By Darrell Barton
EDMOND, OK (January 5, 2005) - Why does Ray Farkas matter to photojournalists? I don't think he ever picked up a camera and he certainly never called himself a photographer. He was a producer. That's a term that is used in television today to describe everyone from the person who back-times scripts in a newscast to the guy who decides who drives which news car. That's not what Ray was. Ray produced. He took an assignment, turned it into a story, and he gave the story his own look.
I believe Ray matters to us because what he did, the work that he produced, the "Farkas Look," was pure, very pure, storytelling. He also matters because of the intensity and the integrity of the man. Most of us, occasionally, "throw a story away." We take an assignment that we don't like that much, go through the motions, put something on the air or on the page that is adequate, if mediocre, and then we move on to an assignment we do like. When we count up our "scores," the contest winners, the ones that got "attaboys," we only tally the work we liked and leave out the throw-aways. Not Ray. He didn't have throw-aways. He attacked every story with an intensity that bothered some people. Every frame was composed the way he wanted it to be and every story was one that he wanted the world to see. No throw-aways and no compromises.
Working with Ray could be hard on the ego of the person running the camera. I know. The first time and the only time I worked with Ray I was thoroughly confused. It was a story about a cattle rustler for NBC News. He had me put the tripod and camera as far from the subject as the room would allow. He hid the correspondent partially behind a filing cabinet. All you could see of him was an occasional glimpse of the back of his head and his hand holding a smoking cigarette (yes, it was a long time ago). The subject was also smoking. Everything in the frame was filtered by wisps of smoke. Ray checked the shot in the monitor, told me to make some adjustments, and then said:
"After you roll the tape you can go outside for a smoke or a cup of coffee. I'll call you when we need to change tape."
I thought he was joking. He wasn't. I told him I was concerned that the subject might lean out of the frame. "Yeah" he said. "I kind of like that." It was a strange day and it got stranger. Later I tried to impress him while setting up to shoot a "stand-up" with the correspondent. I showed him, on the monitor, what I thought was a beautiful rack focus from a rusty jail lock to the correspondent. He said he liked it but said not to do the rack focus. He had me shoot the entire standup with the correspondent out of focus. I saw the story run on the air. It was good and I didn't have a clue why. Still don't.
So that was it for our working relationship. I was probably too much of a prima donna and our basic styles were very different. I like a mobile camera that is involved and Ray liked a locked down camera that wasn't involved. I think we came to respect each others styles but he never tried mine and I confess to trying to steal his on a few occasions. Style differences or not, I became a Farkas fan and, more importantly, a Farkas friend. Over the years and over a hundred racks of pool and a hundred or more hours watching Farkas stories I came to know one of the most unique humans in the world. He was, I believe, the most imitated person in television - but no one succeeded in the imitation.
Ray just didn't see things the way other people did. After he left NBC News in the late eighties, he started his own company and called it "OFF CENTER PRODUCTIONS." Off Center. That kind of explained what the "Farkas Look" was about. He often positioned his subjects in very unlikely places in the frame. And he put the camera in unlikely places as well. I remember seeing a story he did for CBS where there was an interview with a man in a diner at night in New York. He shot the interview through the window with the camera across the street at fire plug level. Cars, taxis, and busses were a constant parade between the subject and the viewer. It worked. Why? I don't have a clue. I've asked Ray and he explained it to me and it didn't help. Ray even had trouble explaining Ray. Here's an example of a conversation with Ray:
"Darrell, Let me tell you about "Interviews Fifty Cents!"
"Interviews what?"
"Interviews Fifty Cents. I'll put a card table in a busy spot with a guy with a sign that says 'Interviews Fifty Cents.'"
"I don't get it."
"Interviews Fifty Cents. I'll have three cameras rolling from way back."
"Who gets the fifty cents"?
"Doesn't matter."
"What are the interviews about?"
"Whatever. That doesn't matter either."
"You are a strange man, Ray."
I didn't get the explanation but I got the final product. You have to see one of these interviews to understand it. I can't explain it any better than Ray could but I can say that they are possibly the most unique and innovative examples of storytelling I've ever seen.
For Ray, everything was an opportunity for his craft. A few years back, one evening while we were walking across the campus at Oklahoma University, he mentioned off handedly that he had Parkinson's. We talked about it and later he called me with the good news that he had found a surgical procedure that would cure the symptoms. The really good news, according to Ray, was that he would be conscious throughout and, therefore, would be able to produce a documentary on his own brain surgery. The result was "It Ain't Television, It's Brain Surgery," which is a whimsical, yet serious, look at Parkinson's. It was featured on Oprah, and in People Magazine.
Anyone who attended the Workshop in Norman over the last dozen years or so probably sat in on what we called the "Farkathon." Ray would show tapes in the auditorium for hours. Ray loved to show his work. The last time I saw him, at his house in Washington, I had barely entered the door when he pressed play on his VCR to show off the latest "Interviews Fifty Cents."
Ray's body of work is huge. I only wish the body of the man was as strong. As deaths go, Ray's was long in coming and not particularly good. Cancer left him weak and thin, with a voice that quavered, but it never touched his mind or his soul or the eyes that saw things that we didn't.
The Ray Farkas Education Fund has been established in his memory, and the family asks that contributions be made to the fund in lieu of flowers.
