Don't Be Too Late

On not leaving it too late.

By the time you read this maybe normal service will have resumed. The rain will be horizontal, the wind will be howling (I’m in Wellington, remember) and the wet-weather gear will be drying over the towel rail of the motel room ready for another early morning start on whatever set you find yourself working on.

But for now, today, the sun is still shining and this endless, foreign, Wellington late summer seems to want to hang around for at least another couple of days.

You could almost forget that it is June, well past Autumn and into the guts of the year.

Except that, these unseasonable blue skies are fooling no one. Winter is a cruel season. And 2016 has already been a cruel year. I don’t know if I know anyone this year who hasn’t been visited and touched by a death that has hurt them very close to their heart. Whether it’s part of the disastrous roll-call of international icons who have gone down too early, or someone far closer to our actual, real, lives.

I didn’t know Geoff ‘Rat’ Jamieson well at all really. I’ve shared a few film sets and lunch tables with him, but I won’t presume to eulogise him. There are hundreds of people in the industry who knew him properly, as a friend, as a workmate and as a person. I’m glad – very glad – that a few of those people have come forward to put a piece together for this magazine. Reading their words, I felt that I’d got to know a bloody good man a little, but too late.

And that, I guess, is the point of this ramble. Don’t be too late.

Don’t be too late to slow down, to get to know someone, to help someone out. Don’t be too late to take notice of your health, to react to an unsafe situation, to speak up about the stuff that matters.

We pride ourselves in this business – maybe masochistically – on how we can get up in the middle of the night to drive to the middle of nowhere in time for a 4am call time, and never be a minute late, year in and year out.

And yet, when it comes to the stuff that matters – our friendships, our workmate’s safety, our own health and well-being, sometimes we sit on our hands and procrastinate until it’s too late.

I reckon, if it needs doing, or saying, or fixing, then now’s the time. Winter is here, and second chances are in short supply.

Love your work,

Graeme Tuckett, editor editor@nztecho.com