In 1980 I was still working at Saint Francis Hospital 4-East, a locked adult psychiatric unit in San Francisco. One of the nurses I worked with was named Judith and she knew about my interest in film making. She was dating a filmmaker named Jerry Stein. She told me about a movie that he was making about Reggae. He had shot a lot of sixteen millimeter film in Jamaica and was preparing to edit it. I volunteered to help with the caveat that I would get a screen credit.

When I arrived at the editing suite, there were pieces of film hanging everywhere. My job was to take all these pieces of film and edit them together physically with tape for that purpose. I would trim the end of one piece of film and butt it up next to the next piece and then take them together. It was tedious but I enjoyed the process as I was always interested in anything having to do with film making, photography and later video. It was great experience and I appreciated the opportunity to participate in putting the movie together. I did get my credit but misspelled!

The movie had it’s premiere at The Castro theater and Milton and I attended. It was much fun.

Judith and Jerry were very into the whole reggae scene and were always listening to reggae when I was with them. I never really got into it to that level. Occasionally I have heard reggae songs that I like but have never been to a reggae concert and don’t follow reggae music.

After the film project was finished, I only saw Jerry a couple of times while he was still with Judith. Over the years I lost contact with Judith as well. The last I heard, she had moved to Oregon.