It Starts with a Call
It Starts with a Call
Caveat Emptor: Aim for Maybe
The Call
Like most freelancers, everything starts with a phone call.
In this case, I missed it, and listened later to the message blinking on my old answering machine.
(Strong British accent):
Hallo, is that Reuben? My name’s Valery, and Ian at Abel Cine Tech suggested I ring you about a project we’re meant to be shooting quite soon in Mauwai. Would you be so kind as to give me a ring when convenient?
She added her number and hung up.
“And so it starts,” I thought.
The siren call of distant lands. The magic of the unknown.
A quick call to Ian did not reveal much. He was vague except that, from the sound of their project, he felt I would be perfect, and that they could use a lot of help.
Caveat emptor.
Aim for Maybe
I have been making documentary films for more than thirty years, forty if we are being honest, and I still feel the travel junkie in me stir every time the phone rings. When I hear a call like this one, I know the odds are against it ever becoming real, so my trick is to aim for maybe.
For every six or seven calls I get, maybe one becomes a film – about the same odds a lion has of catching a gazelle. The difference is the lion never learns to lower its expectations.
I have learned that documentary filmmaking runs on equal parts faith and logistics, or, as an old Sufi saying goes, Trust in Allah, but tie your camel. You say yes to the unknown, and you keep your eyes on the gear.
Maui or Mali?
Because of the poor sound on my answering machine, and Valery’s thick British accent, I could not tell if she had said M-a-u-i or M-a-l-i.
Not that I knew anything about the project and not that I exactly let myself indulge in wishful thinking but had I so indulged, I would have imagined a lush green place like Hawaii, feeling that I deserved to treat myself to an easy project, having recently come off a difficult film in Mexico for the Discovery Channel. That film was challenging in many ways, a lot of hard work and like a lot of projects that start out sounding rich and potentially rewarding, it was ultimately unsatisfying. I could use a break in some place where we could swim in the ocean in the morning before starting work, coverse with English-speaking locals and be able to choose our preferred kind of coffee.
I had been to Maui once before for an HBO film and remembered its winding roads and the safe, if boring, food.
But then I started warming to the idea of Mali. I had never been there, and in my imagination, it was the complete opposite of Hawaii: heat, dust, strange rhythms, a language I did not speak, and food I guessed would consist mostly of rice. Behind door number two, men in robes on camels. You know – just my kind of film.
Before returning the call, I had already tilted toward the version of “Mauwai” with dust, desert, and dromedaries.
The Split Screen
I know full well, and never stop appreciating, that having a choice between two such exotic places is itself a blessing. To be paid to do what I love in strange corners of the world, heat and chaos notwithstanding, is not a bad way to live.
Still, in my mind’s split screen, Maui’s rolling waves and palm trees played opposite a scraggly dog sleeping on a treeless, dusty road. My heart wanted Maui. My instincts told me Mali.
And when I learned it was indeed Mali, I immediately felt a flicker of buyer’s remorse. The kind you get right after saying yes to an adventure you know will change you, though not necessarily for the better.
The Meeting
A few days after the aforementioned message on my answering machine, I found myself sitting in a café discussing the project in person with the filmmakers.
It was late morning. We ordered cappuccinos. I listened.
I am not great at describing appearances, and even worse at guessing ages, but I can safely say that both these women appeared to be in their forties. Neither struck me as the well-pampered, lean and mean manic Hollywood producer type. They seemed nice, genuinely so, if a little untested.
Holly, the director, was the shorter of the two, with a wide, unbroken smile that looked like it had been with her since childhood. Valery, the British-accented producer who had left the message, was sturdier, more grounded. They had the closeness of longtime friends or perhaps lovers. Time would tell.
What mattered most was that they had enthusiasm, lots of it.
I mostly stayed quiet, sipping coffee, jotting notes, letting their story unspool. It sounded like something lifted from a 1930s adventure novel.
The Story They Wanted to Tell
Journal
But the manuscripts were in grave danger. Scattered across Malí and neighboring countries, they were hidden
in closets, buried in cellars, and tucked behind mud-brick walls. Some were being quietly sold off, others intentionally destroyed before the world could ever see them. Exposed to the desert’s heat and drifting sands, they were slowly disintegrating, even as those who treasured them risked everything to protect ideas that others feared.
As the Holly and Valery spoke, I could already see the film in my mind: scholars in flowing robes and turbans, bent over low wooden tables, writing by candlelight in leather-bound books. Camels tied outside under a harvest moon, their throaty grunts drifting into the night.
Valery added, “This was all happening back in the day when Timbuktu was considered to be the Athens of Africa.”
They wanted to make a feature-length documentary, one that could play in movie theaters. Lofty, but possible.
And I will admit it, I was hooked.
Trust and the Unknown
For me, this project was simultaneously sounding better and worse. On the one hand, these gals were unwinding an amazing tale, but they were coming across as a little gullible at the same time with a few splashes of New Age thinking thrown in.
So, nothing’s perfect.
In all likelihood, their “guardian angel” Issa might be selling them a bill of goods. Maybe he was using them somehow to further his own ends yet to be determined.
It didn’t really matter.
Secret, ancient manuscripts? About to perish in the desert? Under threat from enemies? Tuaregs in robes on camels? The wisdom of the ages? Are you kidding me? I was ready to sign.
Looking back, I can see that first meeting as a small test of faith, how much to trust, how much to prepare. The film that followed would challenge both.
For now, I was doing what I have done my whole career: answering the call, tightening the straps, and hoping my camel was tied.