Brillig Commercial Sample Reel

At 18, on a student ship to Rotterdam (where my grandmother embarked for a new land in 1905) I met a man making a promotional film for European student tours.  For some reason I told him I was also a filmmaker.  I rode my bicycle to Paris -- a bearded, daring young man armed with only knapsack and guitar.  Shipmates I met by chance said my friend had hepatitis.  A light flashed.  Without hesitation I went to the American Hospital and talked him into allowing me to make his film.  I went to a camera shop to learn how to operate the Bolex and light meter.  That summer, because I was a "working cameraman," UNESCO hired me to shoot a documentary in the south of France.  Ten years later the advertising genius, Carl Ally, for my second commercial, asked me to make a sound stage abstraction of “little old ladies on motorcycles.”  In order to shoot my version I rode backwards on a motorcycle.