Ray Farkas, Producer And Documentary Maker, 71
DGH
Ray Farkas; Producer, Documentary Maker
By Joe Holley, Washington Post Staff Writer
For Ray Farkas, an Emmy Award-winning producer and TV documentarian
who died of colon cancer January 4 [2008], the signature camera shot
was a long-distance technique that, ironically, was so intimate and
revealing it resembled eavesdropping.
Mr. Farkas, 71 at the time of his death at the Washington [DC] Home,
would equip his subjects with wireless mikes in a setting where they
were comfortable -- perhaps a park or a diner. He would ask a leading
question to get them talking and then retreat to his camera 25 feet or
farther away. The subjects soon would forget the camera and its
telephoto lens, and the result, almost invariably, would be something
natural, honest, unexpected.
His stories, with the quickly identifiable "Farkas Look," often aired
on Fox TV's "America's Most Wanted." One example featured interviews
with New Yorkers not long after 9/11.
"He found a very different way to get people talking about their fears
and their feelings," said Phil Lerman, a former co-executive producer
of "America's Most Wanted."
Friends and former colleagues said the technique's effectiveness had
as much to do with Mr. Farkas's quirky, engaging personality as it did
with camera placement. "No one could get people talking like Ray
could," Lerman said. "It had to do with his unassuming manner and a
sly, devilish smile that you couldn't help but respond to."
With his knobby knees poking out of a pair of shorts -- he wore them
year-round -- he was both non-threatening to the people he filmed and
fascinated by the stories they told. "You can't fake that. That was
genuine Ray," Lerman said.
On an October day in 2004, Mr. Farkas himself was the subject. After
receiving a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, he chose to undergo a
risky surgical procedure at Georgetown [Washington DC] University
Hospital called deep brain stimulation. Because he would remain
conscious during the procedure and would feel no pain, he decided to
direct and narrate a documentary of the experience.
The technique involves drilling two holes into the skull and
implanting microelectrodes that deliver impulses into the brain to
block the shakiness and unsteadiness that afflict patients with
Parkinson's. Mr. Farkas was the third person to undergo the procedure
at Georgetown.
With his sons manning two of the four cameras during the eight-hour
operation and with Mr. Farkas at one point singing "If I Only Had a
Brain," the result was a feature-length documentary called "It Ain't
Television, It's Brain Surgery." Lerman wrote two songs for the
documentary, including "I Need This Operation Like I Need a Hole in
the Head."
"Ray loved to quote the first line of that song," said his wife,
Sharon Metcalfe. "It went, 'You don't have to shake my hand, it shakes
on its own just fine.' That was Ray. He could laugh in the face of
anything."
Mr. Farkas was born in Kingston, New York, and grew up in
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. His father, a Hungarian Jew, and his
mother, a Russian Jew, had immigrated to the United States in the
early 1930s. His father ran a boys' clothing store and probably
expected his son to take over the business, recalled George Trail, a
retired diplomat and lifelong friend.
"He was such a free spirit, that was not in the cards," Trail said.
Mr. Farkas graduated from Lehigh University in 1957 and began his
career in journalism as a reporter for United Press International. He
then moved to NBC, where he wrote for the "Huntley-Brinkley Report"
and struck up a close friendship with anchorman David Brinkley.
"Ray was a great gambler, and he and Brinkley played poker together,"
Trail said.
Mr. Farkas was at NBC for 24 years, including a number of years as a
producer for the "Today" show. He later produced dozens of features
and documentaries for ABC, CBS, Fox, PBS, HBO and AMC. His Emmy Award-
winning documentaries included an ABC News special about abortion
called "The New Civil War" and a documentary about novelist Joseph
Heller for the Learning Channel.
His signature style originated in the civil rights movement. "I spent
a lot of time for NBC down in Mississippi, and we were accused, not
without some justification, of being part of the story," he told Rich
Underwood, author of the book "Roll! Shooting TV News: Views from
Behind the Lens" (2007). "That was part of the genesis for learning
how to stay away from subjects, to stay out of the story as much as we
could."
Mr. Farkas started his own production company, Off Center Productions,
in 1991. The company's work includes two series pilots: "Ira's
People," a mixture of crime and humor that appeared on Court TV in
1999, and "Interviews 50 Cents."
In the latter, Mr. Farkas and National Public Radio correspondent Alex
Chadwick sat at a card table outside Washington's Union Station, at
Baltimore's Inner Harbor and at the Cape May-Lewes ferry slip in New
Jersey with a hand-lettered sign reading "Interviews 50 Cents." Their
cameras set up at a distance, they invited people to tell their
stories.
The curious usually wanted to know who paid the 50 cents to whom.
"Tell us your story, and then we'll decide," Mr. Farkas joked.
In 2005, he created a local newsmagazine program for WJLA-TV, the
local ABC affiliate, entitled "Metropolitan Edition." The program won
two D.C. National Capital Region Emmys.
Mr. Farkas began to develop symptoms of Parkinson's disease in 2000. A
tennis player, he told USA Today he knew something was wrong when he
began to lose to people he usually beat.
The surgery four years later was successful. The tremors disappeared,
and Mr. Farkas resumed playing tennis.
He also became an advocate on behalf of Parkinson's patients. "He made
it his mission in life to comfort anyone that he could with this
disease," said his surgeon, Chris Kalhorn.
Mr. Farkas's marriage to Linda Farkas ended in divorce.
Survivors include Metcalfe, his wife of 20 years, of the District;
three children from his first marriage, Mark Farkas of Fairfax
[Virginia], Julie Farkas of Chevy Chase [Maryland] and Danny Farkas of
Annandale [Virginia]; a son from his second marriage, Andrew Metcalfe
of the District [Washington DC]; and seven grandchildren.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010703192.html
DGH
The January 8 [2008] obituary of producer and TV documentarian Ray
Farkas neglected to mention that he is survived by a brother, Eugene
Farkas of Hagerstown, Maryland.