.  It has taken us 25 years to even call Vietnam a war but it too was fought on foreign soil against an ideological enemy that was only sometimes hard to identify.  Then for the next generation came the Gulf War...quick, political and technical.  I still remember seeing the video from missiles that went right down smokestacks on factories before our eyes.

All these wars were fought by armies, in other countries.  Never were we concerned that they would come here to fight us.  Even the tragedy of Pearl Harbor pales in the face of this atrocity. There were no armies.   There were no rules…only innocent people who got up in the morning on September 11 and went to work in the normal way. One journalist suggested that this attack could even have been so sinister as to use the media coverage to have maximum terrorizing effect...use the first plane to get out the camera crews and then bring in the next one for us all to watch in horror on live television as it crashed into the second tower...if that is true, what could be more diabolical.

Last Tuesday frightened me.  And my father, the soldier, the D-Day survivor, always told me that if you weren't frightened by the enemy then you could never defeat them.  I will never forget that feeling.  But already the emotions are subsiding.  It's just been a week and now the jokes are starting to circulate.  We're already putting the incident in the back of our minds and getting back to work.

The problem is no longer in another country.  The face of the enemy is no longer clear.  In the world today, we are paying the ultimate price of having a free and open society.  I want things to be the way they were and I'm sure you do as well.  But even if we do find the perpetrators of this heinous act and punish them, there will be more to come.

My catharsis is almost over and I'm sending this because, in this business, it is very hard to draw the line between work and life.  All of you are part of my life that I care about.  Not many of us in this young business environment have had to fight a war. So for the sake of family and friends, we cannot afford to suppress the emotions of last week.  As our government searches for a way to bring peace back in our lives, we must not take anything for granted.  We must be careful.  My sincere hope is that we never experience the emotions and the horror of war from last week again, but the most important thing is that we don't forget them.  Our lives will never be the same but our hearts and minds are still rooted in the strong beliefs of personal freedom.  We will triumph over evil, no matter how long it takes.

For your consideration,

Dan Mc