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| Adam's grandfather, Murray with his oldest sister |
The story of the name is simple, but also a powerful bitter sweet tale. You see, it all started with Adam's grandfather, Murray. Murray always a goofy and loving man used to always come home a bit hunched over and tired from work, but the moment he saw his kids, he would hide his fatigue by acting like a monkey to make them laugh. Adam's mother and uncle then started to ask Murray to "make like a monkey" all the time.
Now, you may be asking yourself, that's it? What does this have to do with film? Read on.
Sadly, Murray passed away in 2007 from Alzheimer's. Adam had always been close with his grandfather and had visited him many times over Murray's two year battle with the disease. The difficult truth is, that while you always try to remember someone with the disease for who they were before, witnessing such a ravenous transformation can have an effect on a person's memory.
Now, Adam had heard all of the stories about Murray's life and seen photos of him young and old, but he had never really seen his grandfather as a young man and the VHS tapes of them together had been ruined by time. He had nothing left to remember who Murray was before the previous two years other than still images. This is where things get interesting.....
A few days after Murray's funeral, Adam's family and close friends got together to celebrate the man's life. Stories and pictures were shared, people laughed, they cried, and as things were winding down a close family friend brought out a surprise. While going through photos and various things they had of Murray over the years, they discovered an almost 50 year old 8mm home film with a projector. As the film ran through the light and projected onto the wall, Adam watched in amazement as a he saw a untarnished moving image of his 28 year old grandfather coming home and playing, "make like a monkey" with his kids. For Adam and all, it was both a deeply sentimental moment and a profound example of the enduring power that film has. There and then, Adam said that one day he would name his production company after Murray. Five years later he did.
