Jim Bradley memorial to Tom Humphrey 10/10/09

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From: Jim Bradley <xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:41:42 -0400
To: "Bradley, James"
Conversation: TOM
Subject: TOM

Lights up on audio – opening track from “Apocalypse Now” soundtrack – The Doors, “The End.”

Tom liked The Doors. He admitted that to me once.

Tom Humphrey. TH. Tom. Coach. My teacher. My mentor. My friend. He was Mr. Humphrey for the first 3 years I knew him. In the crowd I hung out with in high school, it was a rite of passage when you could call him Tom. It is the middle of the night here in NY and thanks to Carmen I have just finished watching the 2 plus hour North Carolina memorial video on the web. I feel a little lost. Lonely. Sad. Mad. All of it...

I make my living as a director now. And Tom was there at the beginning of it all; he opened the door to this world of creativity and helped ignite this passion for bringing ideas to life that still singes the inside of my skull -- at times it literally hurts my head. First at Newark High School in 1974 and then at Weathervane Playhouse and later at Millbrook Playhouse and finally in San Diego. The thing I remember most about Tom's work was his uncanny sense of setting the table. Preshows. Music to set the tone. Establishing the spine from the first sound/light/set cue. I find I use that sensibility every day. It all has to connect to your thesis.

I have lived in New York for the last 20 years and remember when my desire to be here began. And again Tom was there. August, 1979. He and I spent a whirlwind few days together running through museums and seeing shows. And in those few days my life unmistakably changed. First, "Sweeney Todd" at the Uris, to this day the most unforgettable evening spent in a theatre audience (talk about your preshow!). And the next day my introduction to 70MM film, my first movie (front row, rear section) at the Ziegfeld, and the first afternoon matinee of "Apocalypse Now" (they handed out a program with the credits as there were no opening or closing titles for the 70MM version of the film). From the helicopter pan of the theater in the dark that opens the movie to the final sound of the rains falling at the end, my little brain got bigger and bigger. Don't remember what time the show was but I remember exiting the theater with Tom afterwards and sitting in the Plaza just outside the Ziegfeld in the bright sunlight, feeling numb and a little woozy. It was around this time I had the dawning realization that movies -- and not theatre -- was what I wanted to do with my life. It was strange to be there with Tom, my theater mentor as it slowly dawned on me that his world -- the theatre -- was not my future. But somehow it made sense that he was beside me at that exact moment. We talked about the movie for hours.

And soon after we hopped in Tom's piece of shit yellow car (what the hell WAS that thing anyway?) and drove like a bat out of hell from NY to San Diego. I think it was 70 or 80 something hours that we were in that car together eating, sleeping, singing, talking -- no hotel rooms -- just drive, switch seats, sleep, switch seats, drive. We did pull off into a parking lot somewhere in Kansas but neither of us got out of the car, just slept in our seats ("Never get out of the boat, absolutely god damn right...") And then, bleary eyed, we emerge from our smelly cocoon and we’re in Las Vegas -- Tom liked Vegas -- so that he could feed his gambling Jones. It was Labor Day and the fucking Telethon was going on and there were people in wheelchairs and metal crutches EVERYWHERE collecting money for Jerry's kids – (“What the World Needs NOW, is LOVE, SWEET LOVE...”). And me, poor college student that I was, stumbling around Las Vegas, broke, bleary, dirty -- freaking because I don't gamble and because it was/is really REALLY weird in Vegas, even during a "regular" day. And finally I can't stand the constant begging for "the kids" and I step back into Circus Circus and Tom is just finishing up, losing the last of his money, cigarette dangling from his lips, drinking and pokering and as happy as can be, truly like a pig is shit, IN HIS ELEMENT...

Finally we get the fuck out of there and march on to the sea, Cardiff by the Sea. And it was my first time in California. And I would move there when I graduated from college in 2 years. And of course Tom had a hand in it…

I am mad that you didn't take care of yourself. That you continued to run the redlights through all the warnings signs for all those last years until it was too late. I am sad that I didn't respond to the last email from you because I didn't know what to say and just kept putting it off until I had the time to say it. I am sad that you never got that thing you were after in your life (did you?). I am deeply sad that I won't get to see you again. I am sorry that the whole world didn't know you and mourn along with us at your passing.

But most of all, I am forever glad to have known you. You changed my life.

Love forever, Jimmy.

FADE OUT.

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