Doug Bruce This is Me

Education

 View all 8 references Web References

1. 1. www.vaildaily.com

   www.vaildaily.com/article/2008 - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/25/2008   Last Visited: 5/26/2008

   The ceremony included singing from students, a video celebrating the milestones students had reached, and speeches from valedictorian Caitlin Mutter and salutatorian Britni Beagley - and from teachers Nancy Whitley and Doug Bruce.
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   "No one can ever be the first again," said Bruce, who teaches calculus and pre-calculus.
   
   "You've made it virtually impossible for us to forget you," Bruce told students.

2. 2. www.moonrisemovies.com

   www.moonrisemovies.com/newslet - [Cached]

   Published on: 9/8/2006   Last Visited: 11/1/2007

   What It's About: On July 3, 2003, alone on a subway train bound for Coney Island, 37-year-old wealthy British ex-stockbroker turned photography student Doug Bruce lost all his memories. Until that moment, he was apparently healthy and then, for no apparent reason, he lost every memory of his friends, his family, and everything he had ever experienced. The film recreates the first terrifying hours as a disoriented Doug wanders around before encountering the police who send him to the Coney Island Hospital Psychiatric ward where he is given an identity tag reading "Unknown White Male". A telephone number in his backpack provides a tenuous connection to a woman he had been dating, and finally she collects him from the hospital. Doug started recording his re-entry into the world just one week after the amnesia and this film, made by a friend from his earlier life, uses this footage as part of its documentation of what happens as he embarks on an overwhelming journey of discovery - of his family, photography, the taste of food, and, most of all, his sense of self. For Doug is in the unusual situation of being able to experience the world with the eyes of a child but the mind and body of a man.
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   Why It Matters: The fundamental question Doug asks himself and others: "How much is our identity determined by the experiences we have? And how much is already there - pure us?" (Do we really remember our second birthday - or just what we were told?). He seems to have changed as a result of his experience and friends find him more articulate, more serious, more focused - altogether it seems they find him a nicer person. And so another question arises: now that he's got a new lease on life with two years of memories and a 95 percent chance that his previous 37 years will return too; does he really want his old memories back? As he describes his current life: "The longer that it goes on, the less I care if my memory comes back." This may be fine for Doug, but it affects his parents, his ex-girlfriend and his former friends in most unsettling ways….

3. 3. Shooting People: Shooter Films Interview with

   shootingpeople.org/shooterfilm - [Cached]

   Published on: 9/11/2005   Last Visited: 6/17/2008

   London Shooter Rupert Murray heard rumours about an old friend Doug Bruce, now living in New York.Doug had forgotten who he was and everything about his past.He was now trying to find out about himself.It was a wonderful opportunity for an old friend to reconnect and to join Doug on his quest for to recover his self-identity, with his camera recording progress, if that was agreeable to Doug and his family.
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   Doug Bruce, the Unknown White Male of the film, lost his memory on 3rd July 2003 ? how long had you been friends?Not sure really.I can?t remember the first time we met, I just have a general idea of a group of friends running around, getting up to no good in about 1990, and Doug was part of that group.Of course when he lost his memory it called into question all of these kinds of details, how long had I actually known him for?How good a friend was I? Where was the person I used to know?
   
   Doug was living in New York when he lost his memory ? what sort of job was he doing?He was a second year Photography student at the NY School of Visual Arts.
   
   Did Doug have any family in New York or was he married or in a steady relationship?Doug, rather uniquely in these cases, had no immediate dependents or responsibilities, so he was able to confront aspects of his previous life on his own terms.If he had been the father of three kids and worked a 9-5, he would have had to deal with the old Doug from day one.As it was, he could choose which elements of his past life he liked and which he didn?t; in effect he had a completely fresh start, he wasn?t really beholden to anybody or anything.
   
   How did you get to hear the news of Doug?s amnesia?Chinese whispers in London.As Doug was in New York and didn?t like talking to people from his past, information was patchy and so the rumour machine filled in the gaps, all kinds of theories were doing the rounds, but none were as astonishing as what actually occurred on that day in July.
   
   What exactly had happened to Doug?What were you told about his condition?Incredibly it is, until this day, a complete mystery.The doctors could not really come up with any definite answers and anyway, I wanted to concentrate on the human impact of what had happened.Also, to investigate the wider philosophical questions the film raises, about identity.
   
   The details really are stranger than fiction.At some point between 8.00pm July 3rd and 9.00am July 4th 2003 something happened to Doug to make him change his clothes, fill his backpack with strange objects but no ID, leave his Manhattan apartment and get on the subway to Coney Island, possibly the worst place to end up with amnesia.During this time he lost his memory, but wasn?t aware he had lost it, a condition known as the fugue state.
   
   He checked into the local police station and they passed him onto Coney Island Hospital who were unable to release him until he was identified.He had one telephone number in his backpack, but the woman at the end didn?t know who he was.The ER department was filling up -it was 4th July holiday- and they were talking about sending him upstate to a mental institution.Even though he?d lost his memory, he knew he didn?t want to end up there, so he tried the telephone number for the last time? and so it goes on.
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   Doug lost his episodic memory and nothing else.He retained his semantic and procedural and also his ability to form new memories.So, he can remember everything from the point that he realised he didn?t know who he was, onwards.The semantic and procedural retention showed itself when Doug found out he could speak fluent French.Someone asked him in the hospital and it just came out of his mouth.BUT, he didn?t know that he could speak French, he had no knowledge of what Paris actually was, or any recollection of having lived there for 8 years.Of course, if you asked him what the capital of France was, he could tell you.
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   Doug agreed to make the film and we haven?t looked back since.
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   In fact, I mapped out a large part of the narrative on paper, before I had even met Doug in New York.I knew I had this one catastrophic event and I could trace backwards and forwards from that point-in-time, simultaneously.As Doug moved on with his life in the present, he was also slowly re-engaging with his past and I could powerfully cut between the two.This is not to say the film is contrived, or manipulated beyond the story itself, things just naturally fell into place.The fact also that part of the story involved me reconnecting with Doug, allowed me to storyboard sequences which imagine what things might have been like for him, like eating food for the first time.
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   Rupert was at that stage wholly immersed in the filming, having followed Doug for around four months.
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   I wanted to cut the mother of all montage sequences for when Doug suddenly is confronted with everything the world contains.The film is made up of virtually every modern recording format known to mankind, except 70mm (although I tried to source some.) So, it?s a patchwork of clips, scenes and styles - much like our memory itself.
   
   There was some material shot of an interview with Doug immediately after his crisis and before you started ? what can you tell us about that?
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   When Doug first told me what had actually happened and that he?d filmed much of it.
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   The principle character Doug was not only an old friend of Rupert?s but also someone who had also undergone the most terrible trauma.We were very keenly aware of how vulnerable he was and our duty of care to him became the paramount influence throughout the production.
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   This showed itself in Doug, who sometimes became slightly paranoid that he couldn?t know the whole truth about elements of his past.He compensated for this, by being fairly demanding of me.He just hated it if I couldn?t be definite about things.I?m not good at that in the best of times, and I?m especially bad during the of making a film.But that?s as problematic as it got, Doug, as you can see from the film, is a very intelligent, balanced and thorough individual.He was a perfect contributor.
   
   You and Doug were friends before this happened, but Doug lost all that knowledge, did it come back?Is your old friendship refreshed ? or renewed - or is it a different friendship from what it was?That is a difficult question to answer.I have a totally new relationship with Doug.Actually, for me it?s the second time I?ve known him, but for him, it?s the first time he?s known me.There are many elements of our friendship that are exactly the same ... others are totally different.Also, the very experience of making a film with someone creates something different, a mix of the professional and something very emotional.I?d never actually WORKED with Doug before his amnesia, so it?s difficult to make a true comparison.
   
   Has Doug seen the film and what does he feel about it?Both Doug and his family have seen the film and have been so positive, which means everything to me.I desperately wanted them to like it, love it, you know, be really moved by it, to see it as a kind of celebration of everything about Doug, past and present, a film about friendship and family and how much all that means.Sorry to gush, but I did.It?s nice to know that they think, on the whole, that I have depicted a truthful representation of their family and what happened to it.
   
   Identifying Doug when he presented with his mind blanked out was a problem because he had no ID on him at all ? Could this happened to you?Do you always have ID of some kind?I never carry ID.
   
   And Doug, does he carry ID now?