My Friend Jeff

On the night of Wednesday, October 11th, 2023, I was watching TV, when I just happened to grab my cellphone to check my email... and was utterly stunned when I saw a message from my friend, Newt Cox, who told me that another very close friend of mine, filmmaker Jeff Burr, had died of a stroke at just 60. He'd posted it on a forum he's a member of and had then sent me the message, wanting me to hear the news from him. I'm glad he did that because, while it still hurt deeply, obviously, it wasn't as impersonal as would've been had I just randomly stumbled across some news blurb. I've mentioned my friendship with Jeff a few times on here (I once had him send me an email about how he came close to directing Halloween 5 for my review of it years ago), but it was much deeper than you could possibly imagine. We knew each other for thirteen years, ever since we met at a horror convention in Pikeville, Kentucky back in 2010. We often traded emails back and forth (at least, whenever I could get him to answer one), and every year or so, we would meet up at the Barnes & Noble connected to Hamilton Place Mall in Chattanooga and just sit and talk for hours. 98% of our conversations centered on our shared love of film, particularly horror and science fiction, and he offered many interesting insights due to his own experience as a filmmaker. Over the past couple of years, I'd been sending Jeff a lot of emails, asking him what was going on in his life and if he wanted to have one of our get-togethers some time soon. He'd recently been going through a bit of an ordeal, as his significant other of many years had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy, so I gave him a lot of leniency when I wouldn't hear back from him. I finally heard from him in July, when I was at G-Fest and told him that I'd gotten to see films like Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla Raids Again, and King Kong Escapes on the big screen, which made him jealous, as he was as big of a kaiju fan as I am. I last heard from him a week before he died. I'd gotten back from a trip to Fort Walton Beach in Florida, again contacted him about possibly meeting up, and we'd planned to do so in either late October or early November.

You've likely heard this numerous times, to the point where it's a cliche, but it's painfully true: when the realization that Jeff had died truly registered with me, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. By this point, at the age of 36, I've dealt with a lot of death in my life, such as my beloved Aunt Gwen, two uncles on my dad's side, and, most recently, both of my paternal grandparents, whom I was fairly close to, especially Nana. But this was a different kind of pain, as it was the first time that anything like this had happened to me, when a close friend just suddenly died. The fact that it was so sudden was what was shocking as, save for one of my uncles, all those others I mentioned had been going downhill for a long time. I now wonder if, maybe, Jeff had been having health problems and didn't want me to worry, which is why he'd been out of touch for so long, or if it truly was a freak incident. Whatever the case, it was a good thing I'd finished all my reviews for this October back in August, as for a couple of days, I was in a haze, trying to reconcile what had happened. Another cliche but, again, it's true: for those two or so days, I was waiting to wake up and realize it was all a bad dream. By this point, I've grieved, processed it, and have managed to move on, but let me tell you, my life will never be the same. Christopher Lee once said this of his friend and frequent costar, Peter Cushing: "At some point of your lives, every one of you will notice that you have in your life one person, one friend whom you love and care for very much. That person is so close to you that you are able to share some things only with him. For example, you can call that friend, and from the very first maniacal laugh or some other joke you will know who is at the other end of that line. We used to do that with him so often. And then when that person is gone, there will be nothing like that in your life ever again." I now understand what he meant more than I ever could.

So, in honor of this man whom I loved like a brother and miss very much, I figured I would share some memories of Jeff with all of you. Instead of a gloomy, solemn piece, I hope this will be a fun, laugh-filled celebration of the friendship he and I shared, the fun times we had, and that it will encourage anyone reading to cherish those in your life whom you hold dear. Trust me, you never know when they may suddenly be gone.

I first met Jeff at the Dark Woods convention in Pikeville, Kentucky, in March of 2010. I went there mainly to meet some other people for the first time but there were others I looked forward to, like Dick Warlock, Ari Lehman, Michael Berryman, and Tiffany Shepis (my introduction to her was when she ran up to me, put some tape over my mouth, and then took a picture of us like that). I got there fairly late on a Saturday and only stayed for the one night, before leaving the next day after going back for a few hours. I'd known Jeff was going to be there, and obviously knew who he was, having seen both Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, and brought my DVD of the former with me. On Sunday, I arrived at the show and there was Jeff, sitting at a table, reading a book. I went up to him, presented him with my DVD, and I wnt over to the table next to his to get a marker so he could sign it. From the outset, he was clearly a very personable person, so I figured I'd stand there for a few moments, talking with him, while he signed my DVD. I told him who I was, what kind of stuff I was interested in, what I'd grown up watching, and I quickly learned that he and I had a lot of the same interests. The real ice-breaker was when I learned he was a lifelong Godzilla fan like me, with one of his favorites being Godzilla vs. Hedorah, or Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, as he knew it as. We talked about how we were both fascinated with that movie due to how utterly bizarre it is, and from there, we talked about all the classics that we loved, our mutual respect and admiration for directors like John Carpenter and David Cronenberg, our love for Hammer movies, our own personal experiences with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, and such. It was also there that I learned he had a chance to work with the legendary Vincent Price on his first film, the 1987 anthology, From a Whisper to a Scream, which I'd never heard of up to that point. Thus, he gave me a little poster for it and signed it, "To Cody, watch it and be scared!" (I later met Terry Kiser, who appears in the movie, at Scarefest in Lexington in October of 2022 and had him add his signature to it.) He didn't charge me for it, nor for his signing my DVD of Leatherface. In fact, I sometimes sat with him at his table at conventions and he never charged anybody for his signature. I'm sure that drove his agent batty, but for him, the meetings and conversation were enough.

Before I left that afternoon, we exchanged email addresses and cellphone numbers and, from then on, we were buddies, especially since he lived in Dalton, Georgia, and I live pretty close to the Tennessee/Georgia border. When I began this blog the following year, he was a major supporter of it, especially since I reviewed a lot of stuff that many people of my generation don't particularly care for. It was also that year when he and I began something of a tradition where we would meet up at the Barnes & Noble at Hamilton Place Mall in Chattanooga, which was the most convenient place for us to do so, as it was only an hour away from our respective homes. Like I said in the introduction, he and I would sit at one of the tables in the little cafe area in the back and just talk for hours, sometimes up to when the store closed (needless to say, my butt was often numb by the end). Even then, we could've talked for hours more. He was interested not just in what I liked but also what was going on in my life, and I shared a lot of things with him that I've never shared with anyone else. Unfortunately, there was something of a "downside" with these visits. Jeff had a habit of buying a lot of movies, specifically ones that I would never touch just from looking at the DVD covers or knowing who was involved with them, and when he decided he didn't want one, he would give it to me. You might say I should appreciate getting free stuff, and I did, in a way, but at the same time, a good majority of the stuff he would give me would be mind-numbingly bad, insufferable, bottom-of-the-barrel dreck. Remember that Illegal Aliens movie with Anna Nicole Smith I reviewed on here? Or Trophy Heads by Charles Band? Or some of the stuff I did for Schlocktober, like The Undertaker and His Pals, A Candle for the Devil (or It Happened at Nightmare Inn), Cathy's Curse (ugh), and Memorial Valley Massacre? Yeah, that was all from Jeff, and that's not even a fraction or, moreover, the worst of the junk he's left with me over the years. I have a big cardboard box of stuff I've decided I need to get rid of that I keep in my closet (I call it the "Nosebleed Section,"), and a good chunk of it is stuff he left with me. Now, you may be wondering why I even watch the stuff to begin with. With me, if you give me something, I feel compelled to, at least, give it a chance and not just write it off. Unfortunately, there are certain people who know that about me and use it to their advantage (not that Jeff was one of them). If nothing else, at leas they'll make for, hopefully, entertaining reviews on here one day.

Just as, if not even more, aggravating was how the stuff he'd leave with me was often not the best in terms of picture and audio quality, coming in sets you could find in the Wal-Mart bargain bin or at the Dollar General. The Undertaker and His Pals, It Happened at Nightmare Inn, and Memorial Valley Massacre, for instance, were three of five films on a two-disc set (the others being Pieces and Die, Sister, Die) that were very, very poor in terms of how they looked and sounded, while Cathy's Curse was in a slip with a picture of a woman in bondage gear that didn't represent the movie at all, and the print looked like absolute garbage (see my review for screenshots to see what I mean). Some of the first stuff he ever gave me were on DVD-Rs, one of which had three movies recorded on it, and in those white packaging slips with clear plastic in the middle so you can see the disc. Sometimes, I would really raise my eyebrows at just what it was he was giving me, as it sometimes looked or sounded pornographic, like Vamps (he gave me a DVD of the second movie that, "lucky for me," had the first as a bonus feature), and

Dirty Weekend. The latter is a prime example of some of the stuff Jeff would pull on me. I'm initially taken aback by the title, afraid it's going to be pornographic, but when I start watching it, I find it's more of a female take on Death Wish, about a mild-mannered woman who, after being pushed around by men her whole life, decides to take matters into her own hands when someone begins stalking her. With that, she proceeds to brutally murder any man who tries to force himself onto her. So, it's going along and, while not great, it's certainly not bad. And then, we get to when she goes to a restaurant and hotel, gets the attention of an overweight guy, the two of them go up to his room after sharing a drink at the bar, he says he's going to put on something more comfortable, she goes out on the balcony for a few seconds, comes back in, the guy turns the lights on... and he's completely naked. This guy, who has to be close to 400 pounds, is completely naked and stands there, rubbing his big belly, flipping his man-boobs, and smacking his rear end, which we get a good look at (thankfully, we don't see the opposite side), and we also see that he has some weird blotches or something on his back. He

also stays naked for a scene that lasts seven or so minutes, and that's not even the most sickening part of it all, but I'll leave it at that. Needless to say, I came close to gouging my eyes out and, once I got over it, I thought to myself, "Why, Jeff, why?! Why do you do this to me?! Is it because I said I wasn't the biggest fan of Pumpkinhead II?!"

On the flip side, Jeff always got the better end of these trades, as I would lend him a number of my many DVDs and Blu-Rays, mainly movies he was either interested in or I felt, if nothing else, he would enjoy the special features. It started out as a fluke, when Scream Factory was working to put From a Whisper to a Scream out on Blu-Ray and he wanted to see the kind of work they did on their special features and from there, it became a tradition for us. However, it was the one part of these meet-ups that was always kind of bittersweet for me as, while I enjoyed maybe expanding his horizons and allowing him to see stuff he'd never seen or, sometimes, even heard of, I've always been very OCD about my stuff. Whenever I would let him borrow things from me, the noticeable gaps in my collection would eat at me every time I glanced over at them, and the longer he had them, the more obsessed I would get. In fact, a regret that I have is, the last time I saw him, which was back in October of 2021, I got kind of pushy in regards to some of the things I let him borrow, namely my Godzilla Criterion Collection set and my Gamera Arrow Video set, and was really anxious about getting them back. That's when I learned about his girlfriend's battle with cancer and felt bad about hassling him. And when I got them back, he secured them in bubble-wrap (he was always very careful with my stuff when sending it back) and it made me feel even worse about it. But, what I especially regret now is that, the last few times I spoke to him over email, I asked about a few items I never did get back, if he would reimburse me for them if he couldn't find them, and was a bit frustrated when I couldn't get a straight answer, if any answer at all.

That was one thing that was frustrating about Jeff: he could be kind of a flake. I would send him emails, asking how things were going or if he was working on something at the moment or if he wanted to get together some time soon, and trying to get him to answer would be like pulling teeth. I understood he was a busy person and all, especially since, unlike me, he actually had a life, but I would often wonder if it was that hard to answer an email. R.A. Mihailoff, who played Leatherface in Jeff's film, once told me that he wasn't all that great at communication, but I don't know if he was being sarcastic or what, as he's one of those people where it can be hard to tell. There would also be times where Jeff was supposed to be a guest at a

convention, I would go there to see him, and he'd never show up. In October of 2010, I made a trip to the small, obscure town of Lebanon, Kentucky for another Dark Woods show, as Jeff was supposed to be there. Well, I got there, and this place turned out to be the definition of pathetic, with the entire "convention" being held in a school gymnasium, with guests such as Ari Lehman, Tiffany Shepis, Ken Sagoes, and Jeffrey Reddick, who was the most fun person I talked with there, but no Jeff. There was a table with his name card on it, but he never showed up. I heard from one of the promoters that they hadn't heard from Jeff for months, so maybe he just forgot he was booked; he later said he would've rode up there with us. So, yeah, that was a bust, in general. It happened again the following October, this time when I went to a convention in Gatlinburg, up in the Great Smoky Mountains. Fortunately, this one was actually good, so it wasn't a waste of time, and I don't know if Jeff ever gave me a reason as to why he didn't go, as I did talk to him on the cellphone after coming back from the convention that Saturday. This right here will give you an example of how scatter-brained he could be. We talked for a little while, he said he had to go do something and would call me right back, and he never did. Yeah, that could drive a person crazy, but I grew to accept that that was just how Jeff was.

Another thing that could be a little frustrating for me is that Jeff was an old-fashioned guy who was rather set in his ways about certain things. For instance, it was hard to get him to watch the more recent Godzilla movies, both the MonsterVerse films and the newer Toho films like Shin Godzilla, because, to him, if it wasn't a man in a suit, it wasn't Godzilla. Similarly, both of us were big James Bond fans but, while Jeff did enjoy the Daniel Craig movies, he was wishing the franchise would go back to the more comic book, sort of campy tone it once hand, such as in the later Sean Connery movies and the Roger Moore movies. When it came to both of those, I was the realist who was like, "Well, man, hate to break it to you but they're not going to do those kinds of movies anymore. They just aren't." Going back to Godzilla, it was hard to get him to watch the last two Showa movies, which he'd never seen before, as well as much of the Heisei ones, too. I really had to push to get him to borrow my DVDs of those but, when he finally did, he ended up enjoying them. Likewise, I had to convince him to watch Halloween 2018, as he was never interested in any of those movies outside of John Carpenter's original, save for Halloween III: Season of the Witch. And I never could get him to watch the 2011 prequel to The Thing because, as he put it, life was too short to waste on certain movies. Okay, yeah, that movie isn't great by any means, but I think it has a little more merit than it gets credit for. And there were other things he simply wasn't a fan of at all and had no interest in getting into them. Chief among them were the Marvel movies and the over-saturation of superhero movies in general. If I referenced those movies in any way, even when talking about something that he was interested in, he would roll his eyes and make it clear that he wished that stuff would disappear. In fact, he wasn't really big into superhero movies in general. He liked the original Richard Donner Superman but was never really interested in the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman movies (he did agree that Batman and Robin was complete garbage) and I don't think he ever saw the Christopher Nolan movies. He couldn't get past the Adam West TV show.

When it came to animation, things were a little hit-and-miss with Jeff. He and I both agreed that the Loony Tunes cartoons were, and still are, some of the funniest bits of animation ever made, but when it came to Disney, he was a little more mixed. While he wasn't a big fan, he did agree that a number of the Disney animated features were amazing accomplishments, but their short subjects, like the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy cartoons, just weren't his thing. Personally, while I could understand why some wouldn't be able to get into Mickey, as he's not really that funny, for the mos part (though, I've always had a soft for the Mouse, myself), I've always thought that Donald and Goofy were hilarious. And there was absolutely no point in trying to talk to Jeff about anime, as it all just went over his head. Even the great stuff by Studio Ghibli didn't seem to grab him, although I do think he'd seen, at least, some of Hayao Miyazaki's work.

One thing he and I did agree on was that we never big fans of some of the newer generation horror film directors in the 2000's, like Eli Roth and Rob Zombie. While I can tolerate some of the latter's stuff, and do think The Devil's Rejects is the best thing he's ever made, I don't absolutely love it, and neither did Jeff; needless to say, neither of us liked his Halloween movies. And as for Roth, while I appreciate the guy's passion for the genre, I'm not a fan of his obnoxious, frat-boy sort of characters and dialogue, especially in his early movies like Cabin Fever and Hostel, nor the way he seems to continuously try to out-sick himself. Jeff felt the same way, and he once told me that he wasn't too thrilled about once being in the same room as Roth, either.

While he was never a big mover in the Hollywood scene, and he himself would never claim to be, Jeff's being a filmmaker for many years did allow for some interesting tales. Among them, he once told me how Neville Brand, whom horror fans would know from Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive, as well as numerous other movies and television shows, was apparently just as bonkers in real life as he was onscreen. According to Jeff, when he was working on the Universal backlot, Brand got so sick of people going by on the tours and looking at him as though he were an animal in a zoo, that he

decided to act like one. In short, he started acting like a caged monkey by crapping in his hand and throwing it at the tourists! That was the last thing I was expecting Jeff to tell me but he swore it was true, and I don't have any reason not to believe him. Another thing he once told me was how, being such a huge fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, when he ran into Kim Henkel somewhere, he attempted to talk to him but Henkel clearly didn't want anything to do with him, and came off as rather sour. Similarly, he worked with Russ

Tamblyn once and attempted to talk to him about some of his own genre efforts, including The War of the Gargantuas, but from what I can remember, he said Tamblyn was tipsy and didn't really recall much. He once badly criticized a movie by director John Guillermin, unaware that Guillermin was sitting right behind him while he was saying this. He also agreed with my personal opinion on the whole issue of who directed Poltergeist, that it was a very close collaboration, with Tobe Hooper listening to Steven Spielberg's suggestions and input. And as far as stories from his own movies, one of the more memorable was his experience working with Vincent Price on From a Whisper to a Scream, mainly in how Price was very professional and accommodating, but the two of them never became all that close. In fact, it seems as though they left things on something of a sour note, given how a blood effect ended up ruining a suit-jacket of Price's and that, after Forrest J. Ackerman saw the movie, he kind of turned Price against it (that's always annoyed me, as I've felt Ackerman should've minded his own business). Indeed, Price is said to have regretted doing the movie in a letter to actor and puppeteer, Gerd J. Pohl, saying his agent "misrepresented" it.

The most memorable story he told me from the production of one of his own movies was an incident that happened during the filming of Pumpkinhead II. At the time, he told me not to spread it around, and in his audio commentary for the movie, he alluded to it as one of the worst nights of filming he'd ever had but said he'd talk about it in detail in his memoirs one day. Well, I guess there's no harm in me sharing it now. Basically, it came down to Jeff trying to film an emotional scene with Andrew Robinson in a hospital room and each time Robinson was getting into it, they would get interrupted, either by someone walking in on them or someone talking too loud out in the hall, and such. After this happened a number of times, Robinson basically had a meltdown, yelled at the top of his lungs, and stormed out. Jeff said he went looking for him and found him outside in tears, crying over how bad he'd just made himself look, and Jeff actually had to comfort him, even resorting to hugging him in order to calm him down. He also said that Robinson was rather upset at the direction his career had taken, as he was now in a rather low-rent, direct-to-video sequel (I'm paraphrasing something that Jeff himself said, so that's not me dumping on the movie). I hope to God it's okay for me to have shared this, and that if Robinson, by some miracle, sees this, doesn't get angry about it or try to sue me. I'm just repeating what Jeff told me.

His comforting Robinson following that incident is an example of the type of warm, kind, caring person Jeff was. Whenever we met up, he was always ready with a smile; one time, he saluted me with one, while another, as I was standing there, reading something, he said to me, "The man, the myth, the legend." He also helped me deal with my Aunt Gwen passing away, as he called me on the night of her funeral (I didn't go, as I just can't deal with funerals, in general) and we talked a little while, as I shared memories of her with him. Similarly, he acted as a caretaker for his mother up until her death in 2020 (when I told him I was sorry to hear that she'd died, he told me not to be, as she was ready to go), as well as for others who needed him. You don't get too many people like that, sadly.

Being a graduate of USC, like John Carpenter, Jeff was heavily involved with the documentary, Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star, on the student film that ended up as Carpenter's first feature. He worked as producer, along with the director, Daniel Griffiths, and the two of them put together an extensive, two-hour look at the film, with interviews with various people, such as one of the actors, Tommy Lee Wallace, optical effects creator Bill Taylor, cinematographer Douglas Knapp, and Diane O'Bannon, the wife of the late Dan O'Bannon. They also made use of archival interviews with O'Bannon himself, designer and consultant Ron Cobb, and Carpenter. Both Jeff and Griffiths, the latter of whom I also met at a convention, told me how they tried and tried to interview Carpenter but he turned them down, forcing them to use an old audio interview. The vibe that they both got, and you can detect it when listening to Carpenter's interview on the documentary (it's available on the "Hyperdrive Edition" of Dark Star and I highly recommend it, even if you're not that big on the movie itself), is that he really couldn't care less about the film, as he's always felt Assault on Precinct 13 was his first real movie. Also, it seems as though he still harbors some resentment towards USC and the fiasco that happened when a short student film of his won an Oscar but the school got the award, not him, along with similar controversies. It's really sad, as Jeff, Griffiths, and I all admire Carpenter a lot as a filmmaker, and I've met the man a couple of times and he was cool with me, but he does, indeed, appear to be a real curmudgeon.

But just because he wasn't a big figure in the film industry doesn't mean that people didn't know who Jeff was. During one of our get-togethers, this one in September of 2016, a guy passed by us and recognized him, to which Jeff commented, "I don't get recognized in public that often." I don't remember the guy's name, unfortunately, but he sat and chatted with us for a while (truth be told, initially, I was little irked, as this was supposed to be our time, but as it went on, I realized he was a cool guy and was glad he sat down). If I remember correctly, he said he was an aspiring artist and that, like us, was a big fan of Toho's kaiju movies, saying that Eiji Tsuburaya was one of his inspirations and idols, among other movies. He showed me a picture of his studio on his phone and on his easel was a copy of the InuYasha manga (which sat well with me, as InuYasha is my personal favorite anime). I, in turn, shared with him and Jeff some Fangoria Legends issues I had on John Carpenter and David Cronenberg. I also gave the guy my blog's address but I don't know if he ever checked it out.

Because of the connections he'd made through the actors he'd worked with over the years, I was able to use it as a short-hand when I met some of them at conventions. I've already mentioned R.A. Mihailoff, who seems to be at Scarefest in Lexington every single year. Nice enough guy but, like I said, with the way he talks about certain things, I can't tell if he's being truthful or sarcastic. One person who I can definitely tell is being truthful is Meg Foster, who worked with Jeff on Stepfather II. She's most well-known for her very striking, kind of creepy eyes, but I can tell you from experience that she's one of the sweetest people you could ever hope to meet. When I first

met her, which was at one of the two Texas Frightmares in Dallas that I've been to, I introduced myself as having a mutual friend and we really hit it off as a result. I've met her several times since then and she's always been a pleasure. Although we never talked about Jeff, another person from Stepfather II I've met is Caroline Williams, who also starred in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. I also met her at one of the Texas Frightmares and she was really sweet and engaging, as we talked about Chainsaw 2. And while we're still on the subject of Stepfather II, Jeff once told me that some people who knew him met Terry O'Quinn at some place like Comic Con and, when he heard

that they knew Jeff, he let them cut to the front of the line. That was very cool to hear, especially since O'Quinn didn't participate in the special features for either of the first two Stepfathers (Jeff told me that he's not the kind of person who dwells on the past) and he didn't think much of how the second one came out, which is why he wasn't in the third one. I also once met Ken Foree, who was in Leatherface, at a convention. He was cool enough and definitely remembered Jeff, but there wasn't much else I could say to him. Finally, when I met Terry Kiser at Scarefest, he was not only tickled at the small poster I brought of From a Whisper to a Scream, remarking on the artwork and that people don't bring it up that often, but when I told him I knew Jeff, he said for me to send him his best.

One of the most memorable times I ever had with Jeff was at the Fright Night Film Fest/Fandom Fest in Louisville, Kentucky in July of 2012. I'd been going back and forth to his table there all weekend long and then, on the last day, I went over to just to kill some time, as nothing else was going on. So, we were just sitting there, shooting the breeze, and talking about this and that, when this guy with a camera comes up to us and asks Jeff if he could interview him. Never one to turn down such a person, he agreed, and since I was just sitting there, I ended up being part of the interview as well. Jeff told him about his background, what he was most "famous" for (he did the air-quotes when he said that), what he was working on at the moment, and who his filmmaking inspirations were (one of whom was actually Jerry Lewis), and then I was asked what my favorite and least favorite of his movies were, which I was honest about. I think I'll put the address to that interview on YouTube below, if anyone wants to check it out. The channel is called Weird Review (that's their logo you're seeing here), which also had a website, but it seems as though the website is no longer available (which is a shame, because they had some photos of me, Jeff, and my mom following the interview), and the YouTube channel hasn't been updated in four years. And yes, for all those who've ever been curious about what I look and sound like, the guy sitting to Jeff's left in this video is me. I apologize if I come across as a bit awkward, as I can be a little self-conscious and introverted when talking with people I don't know, due to my Asperger's. But, I hope you'll get a real sense of the rapport I had with Jeff from it (and I also want to say that, as heavy as I am there, I have lost some weight, as well as some hair). Also, what you'll see is actually a second attempt at that interview, as we did it the first time, but at the end, the guy realized something had gone wrong. I don't remember what the issue was but we had to do it again. And I wasn't around for the little bit at the end with John Rhys-Davies. He was a guest there, was milling around nearby, and they got him to do that coda.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO-qz8g82yc

And I think that's where I'll leave things. There are probably other little moments with Jeff that I'm forgetting but I've talked about all the major ones I wanted to and I hope that, during the time you've been reading this, you've gotten a sense of what a special person he was in my life, as well as the lives of everyone else who knew him. I'll likely make more friends between now and whenever I leave this Earth but, like Christopher Lee said, I will never have another relationship like the one I had with Jeff, and it's really affecting to think that I'll never again hear his great voice, see his smiling face, or share more stories and memories with him. If there is an afterlife, I can only hope that I will one day be able to see him again. In closing, I leave you with these lines from his obituary: "Although he leaves behind a remarkable body of work and undoubted artistry, Jeff’s most profound legacy will be left among those who knew him best as a tremendous friend and loving family man. He was noted among those closest to him for his modest nature, servant’s heart, and genuine love for others. Jeff served as caretaker for his mother until her death in 2020, as well as other family members who depended on Jeff’s care... Because of his selflessness, Jeff’s life leaves behind a lasting impression of kindness and encourages us to love and be gracious to one another. Jeff’s distinctive laugh, wit, and humble character will be sorely missed by all who knew him, but his legacy lives on in the heartfelt stories shared by those his life touched."

Thank you for your friendship, Jeff. Rest in peace.