{"id":2259,"date":"2014-08-28T19:04:20","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T19:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=2259"},"modified":"2014-08-28T19:59:31","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T19:59:31","slug":"two-of-my-mentors-died-august-25-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=2259","title":{"rendered":"Gerry Williams & William Greaves: Two of My Mentors died August 25, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both Gerry Williams, my father-mentor who did so much to launch my life in a new and better direction, and William Greaves, the great documentary filmmaker–the Dean of African American Documentary, died on the same day.<\/p>\n

\"Gerry<\/a>

Gerry Williams (1926-2014) outside his studio, Dunbarton New Hampshire<\/p><\/div>\n

\"William<\/a>

William Greaves (1926-2014) in action.<\/p><\/div>\n

Both GW and WG were born in 1926, and both had been in failing health for some time.\u00a0 I had known Bill Greaves since 1976 when I\u00a0 was working as a film editor for Amram Nowak: Bill had his offices next door.\u00a0 Inspired to write about Bill Greaves, I penned an essay on his life and films with Adam Knee–who had similar interests.\u00a0 Bill was very happy with the essay, which meant a great deal to both of us.\u00a0 I apprenticed to Gerry in a very modest fashion (more of an intern in today’s paralence) and ultimately made a documentary about him\u2013\u2013An American Potter<\/em> (1976).\u00a0 Some of that film was cut in Amram’s editing rooms on nights and weekends.\u00a0 Only in writing this post, do I realize some of these uncanny parallels.<\/p>\n

There is much that I could say about each one of them.\u00a0 I will try to come back to this post and do so, but for the moment I just want to note their passing.\u00a0 My admiration and gratitude was shared by many in both cases.<\/p>\n

Here is the original brochure for An American Potter:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both Gerry Williams, my father-mentor who did so much to launch my life in a new and better direction, and William Greaves, the great documentary filmmaker–the Dean of African American Documentary, died on the same day. Both GW and WG were born in 1926, and both had been in failing health for some time.\u00a0 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[219,41,43,218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2259"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259\/revisions\/2261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}