I took time off from Columbia in 1980 to help Ken write proposals for The Brooklyn Bridge and continued to get more involved. I began to see what he did with the footage he was gathering, to see how powerful it can be to splice two pieces of film together. I witnessed his extraordinary attention to detail, his fierceness of purpose, his enormous intellectual and emotional capacity. What luck for me that I could turn to my own brother at precisely the time I was looking for a vocation. I've been wearied by it, I've been worn to the bone by it, but I've never been tired of it.
Film is so tricky, so demanding, so much harder than people think it is.
Yet, when it works, film is so powerful, so deeply engaging. It has never occurred to me that I will ever stop doing it. Jay Kaplan is Editor of culturefront and Executive Director of the New York Council for the Humanities.