The Mod Squad

Sure they're both elder statesmen of the Fourth Estate now, but once upon a time Steve Flyte and David R. Busse were young broadcast bucks, sporting enough moustaches, straps and gadgets to fuel an entire episode of The Electric Company. What's more, this intrepid news crew did it all while dressed in the finest JCPenney fashions! Short-sleeve shirts with that Western cut, bulging battery belts and the kind of high-waisted jeans that Jessica Simpson tried to bring back a few weeks ago! "Are those Garanimals? Don't answer. In fact, ignore me altogether - for I can hardly judge fashion. Not this Kentucky Waterfall in the distance. Besides, these guys truly are legends; Steve Flyte became famous in 1979 after he scratch-built a microwave antenna in the field and saved an ABC News remote from going down in flames. And David R. Busse? Why he became the Forrest Gump of electronic news-gathering. Which reminds me...

Run, Busse, RUN!

The Stuff of Blockbusters

Whenever I feel silly or vain for amassing so many pictures of myself with a fancycam, I peruse the personal gallery of one David R. Busse, intrepid everyman, legendary lenslinger. Taken as a whole, his photos play out like some unlikely storyboard; frozen frames from a life too rich and varied to possibly be true. Here he's pictured chillin' with soundman John Casillas and a Salvadorian soldier along the Pan American Highway near Cojutapeque, El Salvador, circa 1982. I'm no film critic, but in my not so humble opinion Hollywood would do well to stop regurgitating old TV shows and start dramatizing the plights of people who've spent their days riding the line between access and peril - if for no other reason than to see the likes of Brad Pitt rock a hat and 'stache like that. Sure, it'll never happen but from where I sit in the multiplex, King Kong ain't got nuthin' on David R. Busse...

Backache at Eleven

Sure, your little Namby-PambyCam fits in a purse, but once upon a time videosmithing called for a strong back and a wingman or two. Take Steve Flyte and the ubiquitous David R. Busse. Way back in '80, they roamed the mean streets of San Bernardino as a newsgathering team: a bulky but mobile crew of two bristling with battery-belts and bad moustaches. Just try and outrun them: they'll jump in their souped-up Nova idling just off screen and smoke your disco-ass. But I digress; something I'm wont to do when pressed with so much retro-tech. The hubris, the gadgetry, that totally bitchin' three-quarter sleeve network shirt... those guys were operators.

As for the corduroys - hey, YOU chase pablum and tragedy with half a Radio Shack strapped to your back ... Action-Slacks are out of the question. Just ask Busse...

"Steve Flyte and me on assignment in San Bernardino, Calif., sometime in 1980. He's using a BVU-100 3/4" tape deck rigged with an external battery so he can get double the battery life out of two gel cell batteries on his belt. I'm shooting with an Ikegami HL77 powered by the oddball Cine 60 +/- six volt batteries required to power this camera. I purchased electrical linemen's suspenders and rigged them to clip to the belt, spreading the weight and making the belt easier to wear. We were overjoyed when the newer HL79A came along a few months later."

Right on...

Up the Funky Unknown

When last we left David R. Busse, the intrepid everyman was scanning the Klan. But distilling idiocy is just one facet of television photojournalism. Sometimes, you get to go on boat rides!
Such was the case in July of 1982, when our hero strapped on a moustache and pulled up his tube socks for three weeks of flooding coverage on the Colorado River. I haven't seen a stitch of footage from that particular scene, but there is much to glean from this Reed Saxon AP photo: The trusty BVU-110 in the foreground, reporter Bill Van Amburg's unironic trucker hat, the strobing wake behind them, sound guy Tom Morris' youthful gaze ... those Jim Dangle shorts. Anyway, before I bogart any more details, let's hear from David R. Busse himself - a raconteur in his own right...

Most of our other memories of those trips were 115-degree heat, horse flies the size of canned hams, increasingly irritated property owners becoming even more irritated as they drank more cold beer to slake both thirst and anger. Local cops on the river were, of course, happy to take us for “guided tours” of the flood area for the first week or so, and those times on the water became our salvation from the hellish heat. The boat rides became so common, that we almost used them as scheduled respite from the midday heat. After a couple days of this flood duty, I dispensed with any sort of dress code and decided that cut off jeans and tee shirts were the way to go. This made me look like a local and simplified the “afternoon swim” that also became part of our flood-coverage ritual.

Hey, don't apologize. I'd have killed for a moustache like that in '82. I was but a schoolyard punk at the time; not yet even dreaming of the kind of adventures you were already racking up. Now, tell me about the space shuttle again...

Glass Action Hero

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a thirty year old reminder you'll never be as cool as David R. Busse. Don't feel bad. Few news-gatherers have lived through as many hard and fast deadlines as this West Coast legend. It's why we're dedicating an entire wing of the Lenslinger Institute to him. That, and he's got a suh-weet photo collection that we really think will liven up the place. This latest one is a doozy. In it, Busse can clearly be seen walking the skid of a chartered JetRanger, as he demonstrates how the quintessential cameraman got it done w-a-y back in the 80's. Long before gyro-stabilized cameras made crawling out of the cockpit unnecessary, Busse and his buds relied on a custom-made harness and enlarged sets of genitalia to bag. that. shot.

But as always, the picture only reveals a sliver of the story. Ask Busse and he'll tell you of catching a flying seat cushions by hand - seconds before it got sucked into the tail rotor. He'll tell you of using this same rig to fly low and slow over the 1992 L.A. riots. Hell, he'll even tell you about that time they had to land in a Stuckey's parking lot so his buddy Martin could take a piss. What he won't discuss is exactly when the pussification of America took hold, but I'm betting Busse was hovering overhead and laughing the moment it did. Recently, David stuck that heroic old harness on eBay and waited for a clamor to commence. It did not. Now, my personal pick for The World's Most Interesting Man thinks that celebrated series of straps should hang in a museum and I, for one, agree.

In fact, I have just the - AHEM - institute in mind...

Legends of the Maw

Bonfires, lock-downs, cockfights ... you never know where you'll run into (or over) a colleague.  And since it's chaos we seek, we never let it stop us from catching up. Just ask David R. Busse, a Senior Fellow with the Lenslinger Institute. Busse has seen it all, all right, but he hasn't done so alone. And when he spots a colleague across the maw, he doesn't let said bedlam interrupt his visit. Such was the case the other day, when protesters stormed the campus of the University of California-Riverside...

"Your correspondent, now 55 and proud of the fact that he recently shed knee braces and takes ibuprofen only on really busy days, jumped in the fray and moved up the stairs with the mob, certainly the only person on this campus at the moment wearing a Cabela’s baseball cap. As crowd turned the corner near the top landing, they were met by a brace of helmeted University police in full riot gear. The upward mobility of the group quickly stopped.

In younger days, your correspondent would have pushed his way to the 18-inches or so of tense air that separated youths from hickory batons. About the time he began to ponder that move, and among drum-beating, chanting and loud discussion of the moment, there was a tap on the shoulder, and someone muttering “Hey, Busse…” (pronounced bus-eee in case you were wondering).

It was the familiar voice of Kurt Miller, veteran news photographer of the Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper, and a person with whom this correspondent had covered fire, flood and, now, insurrection, for more than three decades.

The chanting continued, but among the shoving, jostling and drumming, two veterans managed to catch up on the goings-on among respective places of employment, family stuff, retirement plans and other such weighty matters…cocktail party conversation among the jetsam and flotsam...

Ten minutes later, the protesters retreated, cops held their ground and peace returned to that side of the building. Your correspondent began to think of deadlines and image ingestion issues. A packed lunch also awaited in the back seat of Minicam Unit 51 and somewhere in that lunch bag were a couple of ibuprofen tablets."

With friends like that, who needs painkillers?

Rolling in the Deep

Boom microphones burst into flames if they dip into his shot.

He can change receiver frequencies using only his mustache.

Wherever he sets his tripod, begonias soon cluster.

High-speed police chases always follow his chopper's shadow.

Batteries grow stronger when placed in his pocket.


Oprah's photog comes over and jumps on his couch.

Whenever he wears jorts, a new South Pacific island chain forms.

His every whim comes with its very own time-code.

He once fed an entire village from a single fanny-pack.


Men on the Street stop to ask him questions.

He is The Most Interesting Cameraman In The World and his name is David R. Busse. Back in the summer of 1983, he even caused floodwater along the Colorado River to evaporate - but not before stopping to pose with a couple of mere mortals...

"We had no satellite trucks or other live capability from the California-Arizona border area, so we spent three weeks flying out there each day, shooting a story and flying back, to feed our footage from an airport tarmac in Riverside, Rialto or wherever..."

Sure you did, Busse, sure you did. Stay thirsty, my friend.

Inbreds at Eleven

Understand, I don't put these costumed rubes on my site without a little trepidation. But what better way to introduce you to the career of one David R. Busse, news photographer, sat truck operator and sore-shouldered witness to the last thirty years of history. I've been aware of Busse for some time; he's a veritable legend at KABC-TV in Los Angeles and a constant contributor to b-roll.net. But it wasn't until he shared his personal photo spread with me that I began to grasp just how much this journeyman photog has eyeballed in the name of news. His collection of snapshots reminds of a montage from Forrest Gump - in which a likeable everyman wanders in and out of our nation's most important frames. He's been gracious enough to allow me to display a few of those photos here - provided I don't drool over any of the pixels. So, let's begin with the above image, captured by Gail Fisher - now a National Geographic photographer based in DC. It was October of 1981 - at the very center of Fontana, California...

The Klansmen decided they would march down Sierra Ave., the town's main drag, in a show of strength. The march drew plenty of publicity and the Klansman were outnumbered about 50-1 by outraged townspeople, cops and media. The mill closed in 1983 and Fontana's rough edges were worn down by the transition to bedroom community in the growing Southern California economy. Today, people of all races and kinds live in the tract home communities of Fontana, there's little left her to suggest bikers, steel mill workers and the Ku Klux Klan. So be it.

So be it, indeed. Next time, a few candid snapshots of young David hamming it up with a then unknown Bigfoot. Well, not really...

Remembering Altman

Over at the Photog Nation's favorite watering hole, longtime contributor David R. Busse is sharing a treasure. Fourteen years ago, the Los Angeles news photographer went to a West Hollywood hotel for what he thought would be another soulless press junket. Instead, he was treated to a languid lunch with famed director Robert Altman. The legendary filmmaker instantly recognized the veteran photog as a kindred spirit of the lens. Over sandwiches, Altman spoke excitedly of his new film The Player and quizzed Busse on his own background...

We had an all-encompassing lunch conversation about the state of the entertainment industry, our favorite places in the Midwest (his was Michigan, for reasons I can’t recall), and the reasons I liked my job. Altman seemed to “get it” the minute I described a typical day. “No two days alike and you get to be producer, director and DP (Director of Photography) all in one, making little movies for the news...” he said.

Yep.

Read the whole thing, then go rent Nashville.

Riff on a Glyph

When David R. Busse fished this photo out of a Louisville dumpster some twenty-eight years ago, he rescued a treasure. For on this papyrus lies an image so fraught with newscaster hubris that I nearly fell off my bar stool when I saw it...



Libraries have been penned about Murrow and the Boys, dashing correspondents who trod the globe for network perks and a shot at immortality. But I yearn for TV tales from the local front where native sons applied the ethos of Edward R. to the local five and dime. Imagine the thrill of our early pioneers as they strove to illustrate radio for the first time. Flickering pictures Crackling sound! Photogs in pleated slacks! The Golden Age of Television? For some! All the sepia tone in the world can't fix an image this strikingly white. But nightly news tends to reflect society, not improve it. So don't blame these Brill-Creamed Broadcasters for the lack of diversity; they've driven too many station cars the size of bread trucks through dicey neighborhoods to look at life from just one point of view. When they weren't inventing TV News, they were thrusting new ideas on the people all around them, and creating a broadcasting curriculum still taught in schools, practiced in the field and mined for yucks on The Daily Show...

Not bad for a buncha fellas in scratchy wool suits.

Louisville Slingers

ABC, 1978 (Pilot Episode) In this short-lived Starsky & Hutch spin-off, "Berger and The Bus" cruise the means streets of Kentuckiana in search of deadlines, breakers and a couple of those new Members Only jackets. While S&H featured the 'Striped Tomato' Ford Torino, this primetime hopeful revolved around the RCA TK-76 handheld color camera and the duo's thwarted efforts to score chicks with it. Producers initially had high hopes for the series, but quickly pulled the plug when The Incredible Hulk's strong debut instantly dominated key nerd demographics. The series' only surviving episode is known for heavy polyester product placement, unsuccessful catchphrase attempts ("Are we Rollin'?") and it's Electric Light Orchestra soundtrack. Now popular on college campuses, fraternity brothers trade jello shots each time the soundman character runs his fingers through his perfectly feathered hair. Starring real life Lousiville newsies Jim Berger and David R. Busse, with a special cameo by Antonio 'Huggy Bear' Fargas. *** (3 stars)