Marcus Fair spent 25 years battling an addiction to heroin and crack cocaine, and long periods of homelessness and being in prison, before finding long-term recovery and founding Eternal Media in 2015. His primary goal in setting up this charity and social enterprise was to help other people in their recovery journey.
Marcus’s filmmaking career began when he and his friends made a film (Legacy) about a play he had written at TAPE, a Community and Film charity based in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. Marcus later relapsed back into his addiction and was in a prison a year later. There, he conceived the idea of Eternal Media. The following two films provide insights into the initial development of Eternal Media, as well as Marcus’s life at the time.
1. This Man is Going To Die [6’35”]
Wulf tells Marcus that he believes that Eternal Media is a recovery community. A recovery community that makes lots of films. He asks Marcus how he would describe Eternal Media. ‘Surreal is the best… we shouldn’t exist,’ is the reply.
Marcus talks about Simon Shaw, who was Chief Constable of North Wales. He had put a lot of money into arresting Marcus ‘over and over’. Marcus relapsed at TAPE [a Community Music & Film organisation] in 2011, and was back in prison a year later. He was still on the merry-go-round of addiction, since he hadn’t done the proper head work for recovery.
On arriving at the prison, Marcus was put in a hospital bed. He was so relieved to be there. One of the prison officers had heard about some of Marcus’s work at TAPE and got him a job doing the prison radio. Marcus loved it. He then did some filming and editing for the prison officer. He was now having the time of his life in prison. Marcus knew what he was doing was saving his life. He said to himself if this could happen to him, it could do a lot for other people. He started to spend a good deal of time planning what he could do to help others.
Tony Ormond and Ade the Blade made Marcus a case study for the Area Planning Board APB, but had to give him a code name, ‘Little Brother’, because the Board would never have funded him for a rehab place if they knew who he was. He wasn’t a safe bet. Tony and Ade asked Marcus to just go to the library from time to time and write down what had been happening to him and how he had been feeling. They were making the case that if this man was not funded, he was going to die. Marcus was eventually funded and went for a clinical detox and then to Open Minds rehab in Wrexham where he spent six months.
When he left Open Minds, Marcus went to a sober house—‘it wasn’t very sober, there were people dying in there.’ He emphasises that the toughest thing for people in the early stages of recovery is not getting appropriate housing. NACRO (National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders) then provided Marcus with accommodation, but it was a ‘shit-hole’. He was grateful for it. The voluntary organisation AVOW and then Champions House in Wrexham gave him access to a room during the day—‘it was so important for me to get up and go somewhere.’
2. Cops and Robbers [9’19”]
Marcus describes how Tony Ormond arranged for him and some others in recovery to make a presentation about their lives to senior officers of North Wales Police, including the Chief Constable Simon Shaw. As the stories were told, the prickly mood in the room changed in a positive way, and officers started to ask questions. Simon Shaw was a champion of the recovery cause, believing that people could change with the right help. He was a humanitarian, but also knew that a lot of police money could be saved if the highest level offenders could be helped to find long-term recovery.
Simon asked Marcus if he wanted to do the life story session again to others. Marcus said, ‘Why don’t you just make a film?’ Simon wasn’t confident about the police film team, and asked Marcus if he could do a better job. Marcus said he could. Simon asked him what he needed, not knowing that Marcus was straight out of rehab and had no filmmaking gear at all. Marcus asked whether he could be given the police film crew to work with, and he would teach them during the making of the film so they could go on and do more films in the future. Simon agreed.
Marcus had to make a film about addiction and how people turn it around and find recovery, using both the police and people who had been in trouble with the police. He knew that he had to avoid addicts who watched the film later saying to him that they were in a much worse state than that shown. So he had to find as actors, the worst of the worst who had turned the lives around. ‘Luckily, I had friends in low places.’
Marcus knew that the film, Flipped It!, would be his shop window, and maybe his ‘comeback’. Simon hired Colwyn Bay Theatre and invited various dignitaries to the first showing. The place was half-full of addicts and half-full of the great and the good. Even Prince Charles wrote a letter to wish them good luck. The place erupted at the end of the film. ‘We were all just sat there, you know, cops and robbers on the front row.’
Marcus describes one of the most poignant occasions during filming when they had people in recovery dressed as police during a chase scene being filmed by the police crew. One of Marcus’s friends, who was in early recovery and had led one hell of a life, was dressed as a police officer. During a break in filming, an old lady came over and asked him the time. The friend just melted—he had never felt that level of respect.
Along the way, Peter Norrey, a BAFTA-winning filmmaker from London, heard about the film being made and when he learnt that Marcus had nothing to edit the film on, he sent an editing suite which Marcus installed in his NACRO flat. Simon Shaw got more and more worried, as Marcus only got to check the film in a cinema the day before the first public screening.
The film was really well-received. ‘Simon thought he was getting a police training film, he gets a Ridley Scott opening.’ The stage was packed with all the team doing a curtain call after the screening. Simon, Peter and Marcus looked at each other and agreed, ‘This cannot finish here.’