By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
For Ray Farkas, an Emmy Award-winning producer and TV documentarian who died of colon cancer Jan. 4, the signature camera shot was a long-distance technique that, ironically, was so intimate and revealing it resembled eavesdropping.
Mr. Farkas, 71 at the time of his death at the Washington Home, would equip his subjects with wireless mikes in a setting where they were comfortable -- perhaps a park or a diner. He would ask a leading question to get them talking and then retreat to his camera 25 feet or farther away. The subjects soon would forget the camera and its telephoto lens, and the result, almost invariably, would be something natural, honest, unexpected.
His stories, with the quickly identifiable "Farkas Look," often aired on Fox TV's "America's Most Wanted." One example featured interviews with New Yorkers not long after 9/11.
"He found a very different way to get people talking about their fears and their feelings," said Phil Lerman, a former co-executive producer of "America's Most Wanted."
Friends and former colleagues said the technique's effectiveness had as much to do with Mr. Farkas's quirky, engaging personality as it did with camera placement. "No one could get people talking like Ray could," Lerman said. "It had to do with his unassuming manner and a sly, devilish smile that you couldn't help but respond to."
With his knobby knees poking out of a pair of shorts -- he wore them year-round -- he was both non-threatening to the people he filmed and fascinated by the stories they told. "You can't fake that. That was genuine Ray," Lerman said.
On an October day in 2004, Mr. Farkas himself was the subject. After receiving a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, he chose to undergo a risky surgical procedure at Georgetown University Hospital called deep brain stimulation. Because he would remain conscious during the procedure and would feel no pain, he decided to direct and narrate a documentary of the experience.
The technique involves drilling two holes into the skull and implanting microelectrodes that deliver impulses into the brain to block the shakiness and unsteadiness that afflict patients with Parkinson's. Mr. Farkas was the third person to undergo the procedure at Georgetown.
With his sons manning two of the four cameras during the eight-hour operation and with Mr. Farkas at one point singing "If I Only Had a Brain," the result was a feature-length documentary called "It Ain't Television, It's Brain Surgery." Lerman wrote two songs for the documentary, including "I Need This Operation Like I Need a Hole in the Head."
"Ray loved to quote the first line of that song," said his wife, Sharon Metcalfe. "It went, 'You don't have to shake my hand, it shakes on its own just fine.' That was Ray. He could laugh in the face of anything."
Mr. Farkas was born in Kingston, N.Y., and grew up in Chambersburg, Pa. His father, a Hungarian Jew, and his mother, a Russian Jew, had immigrated to the United States in the early 1930s. His father ran a boys' clothing store and probably expected his son to take over the business, recalled George Trail, a retired diplomat and lifelong friend.
"He was such a free spirit, that was not in the cards," Trail said.
Mr. Farkas graduated from Lehigh University in 1957 and began his career in journalism as a reporter for United Press International. He then moved to NBC, where he wrote for the "Huntley-Brinkley Report" and struck up a close friendship with anchorman David Brinkley.
"Ray was a great gambler, and he and Brinkley played poker together," Trail said.
Mr. Farkas was at NBC for 24 years, including a number of years as a producer for the "Today" show. He later produced dozens of features and documentaries for ABC, CBS, Fox, PBS, HBO and AMC. His Emmy Award-winning documentaries included an ABC News special about abortion called "The New Civil War" and a documentary about novelist Joseph Heller for the Learning Channel.
His signature style originated in the civil rights movement. "I spent a lot of time for NBC down in Mississippi, and we were accused, not without some justification, of being part of the story," he told Rich Underwood, author of the book "Roll! Shooting TV News: Views from Behind the Lens" (2007). "That was part of the genesis for learning how to stay away from subjects, to stay out of the story as much as we could."
Mr. Farkas started his own production company, Off Center Productions, in 1991. The company's work includes two series pilots: "Ira's People," a mixture of crime and humor that appeared on Court TV in 1999, and "Interviews 50 Cents."
In the latter, Mr. Farkas and National Public Radio correspondent Alex Chadwick sat at a card table outside Washington's Union Station, at Baltimore's Inner Harbor and at the Cape May-Lewes ferry slip in New Jersey with a hand-lettered sign reading "Interviews 50 Cents." Their cameras set up at a distance, they invited people to tell their stories.
The curious usually wanted to know who paid the 50 cents to whom. "Tell us your story, and then we'll decide," Mr. Farkas joked.
In 2005, he created a local newsmagazine program for WJLA-TV, the local ABC affiliate, entitled "Metropolitan Edition." The program won two D.C. National Capital Region Emmys.
Mr. Farkas began to develop symptoms of Parkinson's disease in 2000. A tennis player, he told USA Today he knew something was wrong when he began to lose to people he usually beat.
The surgery four years later was successful. The tremors disappeared, and Mr. Farkas resumed playing tennis.
He also became an advocate on behalf of Parkinson's patients. "He made it his mission in life to comfort anyone that he could with this disease," said his surgeon, Chris Kalhorn.
Mr. Farkas's marriage to Linda Farkas ended in divorce.
Survivors include Metcalfe, his wife of 20 years, of the District; three children from his first marriage, Mark Farkas of Fairfax, Julie Farkas of Chevy Chase and Danny Farkas of Annandale; a son from his second marriage, Andrew Metcalfe of the District; and seven grandchildren.