All you can eat

First day in Vegas. Richard takes us to the legendary buffet at The Orleans, where we’re staying.

“I don’t know of a single place in the world where two people can eat for less.”

He’s got a point. It’s two-for-one on tuesdays so for $5 a head we have the run of an enormous food hall, and free drinks. There are hundreds of calorifically challenged peeps at the troughs, chowing down on steaks and ribs for breakfast. It’s a spectacular sight.

In the afternoon we waddle out onto the strip for a wander, filming until we get told to stop and then moving on.

The city really comes alive as night falls. We’re booked in to the Stratosphere for dinner, where we get some shots of the city. The restaurant is 107 floors up and revolving gently so we get the full panorama. 

Richard clicks with the manager, Robert, who is old school Vegas. He used to hang with the Rat Pack. He worked with the Beach Boys. He’s met Buster Keaton for goodness sake. He and Richard flip it around. He’s right on the money. “Richard, you need to forgive yourself”. It’s a great encounter.

Furthur

Back on the bus. I fly in from Toronto, Josh and Barb and JP and Richard come from Fargo, where Richard’s 4 hiking sticks and breathing machine cause some hold ups but somehow he makes it on (last on last off of course).

I find them at the car hire desk, where Richard is bribing an employee with slices of cheese and pieces of sausage which he’s slicing off on one of the laminated brochures with a big pocketknife. There’s a big queue gathering behind but eventually we depart with two vehicles and a pretty good deal.

The bright lights of the strip are only about 15 minutes away. A few detours later and we’re at the hotel, where as soon as you come through the front door you hit rows of slots and dead-eyed punters feeding them relentlessly. It’s a barrage of noise and light and air conditioning.

Josh looks slightly shell shocked by the over stimulation of every sense after after the simplicity and slow pace of North Dakota.

And then there were two

It’s Day 50 of shooting. I’m up at 4.45am to catch a plane from Omaha to Houston, and then on to Toronto for the last couple of days of Hot Docs. Hopefully the film will be screening there next year. Josh stays behind to shoot with Richard’s first wife Nola.

Looks like Vegas is on, but who knows what might happen in the next 10 days. Last night Richard suggested Greg and his wife Michelle come along too. What began as a way to entice Lynn to a neutral place where Richard could make amends has grown into a full blown family get-together.

It feels strange to leave Josh and Richard - in some ways the journey is almost over, but there’s a process underway which feels like it’s only really beginning.

The Tao of Richard

Notes from a Breakfast Diplomacy Meeting:

Richard: “We need a system for resolving conflict and making decisions. When traveling with Mike in the 60s we used to flip a coin to decide where to go next, or who was paying. Why can’t we adopt that system?”

“This journey has already been the most significant growth in my twenty years of recovery and has set in motion a process that if kept on track can only have the most positive results of my life.”

“I am grateful to have been an instrument in your spiritual growth“

“We all like to hike. The summit we reach is not a destination it’s a rest point until we see the next valley and ridge to hike. We need time to rest up as we look at the valley ahead.”

“The thousand words are sometimes worth more than the pictures.”

“I am now more centred and calmly looking forward to the trip to Omaha and engaging with the people there. If we had not had this conversation I would have allowed my buttons to be pushed to total uncentredness”.

Great, lets get back on the road then.

When we arrive in Omaha Richard insists on finding a place he can buy bbq ribs. This is where he watched Obama’s inauguration and he wants to show us how down with the coloured folk he is.

“Is that an African accent?” he asks in the first place.

“No, I was born in Omaha”

They don’t have ribs, so we head to Bill’s which is next to a gas station in a fairly rough looking part of town.

“Akuna Matata brother” he says through a heavily fortified window, before placing his order.

There’s a procession of people buying cheap liquor, and Richard banters merrily with them all. Anyone else would have taken a beating but he’s all smiles as he walks out with a big bag of ribs 10 minutes later.

Son Greg is the eldest of his 3 children. They eat the ribs together in Greg’s back yard and chew the fat.

Richard presses him to get the skeletons out. Greg starts cleaning a rifle.

“When I was very young you paid a lot more attention to your friends than to me. Most of the time you were making a lot of promises and then not keeping them.”

“What could i do to be a better father from here on in”

(long pause)

“Pay attention to me. I’ve got something important to show you all the time. You’re my dad, I want to impress you. I’m proud of what I’ve done, and I want you to be proud of what I’ve done.”

When The Student Is Ready The Teacher Will Arrive

After a night in Mission and some ringing around we’ve managed to find Sylvan.

“Many winters have passed since we last met” he says on the phone when Richard speaks to him. He and Richard used to run together, and sobered up together.

Sylvan lives out in a newly built house with a creek running through the bottom of his land. He has a room full of trophies for horseshoe throwing. He lights wild sage as we sit down to break bread. He speaks slowly, deliberately.

They pray together to the Great Spirit to give Richard strength in this search for a new way of living. Sylvan shares stories of his own amends.

“You forgot your Treaty Paper“ he shouts, waving a toilet roll at Richard as we set off for Omaha.

Manic Tuesday

Last night we ended up at the North Star, which is closed on Mondays and run by a fellow whogoes by the name “The Living Legend”. He and Richad go back some, and they talk into the night in the empty bar.

We slept in a town called Gregory. In the morning Richard seems strangely hyper, and as he drives through town he suddenly pulls over and has a mock altercation with 12 foot gorilla (A statue of the town’s sports teams mascot). It seems we are beginning to see the ‘high’ side of a growing manic state.

We run in to a cowboy and his wife on an old pony trap. Richard lifts his shirt and asks the wife to whip him. It’s a good opener, and soon he’s riding alongside them. The cowboy turns out to be an old hand from California and treats us to an hour of fire and brimstone while his pretty (and much younger) wife looks on. 

Richard can’t resist a theological showdown with the right wing Baptist and an argument ensues. After getting kicked off the trap, Richard makes a a hasty amends (‘peace be with you brother!’) before the cowboy rides off.

Richard’s high is escalating and when we hit the cafe for lunch. He walks in with a scarf over his face holding a shotgun and demands to see the manager. The old ladies inside barely bat an eyelid.

Over lunch he gets a call. He loves to banter with salespeople, but as we listen (he’s sitting on another table of course) he starts to give out personal details. Card numbers. Security numbers. We try to stop him but he waves us away. Eventually he hands the phone to me, but the damage is done. I speak to the guy on the other end and question him but i can almost hear the money leaving richard’s account the longer we stay on the line. He calls his bank five minutes later, and a transaction for $995 has already gone through. Oh dear.

Richard comes back to earth with a bump and sets to work on the phone. Once again he has created a whole world of drama which needs to be unravelled.

On the way to Mission we couldn’t drive past this picture, so we lost Richard.

When we arrive he’s at the Native American University in the office of an Indian named Hollow Horn who has a photo of himself meeting the Pope on the wall. We’re trying to track down his old buddy Sylvan White Hat.

Crawlers

The room is alive with ticks. Well, two of them. JP spies one on Josh’s shirt, and I find one on my jeans. Then Richard comes in for a meeting, and he’s got one attached to the back of his neck. Josh does the honours.

We check out of the Siesta and hit the road. Richard has seen a storm brewing and wants to get his car hailed on so he can claim on the insurance. He speeds towards it.

The sky is a golden yellow, but soon we’re right in it. The rain falls so hard I can’t see more than about three metres ahead. It closes right in until I’m crawling. Then suddenly we’re out the other side, past a sign that reads:

“God does not keep us from life’s storms...He walks us through them”

The sunset is spectacular. We cross the Missouri as night falls and pause on the other side. As we film in the dusk, coyotes begin to howl.