Cab 16 by Rick Hancox (May 1969)

Because of the documentary nature of this film, and particularly because I had little or no information regarding my subject I set out at the beginning simply to shoot things as they happened. In this case this was the only approach I could use, owing to the fact that you can’t tell a crippled person to “Get back up them stairs-that was a dry run.” There was no such thing as “take two.” Another disadvantage was the length of time to plan the film. There wasn’t any. I was in touch with my main character Saturday and on location Monday. Consequently the original treatment outline is a mess which only I can translate. The film was conceived on Friday and finished five days later.

My plan was to travel around with Elmer on Monday and record the soundtrack. This I did, and I found this also gave me time to plan the visuals. The soundtrack itself was great help for this purpose, and Monday night I put together a preliminary shooting schedule. Since it was impossible to foretell the order of shots in the final film, I simply grouped Wednesday’s shots into scenes on the script. Many of Wednesday’s shots were not completed due to lack of time, and in some cases due to my own stupidity as regards lens caps, unwound motors, etc. Finally by the time Wednesday rolled around the children had become used to the camera and co-operated wonderfully for their shots.

I find it difficult to say what I was trying to accomplish in the film; at the same time certain shots were intended in the early stages, and I was able to plan a little in advance by visiting some of the locations (see Elmer’s daily schedule). Any sense of what I was trying to accomplish however didn’t register with me until a few days after the shooting had been completed, when I realized what had impressed me most was something very unique. Elmer Larter is, in public, incredibly shy and reserved. The children, from what I gathered from Elmer, do not all enjoy a happy home life. Together, however, Elmer and the kids enjoy a certain private world all their own, full of love and happiness. Elmer is suddenly on stage, cracking jokes at a mile a minute, and the kids are lapping It up. They tell Elmer things they’d never tell anyone else. In fact Elmer told me when he went to Halifax one of the kids wouldn’t eat until he came back. I was lucky enough to penetrate this world of theirs and become accepted as part of it for those few days. To see these severely handicapped children so cut off from everyday life, yet able to laugh and enjoy each other so much, made me feel like I was handicapped-not them. To see how much a man, like Elmer Larter, can almost entirely forget his own existence in place of other people, was enough to personally involve me in the film so much that I decided a life dedicated to documentary filmmaking would be a very gratifying one indeed. If Cab 16 gives anyone a similar feeling to the one I had making it, then the film accomplishes what was unconsciously intended.