In one way or another, our creative work is informed by the life we live outside the office. Here are a few real-life experiences that continue to influence me as a creative.
Notre Dame Boxing
The “Bengal Bouts” is the annual university-wide boxing tournament for the 100+ members of the Notre Dame Boxing Club. Knute Rockne started the club in 1920 to keep his football players in shape. Not every Bengal Bouts athlete is a skilled boxer, but every one is a fighter; the training is brutal and it takes a lot of heart to step into the ring in front of a few thousand classmates and go toe-to-toe with a guy who’s trying to take your head off. I lost in the semi-finals of my weight class to a guy who went on to fight in the Golden Gloves tournament in his hometown of Chicago.
Private Investigator
My dad was a licensed P.I. and I worked with him for a few years, primarily locating people who didn’t want to be found and conducting video surveillance of insurance plaintiffs. Back then, when I told people what I did for a living they would invariably reference Tom Selleck’s TV character, Magnum, P.I. Yeah, it was just like that. Except that I worked in Detroit, not Hawaii. And drove a Ford Taurus, not a Ferrari. And never once got the beautiful woman at the end of a case.
Journalist
Writing for Michigan’s largest daily newspaper, the Detroit Free Press, I met an awful lot of interesting people, including musical artists Mavis Staples and Michael Stipe, writers Elmore Leonard and Jim Harrison, and unusual characters such as Rodriguez, the subject of the film, “Searching for Sugar Man.” I got interview requests from around the globe after breaking the story that Jack and Meg White of The White Stripes were not brother and sister, but former husband and wife. And I learned that every one of us, without exception, has an interesting story – it just takes some hard work to uncover it and a little bit of skill to tell it.
Kayaking the Zambezi
Long ago, before I had a wife and two sons, I was part of an 8-man expedition that set out to be the first to kayak the entire 1,600-mile Zambezi River, from source to sea. The expedition leader was a Zimbabwean river guide who lost an arm to a hippo attack on the Zambezi two years earlier. The expedition received a lot of media attention due to the dangers we faced (Class V whitewater rapids, crocodiles, land mines, etc.) and the fact that we raised more than $100,000 to purchase prosthetic limbs for African land mine victims.
Documentary filmmaking
I’m the co-producer of an in-production film about Michigan-born author, poet and literary bad boy, Jim Harrison. Revered by critics, Harrison is largely unknown to mainstream lit fans, though most everybody is familiar with the movie based on his book, “Legends of the Fall.” The film is scheduled to be completed in 2023.