Eric Frith byrdproductions.com	Editor
Pete Droge puzzletreemusic.com	Composer
Vicki Dunakin	Producer
David Fox and Diana Wilmar foxwilmar.com	Cinematographers
Doug Loviska	Editor
Drew Christie drewchristie.com	Animator
Dave Hunsaker	Writer
Annalisa Barelli annalisabarelli.com	Artist
Larry Estes	Executive Producer
Aileen Imperial	Production Co-ordination
Lisa and Josh Tuininga  the-medium.net	Webmasters
Cecile Thomas  make-it-matter.com	Artistic Consultant
Don Bunger	Hogwarts English Department, Editor
Jake Farmer  jakefarmer.com	Web Stuff and Spiritual Counsel
Debrae Firehawk  debraefirehawk.com	Mystic and Angelic Counsel
Doug Serrill	Engineer

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Our Namesake

 

Woody the Dog was the most famous canine in Ketchikan, Alaska.  He even hosted his own radio show, Chew the Bone with Dr. Woody, where he dished out poignant and cosmic advice to problem pets and the people who lived with them.  Woody was my medicine wheel for seven years.  Then one day he wandered into the Alaska woods, never to be seen again.  He was a great sage and a clown prince of dogs.

 

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The Full Story…

Our Story begins twenty-seven floors above the concrete in a skyscraper in downtown Seattle, a place I called Boxtown where I was masquerading as a three piece-suited accountant, a CPA wishing he were outside instead flying the free air with the seagulls that passed by the window. Stacks of audit papers were becoming a prison wall around me.

I had to get free and got my chance in Alaska. The accounting firm had a handful of Alaskan Native Indian villages as clients. I raised my hand and said, “Give me every on of those.“ And so I spent my summers with the Deadheads riding the deck of the Alaska State ferry in my oxford shirt and audit bags, up to Kasaan, Hoonah and Saxman in Southeast Alaska. Alaska simply knocked me right between the eyeballs—its gourmet air and water stunned me into the reality that my boxtown days were over.

I went to work in Saxman, a Tlingit town south of Ketchikan, as a controller for the Indian owned Cape Fox Corporation. After playing a central role in rescuing the company from bankruptcy due to flagrantly incompetent white management, I started a cultural tourism venture in the village. I worked with the elders to get the kids involved in traditional songs and dances and hired every teenager I could find as tour guides. We built a tribal house, carving center and village store. I was adopted by the tribe, given the name “Gonya” the Tlingit name for “woodpacker” or beaver—yet elders called me affectionately White Raven. Once the village was on its own feet and on its way to become the most successful cultural tourist village in Alaska, I left the formal work world to rest and to explore various art forms that were beckoning to me.

During all of this, my sidekick was Woody the Dog, a yellow lab who was to become the most famous pooch in Ketchikan Alaska. He had his own radio show, Chew the Bone with Doctor Woody where he dispensed invaluable cosmic wisdom to problem pets or people who lived with them. I was doing two radio shows a week on public radio station KRBD, Wordsongs about good lyrics no matter the style and Over the Edge, a rock and roll show on Saturday nights.

I also began exploring theater and acted in a half dozen plays and directed a few others. Meanwhile photography had become a companion of mine and I did a number of multi-image slide shows on a visual piano that allowed me to conduct the projectors live. This had been the brainchild of my high school English teacher Don Bunger, a shaman with a magic lamp. He housed himself in Room 261 at Highline High School in Burien and there, through the most extraordinary non-linear, courageous and inventive ways, defied the powers of conformity baying at him from all directions and gave his students the opportunity to discover abstraction, art, culture and free thinking. Because of him I had the courage to make the leap from accounting to art. 

Woody the Dog and I lived in a wizard’s hut by the sea near a waterfall called Shakri-La. I renamed the waterfall—the soundtrack of those seven years of my life—Woody Creek. Living there in a poetic timeless way, I began to dabble in documentary film, leading to my first piece, a 30-minute show for Alaskan public TV on Tlingit elder Esther Shea called The Bear Stands Up.

My time in Alaska culminated in an experimental multi-image art show on the Caves of Southeast Alaska called Treasures of the Tongass. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and Alaska Humanities Council, Treasures toured to ten cities. It featured my photographs of living underworld with a group of eccentric explorers who had discovered over 500 caves in the Alaskan rainforest and were in a race against time to save the ancient forests above them from the logging companies.

I moved back to Seattle to help shepherd my mom, June Duncan and dad, Douglas Edward to the great beyond in 1997 where they are still learning and growing (Ps: death is not the end).  Workwise, I did some commercial video and multi-image productions for Carabineer and Jack Morton. While these shows were successful and well received, I remember walking out of an event I produced at the Sheraton Hotel that the audience liked so well they asked to see it twice, feeling completely empty. I just couldn’t work for corporate America any more. I couldn’t help them sell this planet into ruin. I had to work with people and tell stories about people who were interested in waking up, who realized the Titanic was going to go down unless we started to love, care and cherish each other and this planet more. I also became more and more convinced that our survival depended on recognizing, listening to and empowering women in the world.  

Luckily I found Pyramid Communications that did work exclusively for social cause non-profits and foundations. Hired as a writer, I approached the owners, John Hoyt and Anne Tillery and asked them if I could create a film and video department for them. They agreed and that became my passion to create short films to help good causes market their work or to use for fundraising events. 

On the side, I began to work on my own documentary, one that eventually became The Heart of the Game. Once Miramax picked it up, I stepped out full time to devote my energies to Woody Creek Pictures.

In 2009 I told the universe that I refused to do any more work unless I was partnered with my co-creatrix. I set off on a five-month tour of Asia, including Thailand, India and Nepal. (This tour was chronicled in Waylon’s Journey, a blog I wrote along the way and that you can read on this site). While in Thailand at an outdoor restaurant, I had my breath taken away by the fetching figure of one Sophie Jane Mortimer. I saw her radiating joy to everyone around her and realized that I needed her heart close to mine, that taking care of her was my next great work of art. Our marriage is the strongest most beguiling, challenging, beautiful and mysterious spiritual practice I have ever engaged in. 

We are now co-creating a number of films that have as their essence a divinely mystical intent, one that hopefully inspires deep listening, care of the earth and compassion for every creature on earth. As well, I am head over heals writing my first book, destined to be a cult classic. Woody the Dog, Life with a Canine Avatar.