How an English cowboy brought free health care to America’s needy
British documentary filmmaker Paul Michael Angell met Stan Brock for the first time a dozen years ago — in the pages of the Times of London.
“My research skills as a filmmaker go no further than checking the newspaper,” he said, laughing. “Here’s somebody doing an incredible humanitarian relief effort, but in the United States, where you might not expect it’s needed.
“But he has this incredible backstory, whereby he’s an English public school boy who fled his stuffy school to become an Amazonian cowboy, and was later discovered by U.S. wildlife TV producers.
“And then he has an epiphany.”
Brock, who died in 2018 at 82, was nearing 50 when he realized the rugged life he’d led — cowboying on the massive Dadanawa Ranch in Guyana, co-hosting “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” and starring in a series of low-budget adventure films — no longer brought him satisfaction.
In 1985, Brock left all that behind to found Remote Area Medical, a health care nonprofit that brought free medical, dental and vision care to those who might otherwise never have it.
“Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story” is the documentary film Angell made over years of filming Brock and RAM volunteers and patients at pop-up clinics across the United States. It debuts in 700 movie theaters around the country with a special one-night screening Tuesday before it eventually becomes available to viewers on other platforms.
“I straightaway realized that this was the sort of person who could carry a documentary film about health care and give it some form of entertainment aspect where he had this incredible story behind him to explain his motivation,” Angell said.
“So after reading the article on Sunday evening, I thought, I’m just going to Google this organization. I’m so buzzed up about this I’m going to call them now,” he said. “I call and somebody picks up the phone like, ‘Hello, Remote Area Medical, Stan Brock speaking.’
“Wow. So what I’d read about his commitment to the cause is not a mirage,” Angell said. “This guy really walks the walk. At that point, I thought I’ve got to get this guy.”
BROCK ON BOARD
Getting Brock on the phone was one thing. He lived a simple, monk-like life, sleeping on a bedroll on the floor of his office inside a ramshackle former school building near Knoxville, where RAM was located at the time.
Getting him to appear in the film was another thing entirely.
“Yeah, it took a bit of persuasion,” Angell said. “The reason he thought about is that he’s an incredibly modest guy who’s a doer, not a talker, and I kind of forced him to talk with to me.
“I think he’s much happier just getting stuff done and making a difference,” he said. “I think the reason he was finally sold on it is because RAM had a kind of DIY startup ethos to begin with. It was just Stan, an old pickup truck and, I think, two volunteer dental nurses.
“I think he looked at our operation and it was, like, these guys don’t have a penny,” Angell said. “Not that established, clearly want to grow something. So we’re very lucky that he saw some sort of parallel in the way that we did things.”
It’s clear from the film, and conversations with both Angell and Poppy Green, RAM’s marketing manager, that Brock had a knack for spotting talented people who just needed a nudge to join him on his mission.
Green was a student at Hamilton College in New York in 2013, procrastinating on finding an internship. He stumbled onto video clips about RAM, called a friend who lived in Knoxville and headed down to volunteer for eight weeks, which eventually turned into a career.
“Stan had this ability to look at you and ask you to do something,” Green said. “The way he communicated, he displayed this trust you would do it. Very hard man to say no to.”
Back at school, Brock would call Green as he put together a new RAM mission.
“The phone would ring, and it would be Stan,” he said. “He would say, ‘We’re going down to the middle of Florida, and we need your help.’ It would be Wednesday and I was planning to go to the pub. ‘You need me in Florida, Friday at 9 a.m.?’ I’d say sure, put gas in my car and drive down.”
RACOONS AND ANACONDAS
Angell initially thought his film would be purely observational, and he pitched Brock the idea of living with him at the crumbling old school.
“I remember asking him if I could sleep at the old schoolhouse,” he said. “He said, ‘Oh, absolutely not. It’s too dangerous. We don’t have insurance, and there’s racoons falling out of the ceiling.’ I think he had insurance, but there were racoons falling from the ceiling.”
He suggested pitching a tent on the grounds, which Brock also shot down.
“He was never going to let me spend every day with him,” Angell said. “It would have just gotten in the way of his work.”
Then, too, the filmmaker realized there was just too much great material, stories and archival footage to let the Stan Brock story unspool through the passive medium of observation.
“When I met Stan and heard the true richness and depth of his past and the stories he had, I realized you can’t get somebody to tell you those kinds of stories on the hoof when they’re washing the dishes, you know,” Angell said. “And say, ‘Oh, let me tell you about the time I wrestled an anaconda.’
“You need to sit down in a chair in a formal setting and really calmly and quietly speak and listen to them. That was the only way to do justice to the drama and all his stories.”
Still photos and old film footage also added context to the story of who Brock was before he decided to serve the underserved. In addition to clips from Brock’s time on “Wild Kingdom” and B-movie action flicks, Angell discovered rarer stuff such as the outtake of Brock, up to his neck in a river, a massive anaconda snake wrapped around him, asking a cinematographer which camera he should look into.
“Can you imagine the moment I discovered that shot existed?” Angell said. “So that’s out of Stan’s personal filing cabinet, an old VHS tape.
“When he’s saying, ‘Which camera? Which camera?’ it really summed up a man getting toward the end of this socalled exciting film career,” he said. “He’s starting to see it’s not that glamorous, but good, old Stan, he really wanted to do a job, didn’t he? He really wanted to get the anaconda in the right position.”
Other bits and pieces he found included film of Brock at home in Guyana, a monkey and cougar wandering through his house, and a pair of early BBC documentaries that predated Brock joining “Wild Kingdom.”
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, wow, this is golden,’” Angell said of the footage of Brock, reclining in his rattan chair, stroking the head of his cougar. “There’s another aspect of his character which is like Doctor Dolittle, the man who charms the animals from the trees.”
If you go
“Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story” will be shown in special screenings at 7 p.m. (local time) Tuesday at more than 700 theaters across the country, including AMC Chattanooga 18, 5080 South Terrace in East Ridge, and the Hollywood 10, 3519 S. Broad St. in Scottsboro, Ala. Tickets are $13 in East Ridge, $10-$12 in Scottsboro. Learn more at fathomevents.com.