Tom Casciato:
Well, it meant the world.
We started in 1991. We have made a series of five films, Kathleen Hughes, and Bill and I. The most recent one was last year, 2024. We asked Bill to work with us on that, and he said: “Oh, no, Tom. I’m too old. You and Kathy can do this without me. Don’t worry about it.”
And then, as soon as we showed him a rough cut of the film, he said: “I want to do it. I want to do it.” So we said: “OK, you will narrate it. We will just bring a sound person to your apartment. Don’t worry about a thing.”
He said: “No, no, I want to go to the studio.”
So he and his walker and his full-time health attendant and Kathy and I went down, picked him up, went down to WNET studio, PBS studio in New York, and did the narration. And he was — I have never seen him as happy. He was so glad to be in the game again, working on the film, making contributions to the script, significant ones, and still being Bill, still working until the end.
