TURN THAT LITE OUT!!!!!!!

Back in 1967...when I was "just" the 10 pm producer (Memphis is Central time) and film editor....and when the civil rights folks had 'taken up' James Meredith's "Mississippi March" after his one-man march ended with him being shot.....................................a 3-man NBC film crew came in to do an update on the march as it was to rally one night in Greenwood Mississippi. The crew checked in with me about 3 pm and took off for Greenwood. They knew we'd process their film and I'd edit it late that night for the Today Show the next morning. They got back about 10:15 pm and their film went "in the soup." When it came out about 10:45 I put it on a projector and we watched the raw material. They weren't telling me a thing about what happened.

The film began with a dark scene, a bright white shaft of light beaming out in front of the camera and the sound of 3 sets of feet crunching on the asphalt as they walked the 2 blocks to the rally at the court square. The cameraman, electrician, and the sound man walked forward with the camera rolling. Occasionally a bug would fly through the shaft of light.

Suddenly from off camera you heard someone yell: "TURN THAT LITE OUT." The crew kept walking. "TURN THAT LITE OUT." They kept walking.

Then there was a gunshot...the sound of shattering glass (the camera light)...the view of glass pieces falling through the slowly dimming light shaft. Then darkness. Then we heard: "I TOLD YOU TO TURN THE GOD DAMN LITE OUT." Camera shuts off. That was it.

 

The cameraman turned to me and said: "What can we do with this?" I said: "Watch this." I called NYC and told them what happened and that I would "put a head and tail leader on this. Run it as it..unedited." The Today Show did. And NBC Nightly did, too....unedited.