Everyone at Eye For Film was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Angus Wolfe Murray after one of his sons, Rupert, broke the news on social media and our thoughts are with all his family and friends.
Angus was a remarkable gent, who genuinely changed the course of my personal career. Without his mentorship and encouragement, I very much doubt I would have moved from subbing into film criticism and I certainly wouldn't be writing this obituary in Utah, on the day that Sundance is due to start. But, Angus was that sort of person, he had the ability to make it seem as though it was perfectly natural to be able to make these kinds of moves if you felt like it and he encouraged you to embrace impossible ideas.
His is certainly the name that could spark a thousand anecdotes. I realised, not long after I had first met him after standing in to write a review for him in the Edinburgh Evening News, because he was on holiday - Evolution, a good week to be off! - that there was a lot more to this tall skinny bloke in the cowboy boots and carefully patched jeans than I had first imagined. As I somehow came, by baby steps even I'm not sure of now, fully involved with the precursor site to Eye For Film, which Angus co-founded and which led to Eye For Film, I also learned he seemed to have already crammed about three lifetimes' worth of accomplishments into one.
Among other things, he co-founded Canongate books with his equally remarkable wife Stephanie, also much missed by this website, and had turned his hand at fiction writing and filmmaking among other things. An Old Etonian, who spent his life kicking against the establishment in all sorts of unexpected ways, he was a force of nature, permanently curious, never judgemental.
I could write a lot of things about how he took an interest in and encouraged everyone he met - ask anyone who knew him at Edinburgh Film Festival and they'll almost certainly remember conversations with him. I could also tell you about how every chat I think I ever had with him always featured some crazy tale about one of his many animals - last time, I recall a resuced owl - films, of course, and family, of whom he was fiercly proud. But I think his own description on his site of his life gives you a sense of his way with words and his sense of humour.
So, over to Angus: "On the way back to school one year watched On The Waterfront and Psycho on the same day before catching the train to my beastly boarding school in Berkshire. Naturally life was never the same again.
"After failing the medical for national service (asthma) I went to Canada for a couple of years and worked on a golf course, in a bank and at an oil refinery. On returning to what they used to call Blighty, I worked at Lloyds as a junior insurance broker, which is like wasting your youth in slow motion, after which I became a journalist in Yorkshire and then a novelist and then a publisher and then an art mover (I had a big van and called myself Moving Pictures) and then a film critic for The Scotsman and then co-founder of a movie review site and now an old fart who lives in the country, looking after chickens. I perform in the local panto every winter and play cricket for Melrose.
"P.S: still a film fan as well as an obsessive TV series watcher. Am accused of not living in the real world. Probably true."
Whether he lived in the real world or not, he made it a better place for everyone else and will be much missed. Read some of his excellent writing here.
Rupert is collecting anecdotes about his dad - and you can read more about those here.
