This is kind of perverse: that I’m using a blog, and promoting this blog entry through Facebook and Twitter (of all things) to eulogise someone I’ve known most of my life. But the circumstances which bring about this modern world social media perversion are perverse themselves. There is nothing more frustrating, ignoble or unfair than cancer. But this is kind of what I do now, so we shall consider this eulogy more e-ulogy.
I also make puns.
I met Stephen Sunderland in about 1983 or 1984. I remember the first time this happened, my parents owned one of Perth’s few videos stores at the time, in Wembley and Stephen came in to the shop with my father and was talking to me (then about eight years old) about the videos I liked. At the time I was a fan of The Muppet Movie and Buggs Bunny (still am). The thing about meeting Stephen at the time, and in the years that followed was, that he was as big a film junkie as I, and always seemed to be interested in what it was I had to say about movies. This is a pretty cool thing when you’re eight.
Stephen got a regular gig on Perth TV shortly after, and I recall it being unassailably cool for me to be able to make reference to someone I knew who was on TV. The better aspect of it was that he was talking about movies on TV, so if you were watching Good Morning Perth on Fridays (this probably meant you didn’t have a job), you’d see Stephen in various states of fashion catastrophe, and increasingly thinning hair, talking about movies with Jenny Seaton, and invariably giggling with her when one of them said something that could be misconstrued as vulgar.
Stephen and Cassie bought me a subscription to Premiere magazine when I was 15. Great gift for a teenage movie nerd. He gave a brilliant speech at my 21st made up of several dozen movie titles describing my life to that point, which ended with “Although now he spends most of his time Home Alone, Spanking the Monkey.”
Spot on. It absolutely killed.
As a teacher, he was always interested in my academic progress, which started well enough, lessened as my teenage years wore on, then eventually rose to acceptable heights at university. He had wisdom and insight, very quick with useful advice. When I was first beginning my own (short-lived and ill-advised) career as a teacher, he had plenty of advice for me then as well. As far as media was concerned, radio specifically, he wasn’t so keen on me infringing on his ‘turf’; I once told him over the phone I had a weird dream about reviewing films on this new Perth radio station, and he told me that it wasn’t going to happen. He’d see to that. “It was just a dream, Stephen,” I said. “Doesn’t matter, I wouldn’t let it happen,” he laughed back. Sinister bastard.
He could be deadly serious when he needed to be; he would reflect on moments of supposedly volcanic anger – experienced a lot of the time in traffic, or on aeroplanes; but there was always a self-deprecating humour attached to it in retrospect. Stephen had this ‘big fish’ way about him in the small pond that is Perth’s PR/entertainment/film/media ‘scene’. He had a way of owning every room he walked in to. I saw this over the years, if I was tagged along to some movie preview or event, there’s Stephen, commanding the attention of those who moved and shook. Later, when I started reviewing films for Curtin’s student guild, I got to go to more of these events. Then, in late 1995, Stephen’s notorious lead foot got the better of him and I was called upon to be his chauffeur for a spell while his driver’s license was under suspension. I didn’t mind, it meant I could go to the movies with him more, which was good because I like going to the movies, could be (sort of) important by proxy, and if I was to drive him home afterwards we could talk about movies some more. Eventually, when I was having by-lines in The West Australian, he started seeing me in more of a colleague’s light; as associates. Equals, almost.
Almost.
Stephen’s caustic wit was a major part of what made him what he was. He could be sharp, and bitter, and ever so bitchy when he wanted to. It was funny to see him square off with Holly Wood; I recall being at Ron Tutt’s theatrette at one point and just seeing these two grown adult males working hard to out-camp each other. Holly won, as far as I was concerned. No contest, try as Stephen might have.
For most of the time I knew him, his wife, Cassie played ‘straight man’ to him. They were an interesting pair; Stephen about being the focus of attention, and Cassie, always there to be a quieter, more grounding influence – the straight man – and basically call him on his bullshit. Cassie had this way of silently editorialising on Stephen’s more ludicrous comments, a slight raise of the corner of her mouth, an ever so gentle eye roll and head shake. The kind of minimalist gesture that always, hilariously said, ‘Oh, for fuck's sake.’ Cassie could be brilliantly funny at times, too. I recall once I was struggling through using a one-armed bottle opener at a Sunday BBQ. Cassie, a non-drinker, looked at this implement I was handling.
“Hmm,” she observed, deadpan. “Thalidomide.”
Brilliant.
The last time I saw Cassie was the day after my sister and brother-in-law’s engagement party. She was smashing, totally destroying my mother’s guacamole, which is an excellent dish. This was heartening considering her chemotherapy had robbed her of an appetite for so long.
Stephen was, as you could imagine, a different kind of man after Cassie’s death – from cancer – in 2001. He still had that same bite about him, but you don’t lose your soul mate and not blink. But his taking charge of sole parenting of his sons Andrew and Cameron gave him, as you might expect, the impetus to keep at it. The fact that his other, non-teaching career – being 94.5’s entertainment reporter – was ended by his contracting throat cancer is another sickening, ironic twist in an already disheartening story which should not be inflicted on anyone.
I find it hard to get my head around the fact that someone I have known for nigh-on 30 years isn’t going to be around any more. I suppose because of the harsh, elongated nature of his illness, this is something everyone who knew him had to have considered was a possibility, even when hope and optimism was the order of the day. I haven’t spoken to him much over the past couple of years, me being in a different part of the country, although I was lucky enough to see him this last Boxing Day, his form as good as ever: him talking about what he was going to be doing for the next Christmas; us both reflecting on what a major fucking plastic hassle Christmas tended to be. Stephen always made an effort to come over to my parents place for scones when I was in town. My mother makes excellent scones, too.
I think that moments like these, when those you know and love move on to the next world, you take stock and embrace the opportunity to reflect fondly on them. For me, Stephen Sunderland was always kind of surrogate uncle, a mentor, and that lucky bastard who most people in any given room would warm to, want to talk to, or be seen with; and he was the one who had the job I wanted – wouldn’t anyone like a job where you talk about movies? But when I was there, in those rooms with the people wanting to float in his orbit, he always had room for me; a special place in this orbit for the Matt satellite, since I’d known him since whenever, before these things mattered. Not that they ever really mattered that much.
There seemed to be infinite blessings in his life – loving wife, two mightily impressive sons. The curses that afflicted him later are more perverse than I could have imagined, unworthy of a man I knew and we all loved for so long. My sister Ainslie mentioned her sadness during her wedding speech that Cassie wasn’t there, as it was something she always assumed would just happen. Stephen told her that Cassie would have loved to have been there. I’m in a similar predicament now, I just never figured Stephen wouldn’t be a part of my world, reduced as it has been to text messages or Facebook posts as many things are these days. He posted that he liked my blog entry on The King’s Speech and thought it spot on. I’m sure he’d want to be here. It really does weigh heavily, and gives added weight to my already loaded devotion to atheism. This kind of thing really isn’t fair, and doesn’t bode well for notions of a higher power who supposedly loves us.
It just doesn’t.
But this is, I have to convince myself, not the time to reflect in negatives. I wrote about Amy Winehouse last year and said that we’ve lost the source of joy, but not the joy itself. Same goes here. We’ll have memories and anecdotes and hours of embarrassing TV footage with all those 80s fashion moments, and that wedding photo where he looks like he was in a Moody Blues tribute act.
I have a mate, Ed, who took on cancer, and because there are still forces of good in the universe, HE BEAT THE FUCKER. For this we all cheer, and I will say that the world is a far better place for Ed Wilcox’s presence; so this is as good a forum as any to say that we should embrace the idea that who we have in our lives make us better for them. That this particular day is a sad one is very true. But this is one of many. I’ve known Stephen for about 10,000 days, so it’s rather unkind to levy sadness towards someone when only one of those days is like that, as opposed to the thousands upon thousands when Stephen gave us laughter and arguments and knowledge and arrogance and company and friendship and love and advice.
I’ll leave it at that and after this, return these pages to ill-informed ranting about movies I saw, music I’ve listened to and books I’ve read. It’s what Stephen would do, although he’d probably have done it on the radio, and it would have taken less time, and he would have been paid more, and would be consumed by about 300,000 times as many people.
It was, and remains, a pleasure to have known him.
