Most folk in inner-city Australiana have a Chopper Read story, and now the man is no longer with us, you’ll get to hear most of ’em. Here’s mine:
I was a guest at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in 2003, the year my film Lesbo-A-Go-Go screened. In addition I was roped into Emcee duties for the Opening and Closing Night ceremonies; MUFF Direktor Richard Wolstencroft, in his inimitable fashion, had made our old Uncle Chop-Chop head of the Jury.
Final night of the Festival, it was my duty to introduce Chopper to a packed Palace Cinema audience primarily of MUFF […]
The noonday Fort Ilocandia sun was blinding on the top of the sand dune. I squinted and adjusted the brim of my already-soaked safari helmet, looking to the rest of the Philippines like a wet, tubby Stanley Livingstone, as my co-producer Dani, in his Arab-looking scarf less a tattooed Sancho Panza than a Polish Lawrence of Arabia, snapped my photo on his iPhone. Big Jim Gaines, our six-foot-plus African-American-Filipino kumpadre, was at the bottom of the dune with hand against his beret surveying the cracked, dried mud and that summer’s vain attempt to make the desert come alive.
