For Blake Heron...
Did you guys hear about Blake?
That's the text that came from our sound man, Sean... "I just found out that he passed away" he continued, and that's when tragedy struck, and shock passed through us from Los Angeles to Dallas, to New York, London, Paris and Barcelona.
It rendered us, the team at DRAFT... speechless.
The minutes pass and you try to make sense of it. And you fail, because you can't make sense of something that is senseless.
Blake told us about his film, "A Thousand Junkies" premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, but we never really had the chance to talk about his feature, never mind much about its subject matter. Little did we know he was indeed somewhat imitating life.
In an online interview Blake draws his audience ever closer with a firsthand account of the darkest days of his life and how he survived.
Video courtesy of Dorri Olds
In our brief acquaintance, he seemed to enjoy living life and took-in the many locations where we've been shooting our documentary film CHARIVARI a fashion UPROAR (where he was our camera assistant but stood in as DP for our Paris and Florida locations); especially Paris, our last shoot. Just a little over three weeks ago, we had the pleasure of meeting his girlfriend, hair/makeup artist, Chanel Panagiotopoulos. Our hearts go out to her… Who would ever have guessed that everything could change so drastically, so suddenly? That her life would be irrevocably shifted, and now she would be left without him, on her own - her tragedy to endure.
Spending more and more time with him over the course of our shoots this year, we came to know that he was still an actor at heart, as well as becoming an emerging filmmaker. And we are thankful that he lent his talents to our project, and for being a part of our first feature film.
To Blake, no matter how dark the space became around his star, for us it shined and will forever shine brightly on… our thoughts are of his family—for it is their tragedy most of all.