Marooned

Bob Denver stepped into my studio. Gilligan never left.

“Look right here” I said to Bob Denver, as I pointed to the lens. One frame was all I needed or wanted. The client had left the room for a few minutes, leaving us alone.

Bob was forever locked in my mind as Gilligan, the goofy guy from my childhood, and here he was, sitting in a rowboat, marooned, not on a distant television island, but on a white seamless background in my Charlotte studio. The powerful strobe lights pulled every last kilowatt through the conduit — that familiar zing — and I held my breath against the circuit breakers, long enough to fill with dread. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. A man, once and still an unplanned comedic hero of America, trapped in his boat by the people like me. The client returned, back to business.