Brenda Webb first learned Allen Ross was missing in April 1996. That’s when she got a strange phone call from Vic Banks. He had been editing a documentary he’d shot with Ross, one of the founders of Chicago Filmmakers, the local artists’ cooperative and film society. Webb, an old friend of Ross’s, was now the group’s director.
Ross’s father, Laury, had recently received a phone call from one of Greene’s ex-husbands, Denis Greene. He was also looking for Allen. Denis had told police that Linda Greene said Allen had been murdered and was buried under a house in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where a few members of the Samaritan Foundation had relocated. He had convinced the police to dig up the house’s crawl space, but they found nothing. Susan Ross told Webb the police had given up. “They weren’t all that interested.”
Ross was an important figure, not only because he helped start Chicago Filmmakers–which rents equipment to its members and screens documentaries and experimental works that otherwise wouldn’t play here–but because he set an example: he proved that someone could stay here and earn a living as a filmmaker. He loved filmmaking and made all kinds of sacrifices to remain in the business. He lived cheaply, in a seedy loft near the Maxwell Street Market. He cobbled together assignments as a cameraman on various low-budget films–slasher and exploitation movies, industrial films; some made here, some in other cities. And he earned a little extra cash teaching part-time at the School of the Art Institute. He was known for his generosity, always willing to help people make their films, often for little or no compensation. When there was no work, he drove a cab.
At the Art Institute, Ross’s patient eye and his craftsman’s love of detail combined to make him an excellent documentary filmmaker. He won a reputation for doing whatever was necessary to get a job done. He had a knack for quickly fixing even the most recalcitrant camera or sound recorder.
The last film of the trilogy details his grandfather’s funeral and his family’s muted mourning rituals, a conclusion full of understated but deeply felt emotion. The camera lingers on the casket and on the grave, and most of the shots are slightly off-kilter–all is not well. As the casket is lowered into the ground, light leaks into the camera, overexposing the film slightly. Ross loved the effect–he left these flash frames in the final cut, a reminder that even in a documentary there is more than meets the eye.
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As Ross looked forward to life after film school, he quickly realized that a career in filmmaking would be a precarious one. By the mid-70s, film was an art form under siege. TV news departments had switched from 16-millimeter film to video–with most local labs closing or cutting back on processing. This in turn drove up the cost of making a film. Ross thought filmmakers needed a way to share the expenses of plying their trade. He envisioned a place where filmmakers owned their equipment. In his darker moods, he would even talk about a time when it would be necessary to make their own film stock and develop it themselves.
Ross showed his playful side in Metrick’s performance pieces. In one, The Secret Life of Dust, the gangly Ross, wearing white tights, rode an exercise cycle continuously throughout the show. He also appeared in a postmodern version of The Honeymooners. “He was one of two or three Ed Nortons,” Metrick says. “He wasn’t embarrassed by anything.”
