It’s all about STORY.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be paid to film, to edit, to write and work in the business of visually communicating — in newsrooms, documentaries, commercials and corporate gigs. My business cards had more slashes than Guns and Roses. Director-slash-DP, producer-slash director. Writer-slash-director.

I love technology and cameras, which I now realize is a blessing as well as a curse. For years I would visit every NAB, every industry trade show and be enthralled at every announcement of bigger and better, higher resolution this and more cinematic that. ‘Check this out, it looks like film. Look at that camera, look at those lights and microphones.’ Too many thoughts, too much stuff going on. After 3 or 4 days of walking through literally square miles of bigger and better, I would always have this one thought. It’s all about story.

Isn’t that what the prophet Robert Rodriguez showed us? One could, with a small budget and several trips to Radio Shack and Home Depot, make a movie that gets the attention of the film world. Then you’ll have the resources and clout to tell your next story on a bigger and better and higher level. Same thing with the producers of the Blair Witch Project. Everyone talks about the shabby film cameras, the cheap video cameras and the bare bones budget. Few filmmakers talk about the truly revolutionary ideas that spawned these movies. And yet these movies started with an idea and someone bold enough and disciplined enough to write it down.

Most will forgive the grainy and the blurry, but we, as an audience, cannot find the grace to forgive a filmmaker who doesn’t have a good story, or doesn’t tell his story well. Whenever you get filmmakers together in one room, there’s a lot of geek-speak about cameras, filters, dollies, cranes and other equipment and processes. And I’m right there. That’s my language, too. Pen and paper isn’t nearly as sexy to talk about at as a camera or lenses. There’s not much fun you can have discussing Final Draft. But in the end I walk away and remind myself, it’s all about story. It’s about words on a paper.

Perhaps the next bunch of cards I make should just say

Dean Krueger / Storyteller

So there it is. I’m trying to remove the slashes in my life. I’m a storyteller at heart. I’m passionate about creating stories and pictures that move you.

I hope to hear your story one day.

I know that this is not goodbye

Dean and Dean

It was the morning of June 17, 2010. I awoke in a downtown Chicago hotel room and was preparing for a transatlantic flight to Uganda to film a TV show and grabbed my phone. Several Facebook messages were referencing my friend Dean Mack and I could feel it coming. Like many of our mutual friends, we had heard the reports from the doctor, we had seen the photos on Facebook. It was only a matter of time.  When I read the status update from his family, my heart sank. My friend Dean had died. He had fought cancer beating it three times before it came back and took his life.

It hurts to say goodbye to someone so close. Later in the day I was sitting in a window seat on my flight remembering some of our times together. Some of the best memories I own are ones with Dean in them. He had a passionate love for life, his enjoyment of simple things like strong coffee sweetened with honey, or sitting over the massive amount of food that is the teriyaki plate at the Teri Cafe in Oceanside, California. I remember watching him catch a wave one Sunday afternoon in Encinitas, making it look so easy to someone like me who grew up in states that didn’t have waves and surfboards.

Dean had this outrageous, even infectious laugh. As I thought about this I also remember he didn’t let anything get in the way of a good laugh, even if it was a mouth full of food. He’d eat a forkful of chicken tikka masala one moment, and the next he’d look at you with his orange mouth wide open laughing as carefree as if he hadn’t been eating. I would close my eyes, shake my head and wince a smile.  I also recall the way his eyes looked when he prayed. He always prayed like God was sitting right there in the room with us. Because he was.

We were both huge fans of U2. Dean told me he had a dream where he was hanging out with Bono and The Edge doing nothing in particular, just hanging out. We used to talk about dreams and destinies a lot.

Because he was an easy target for my brand of humor, Dean suffered my merciless imitations of his accents. “Good on ya, mate,” I’d say. He’d mostly respond with “on ya” and laughter (polite or otherwise), or self-deprecation (sometimes he’d join right in and do some quotes from Crocodile Dundee) and other times he’d give just plain ol’ grace under pursed lips. He’d often call me cobber, or “cobb-ah,” an Aussie term for friend. I remember one night riding down interstate 5, or “the five” as we call it locally. As we passed the power plant at San Onofre in my red ’96 Land Rover, we had the CD cranked up listening to “Kite” by U2. Dean would play air drums and we’d sing with Bono as loud as we could.

In summer I can taste the salt in the sea

There’s a kite blowing out of control on a breeze

I wonder what’s gonna happen to you

You wonder what has happened to me

I’m a man, I’m not a child

A man who sees

The shadow behind your eyes

He told me he could really relate to those words, that we all wanted our fathers to see us as men and not children. Even Bono.

I first met Dean in winter at a coffee shop in Southern California. It was dark out and I was sitting around a fire ring sipping Mexican hot chocolate when a mutual friend introduced us. I was intrigued with this tall guy with long hair, who spoke with a Southwestern Australian accent mixed with regional colloquialisms picked up from Atlanta and Southern California like “I reckon” and “dude.”  He told me of a motorcycle that was given him by a friend who ran a homeless mission in Atlanta, where he had worked. He also mentioned the girl he had just met, a daughter of a dear friend. “The girl” was Cassandra, or Cassi as all her friends call her. She had chestnut hair, fair skin and a smile as big as the outback. Dean was living in my friend’s garage at the time and was falling in love with his daughter. And boy did he fall hard.

Dean had this Harley Davidson with pipes so loud they’d rattle your teeth. When he put on a leather jacket and skull cap, he looked like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. We went on many rides together: to LA, cruising the Pacific Coast Highway or the desert.  One of my favorites is a trip we took past the live oaks of Palomar Mountain to Borrego Springs with his brother who was visiting from Australia. It was more than 100 degrees and we rode in tee shirts and sweated buckets that day. We winded our way through the mountain village of Julian on the way back and stopped for some coffee. Always black with honey.

I filmed Dean and Cassi’s wedding in a tropical back yard of a friend’s Carlsbad home. Their vows spoke of loving each other in sickness an health, until death do they part. After the cake and bouquet toss, they waved to the crowd as they drove off in a vintage silver Mercedes loaned to him by his former boss. A few months later, we met on a beach overlooking a break we used to surf to film some additional scenes for their wedding film I made as a gift. They embraced as the sun went down and if you look closely, you can see she was newly pregnant with their first born son, Asher.

A few months later Dean took Cassi to meet the family in Australia. They were elated to meet Dean’s beautiful young bride and new baby. When they returned to the United States, Cassi and Asher passed through LAX customs with no problems. But custom agents took Dean to a back room, interrogated him and put him on a plane back to Australia. Cassi tried legal help to get him back, but the case got lost in bureaucracy and it looked like he’d never get back to the states. So Cassi boarded a plan with all the luggage she could pack and, with her son, moved to Australia. And just like that our hang times were put on hold. No more outings for coffee, no more bobbing on the waves at sunset and no more motorcycle rides. I would still ride my bike and tried to find others to ride with, but it just wasn’t the same. Dean was half a world away.

When I called his home, this woman answered the phone with a thick Aussie accent. It was Cassi. Didn’t take long for her to catch the local accent. Now here she is with two amazing boys that look and act like my friend Dean. That’s a big responsibility, and Cassi is a brilliant mother who has risen to the challenge.

Back on the plane on my way to Africa, I saw the clouds covering the sphere below and kept hearing Dean’s voice laughing that outrageous laugh of his. Perhaps he was eating in heaven! Dean Mack was free beyond anything we’d know below those clouds. The lyrics to Kite, which Bono penned for his dying father and which we sang with all our hearts back in that Land Rover, suddenly took on a new meaning.

Something is about to give

I can feel it coming

I think I know what it means

I’m not afraid to die

I’m not afraid to live

And when I’m flat on my back

I hope to feel like I did

’cause hardness, it sets in

You need some protection

The thinner the skin

I want you to know

That you don’t need me anymore

I want you to know

You don’t need anyone, or anything at all

Who’s to say where the wind will take you

Who’s to say what it is will break you

I don’t know, which way the wind will blow

Who’s to know when the time has come around

Don’t want to see you cry

I know that this is not goodbye

I know that when Dean was flat on his back in a Perth hospital, that he must have felt that he had lived his life to the fullest.  I know one day I’ll see my cobber Dean again. I’m hoping that nearby there’ll be a pot of strong, black coffee with honey. I also get the feeling we’ll be hanging with Bono and the Edge for no particular reason. One thing I’m sure of, I know that this is not goodbye.

Kite ©2001 U2, lyrics by Bono and The Edge.