A Friend’s Appreciation of Maurice Melzak by Chris Morphet

Maurice was a Zoology graduate with experience working as a researcher for films with Sir David Attenborough and Gerald Durrell. So I came across him as the researcher on a film I was shooting as a cameraman about wildlife in disused power stations. The director badly needed a shot of a fox with a background of a power station, so Maurice was duly instructed to find one, which he was able to do. On the day of the shoot, the fox was released from the cage it had arrived in and I felt really chuffed, as although it all happened in a flash, I managed to pick the fox up in close up, then zoomed out to reveal the power station background. This was all in the days of 16mm film, so on ringing the production company the next day to enquire about the printed rushes,     I heard there had been a kerfuffle. My camerawork and the shot were perfect, but unfortunately on close inspection it was discovered the supposedly wild fox was still wearing its collar. Poor Maurice. The director could be heard shouting in the background “You Left The Collar On Maurice”.

Things progressed upwardly from then on and Maurice soon established himself as a director with his own company Nautilus Films. This was a generally very happy and successful time with Maurice making a good number of mainline TV documentaries. In the year 2000 Maurice made a very positive program for the BBC, “Josie’s Journey”, with Josie Russell and her dad Shaun Russell, about Josie’s recovery from trauma, her burgeoning creative artistic talents, and love of wild animals. On just hearing the news about Maurice, Josie emailed “Oh gosh that’s really sad to hear. It is terribly unhappy news. Maurice was such a nice man and we were hoping one day to make another programme together.” And her father Shaun Russell said “Maurice was the only film-maker who Josie really connected with as a friend, not least because he was always so tender and protective towards her. I think he may have fallen out with the BBC partly as a result of resisting them always seeming to want a more intrusive exploration of Josie’s private life. Josie and I feel a great debt to Maurice for his friendship and the sympathetic way in which he told Josie’s story.”

Around this time Maurice also made several 50 minute C4 documentaries on Rabies and Aquariums, and a memorable C5 series about an academy for crime investigators in Knoxville, Tennessee, with its pioneering body farm. This led to a wonderful film with the brilliant forensic botanist Patricia Wiltshire “The Natural History of Murder”, where we followed how Pat had skilfully nailed various murderers like the Soham murderer, by linking microscopic samples in the ditch from where the bodies were found, to the car tyres and clothing belonging to the perpetrator Ian Huntley.

Maurice continued to do well and we together did a whole run of TV films examining aspects of urban wildlife often featuring experts like pest controllers, zookeepers, and vets.  Pet Patients at The Blue Cross Animal Hospital, London Zoo, Urban Pigeons, Lice, and City Rats were all delved into. Who knew there was a rare colony of rattus rattus, the black tree climbing rat with a long tale, in the vast grain store at Tilbury Docks, where fat pigeons feasted on grain spills from offloading boats, some later to be filmed trapped in large numbers by our pest controller.

Sadly though, the TV world started to change and be taken over by reality TV, celebrity presenters, and more prescriptive and set up film making and programs. Maurice did not have the right skills and personality to sell his often excellent ideas in this new environment. He was also never that interested in either the technicalities or the artistic or stylistic aspects of filmmaking, but rather he had a real passion and interest for the subject matter itself.

Around 2010, disillusioned with the broadcast TV world, Maurice with great enterprise started a new chapter with his website Petstreet. With basic and minimal equipment he shot and edited by himself many terrific short films for showing online. These covered fish, cats, dogs, rabbits, horses, monkeys, lizards, parrots, and snakes, and featured organisations like The RSPCA, The Mayhew, The Dogs Trust, and The Feline Advisory Bureau. There were also useful instructional videos featuring the aptly named vet Cat Henstridge. Not to mention The Snake That Ate The Neighbour’s Cat, another stand out short video at the time.

Petstreet in due course closed down, but Maurice as a solo operator continued to do films like the yearly Animal Wetnose Awards for animal charities. Also, still in hope, he kept finding great subjects about which he made so called teaser or taster tapes to send to TV commissioners with subjects like the wonderful Jenny Clark MBE the Sussex bat rescuer. When I told Maurice we had 2 bats coming out at dusk in the alleyway of our Kilburn house, he was keen to lend me a bat listening device, which was a revelation, as it enhanced and amplified the otherwise inaudible bat sounds.

Although Maurice was now mainly doing the filming himself, I did help out when asked. We made a film with his sister Sheila for her Baobab Centre for Young Survivors. Also a very early short film for The Womens Equality Party here founders Catherine Mayer, Sandi Toksvig and Sophie Walker, were recorded chatting informally sitting around Maurice’s kitchen table.  And when a large and rare species of cave spider called Meta Bourneti was found in the vaults of Egyptian Avenue in the nearby Highgate Cemetery, Maurice called me in to film some big close ups. Also in the cemetery around this time Maurice successfully applied for a grant to put over 100 safe nesting boxes for the birds and the bats up on the trees.

Strangely, we never made a film about the great love of Maurice’s life, his bees and the beehives located in the cemetery. He was very proud, along with fellow beekeeper Ian Creer, of producing such excellent quality honey of impeccable provenance from the many and varied local flowers. Maurice enjoyed his distinctive honey jar label with an image of Karl Marx and underneath the words “Workers Unite”.  A reference to worker bees perhaps.

Maurice also loved walking on the nearby Hampstead Heath and tending his back garden, where he grew some of his own vegetables and even cannabis to try out as an alternative to relieve his pain from cancer. I never did try the cannabis, but we met up regularly to chat either in his kitchen for tea or at one of the local Highgate restaurants. Although on different sides of the North London divide we often watched quite amiably together the keenly contested Arsenal v Spurs derby on his large TV.

In October 2013 perhaps the most bizarre and memorable event, which involved Maurice being interviewed, and his footage used on the news, was the mysterious and sudden appearance of 3 Bennett’s Wallabies in the cemetery. It was a bit of a saga at the time whose outcome was not altogether positive, but for those of us who know the full story, maybe best kept secret, it somehow epitomised the man that was truly Maurice. His intelligent and informed passion for animals, nature, and life itself carried him through.

© Chris Morphet