Beckett: a short verson of a tragic life

Introduction
I learned about the life of Adam Beckett and his tragic death at the age of 29 in bits and pieces.  To learn the full story with completely accurate facts you should refer to Pamela Turner and help her in her quest to publish her biography on Beckett.

I mostly learned all about this through a few different sources:

• Directly and indirectly via Pam Turner
• iotaCenter website containing a very short biography
• discussing Beckett's life at the iotaCenter office (Pam lives and teaches in Richmond Virginia

• Beth Block - she was a close friend of Beckett's and helped collect his things after he died
• she is a board member at NewTown where I am the Artistic Director so I was able to ask her directly and heard stories
• I also helped the Los Angeles Filmforum with their Oral History project and found out that Pat O'Neill, Beth Block and Diana Wilson all talk about Beckett at length in their interviews.  I was trying to include this in the DVD, but due to some miscommunication it got cut.  Yet, in the end our goal was to show the artwork and films.

• Mark Toscano - being both personally interested in his films and professionally connected to them.  Mark has become a second historian, of sorts.  Mostly in relation to his film materials and piecing things together from that end.  Pam has done most of the research (particularly in relation to getting to know the family), but Mark has seen everything Beckett has been apart of - collaborations with lovers, rejected Star Wars footage, audio recordings of Beckett and friends hanging out.

Early History

The Beckett family was tainted with tragedy, wild emotions, pinnacles and pitfalls from an early time.  According to Diana Wilson, Adam's father was a prominent architect.  When Adam was young his father was well on his way to becoming one of the most important designers in the Southland.  However, by the time Adam was about eight years old for what ever reason that all came crashing down.  As someone who's lived here for 6 years now I can say that Los Angeles is a harsh place in careers, success, glamor and importance.  It is significantly more severe then New York City.  So, it's not surprising that after some short lived success father Beckett eventually became the doorman of a major downtown hotel over looking Pershing Square.  No continuation of an architecture career to speak of.

It was there that the man decided to walk off the second or third story balcony to his death.  Possibly out of shame and feeling betrayed it's hard to say exactly, but I did hear a rumor (I can't remember from who) that Adam may have in fact been there to actually witness the incident just as the curtains close on Act I in our Shakespearean play.

Adult Life
His fame really started almost at the beginning of his Graduate studies.  He was in the first class ever at the newly formed CalArts Animation program started by Jules Engel and included Pat O'Neill as both important mentors for Adam.  He made six of his own films while there and numerous collaborations.  He worked with now world renowned composers Carl Stone and Barry Schrader.  He began a romantic and artistic relationship with highly influential animator Kathy Rose.

He made six films while at CalArts - "Dear Janice", "Sausage City", "Flesh Flows", "Kitch in Synch", "Heavy-Light" and "Evolution of the Red Star".  They were shown all around the world and according to Jules Engel he had a following when ever he would go to a Film Festival.

After graduating he continued to work on two films that he never completed - "Knotte Grosse" and "Life in the Atom".  He also worked on many commercials and FX for many films.  With his experience with the optical printer he was highly sought after.

He was hired by ILM as a Visual FX supervisor to work on the first Star Wars movie.  All his friends were hired - David Berry, Chris Casedy, Kathy Rose - it was basically a CalArts reunion.  His department was basically in charge of all the glowing things - lightsabers, lazor guns, etc - and explosions.  According to Beth and Diana Adam was enormously invested in this film.  He praised Star Wars as the Science Fiction epic movie that geek culture had been waiting for.  He developed a complete new look to the Visual FX to add to the fantasy and legendary status to the film.

Of course, we all remember the look of the lightsabers and how innovative and different that was, but the explosions that Adam was working on were really quite different and might have ended up in a film like TRON, but apparently when George Lucas saw the first example he'd decided to go with pyrotechnics instead (meaning the explosions would look real and be shot with real explosives - usually much smaller explosives on a controlled set).

This hit Adam quite hard.  Certainly during the film there was a lot of drug usage and debauchery in order to maintain the level of production that they were doing, but after that hard blow to his ego Adam went into a huge spiral of drinking, smoking and snorting.  Apparently, he was still a fan of the film and trumpeted it when it was finally released, but he never quite recovered.  Particularly when the film won an Academy for VFX and those in the other VFX department received an Oscar, but Beckett received none.*

He continued on for a few years working on other films commercials, but many of his friends recall that he was basically a ticking time bomb at that point.  Beth told me a story once of how Adam stormed in on her while she was on a long distance phone call with her Aunt.  He drunkenly yanked the phone out of her hand and screamed obscenities into the receiver and hung up the phone.  Beth promptly flung him back out the door and back into his car before calling her Aunt back.  Shaken and flustered her Aunt asked if she was ok.  "Of course, I am.  why what ever do you mean?  We simply got disconnected."  She knew there was no use in explaining the situation and it would probably just use up expensive long distance phone charges.

Most thought he was going to fall into a drug related overdose or a DUI related car accident.  But instead he ended his life with a tobacco cigarette.  One night he was working late in his house on a film and he ended up passing out with a lit cigarette in his hand.  The next morning he house was half gone along with him and his dog Elvis.

That morning as his friends were sifting through his remains his mother received a phone call: "Mrs. Beckett, we need you to identify the body of your daughter."  Apparently, she had invited home a man she met at the bar.  At some point in the night he turned on her and murdered her.

While his mother was in the middle dealing with this she found out that her son had also perished.  I can only imagine what she had to go though.  In 1979 at the ripe age of 29 Adam Beckett was no more.

For many years the questions remained - Did Adam in fact committee suicide?  Or was it just an accident?  Adam was very attached to his sister and it is conceivable that he would have ended his live over hearing of her death.

For some time many of his close friends assumed that he committed suicide, but Pamela did the research and she knows for a fact that Adam could not have known about his sister at the time of his death.  Further more, Beth backs up this fact with the issue of his dog, Elvis.  Adam loved his dog and he never would have done harm to him on purpose.

Epilogue
So for many years the films of Adam Beckett were hidden at CalArts or deteriorating each time someone rented them from Canyon Cinema the film distribution house.  Up until Pamela started investigating, meeting the family, getting to know where the all the films and elements were held.  And only after a significant amount of time and research from Larry Cuba, Mark Toscano and, in particular, Pamela Turner were these films and his life's work finally brought together and donated to the iotaCenter from the Beckett family.  And that was just the start of the journey for his films.

And it doesn't include the story of "Life in the Atom" which was lost for almost 30 years.