The Black Dog — The Brotherhood of Awesome

The black dog.

OR WITNESSING A GROWN MAN battling depression
BARE HIS SOUL.

“Watching Kurt gently cradle the doll given to him at an early age by his mother was like watching him handle, with kid gloves, a miniature porcelain version of himself. It didn’t take much coaxing or direction. He picked up the tiny prop and was immediately transported to that raw, emotional place. It was beautiful.”

Shortly before we left Las Vegas in 2015 for a bucolic suburb of Houston, a couple of talented friends and I began working on a project. Like many creative pursuits, it was small and had no specific purpose or timeline. Just three creative heads coming together to try to make something interesting. My friend Kurt (Rauf), a talented DP (cinematographer, in layman’s terms) was in a bit of a rut. Work was slow. He was rapidly falling behind on the digital curve. Where he once was flush with jobs, phone ringing off the hook, he now found himself more often than not sitting by idly and waiting for the phone to ring. Once the go-to old-school lighting guy, he now would lose jobs to “kids” right out of school—some maybe still in school—with far less understanding of lighting but a shiny new laptop packed to the gills with programs, or a 5D Mark III, or a new drone that they barely new how to get off the ground. They could achieve what he could in less time, for less money, or so was the belief. Generally, way more sizzle than steak but, at the time, it’s what the audience wanted and the value he brought to the table as a seasoned pro was easily dismissed. Moreover, the intimidation factor for him that came with having to learn a new skill set became another barrier to entry. Even were he all about it, an annual subscription to Creative Cloud isn’t cheap. Bottom line? He was in an unfamiliar and lonely place.

We hadn’t known each other all that long. We’d worked on one or two small projects together with friends, but our relationship was still young. Yet, for some reason, he trusted me enough to let me into his world. With all of this going on, struggling to generate leads and find some way to reinvent himself, he confided in me that he was battling depression and had been doing so for several years. He’d recently lost his dog—his best friend of many years—and, historically, it was loss of family members that had triggered the onset of the depression or what he also referred to as “going black.”

It seemed he just needed to tell somebody. He wanted to get out from under the thumb of the condition that had often kept him emotionally paralyzed, drowning in quicksand, feet encased in blocks of cement. Where many find it hard to express what they’re experiencing for fear of being judged and with the stigmas attached to mental illness, Kurt had finally arrived at a place where he wanted to put it out there in order to free himself and move forward.

“It’s rare that we get to see people—especially men—at their most vulnerable. This creative endeavor was a learning process for all of us and reminder of why we should let our guards down and let friends in far more often than we do.”

At the time, I was running a small gallery and always looking for ways to engage new artists or springboard creative veterans back into the mix. Kurt showed me a bunch of sketches that he’d completed or half-completed over the years while on set or in between gigs. He had a fun, loose style and a twisted, often self-deprecating, sense of humor. I enjoyed his drawings and we talked about him doing a show. We also discussed him shooting still photography. That had been his background before turning to film. Yet, over the years, even with a Canon 7D in his arsenal, on his least black days, he still found it hard to find the motivation to pick up the camera. We’d meet for coffee. “The best way to get better at shooting is to simply start shooting,” I’d say, just hoping to light a spark. In the moment, I’d see wonder in his eyes. Then we’d part ways and, when I’d check in with him later in the week, he would have slipped back into that comfortable corner of doubt.

So, we engaged my friend Lucky Wenzel, a gifted and wildly prolific photographer. Being ever mindful of Kurt’s privacy and feelings, I made sure that he was good to let other people in, and he was. Though Kurt had spent many years to this point lighting sets and other talent, he himself had never been in front of the camera for a still shoot. So, this was a first.

Here are the images that came of that shoot. Below that are images from Kurt’s sketch book. If you’d like to listen to the audio from our conversation, I recommend it. Few men that I’ve ever known explore their own depths and share their heart in the way Kurt did that day. If nothing more, it’s an affirmation that, whatever we’re going through, we’re not alone.