Reporter's Notebook

Loving The Craft

Alexander MacKenzie, founder of Vancouver-based Highland Light Productions, made a career in movies by accident.
“It never occurred to me” to be in film, he said.
But as a child, MacKenzie played on the “Howdy Doody” set with a family friend who worked on the show.
“It was like daycare for us,” he said.
Later, as a sailor, MacKenzie met a screenwriter at a bar in 1970 who was preparing a script called “The Last Detail.” He paired its star with MacKenzie for a character study.
“The Navy sent me on temporary duty to Columbia Studios and introduced me to this skinny kid in the corner, Jack Nicholson, who was from New Jersey just like me,” MacKenzie said.
The Navy assigned MacKenzie to the studio, where he was an extra and crew member for “The Longest Yard,” “The Rockford Files” and more.
MacKenzie completed six tours in Vietnam and stumbled back into movies while vacationing in Hawaii near a movie set. Today he’s making plans for Highland Light to shoot feature films with local crew and actors.
He’s nonchalant when talking about his career, and that’s partly why he’s come so far. MacKenzie wasn’t starry-eyed, he said, so directors assumed he knew what he was doing.
MacKenzie is in a unique profession, but his advice for film newbies applies to any industry: Love the craft, learn all aspects of it and help others get ahead while you do it.
More about MacKenzie’s plans for Highland Light is in the current issue of the VBJ.

--Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com