The kid's latest crazy idea was to make a music video for Bob Dylan's song 'Masters of War'. He was living on the wrong side of the world, didn't have any money or even a camera, but that wasn't going to stop him.

Instead of using the original song, he wanted to use the chaotic live version from the recent album no one liked, with Mick Taylor on electric guitar.

'You'll never get the rights,' everyone told him. His dad suggested he should write to the record company, just in case.

Months later, a letter turned up: he could have the rights to use the song for a dollar.

Inspired, the kid finished the script. There were a few bits where he was going to need some actual war footage, but there wasn't a war going on within pedalling distance. Undeterred, he wrote a letter to the presenter of a Canadian war series he loved, asking if he could use some of their archival footage. Everyone said they would laugh at him and throw his letter in the bin.

Intrigued, the famous presenter asked the producers on the kid's behalf, and wrote a nice letter back. Amazingly, the producers gave him the rights to their war footage. This time, it wouldn't even cost a dollar.

By now, the kid had delivered enough junk mail to buy a cheap second-hand video camera that worked most of the time. He found some other kids who would act for free, and an older one who was good at blowing things up.

The script called for a cricket game in a cemetery which went pear-shaped and somehow started World War III. The kid watched videos of Hollywood explosions, and figured out how they worked, frame by frame. As it turned out, you could make a tiny explosion look enormous with a few simple tricks.

There was only one more thing the kid needed to create his masterpiece – a tank. Luckily there was a perfect hulking monster sitting on a concrete stand just down the road, outside the national war memorial. This particular lump of metal had been unemployed since the Vietnam War.

The kid wrote to the war memorial to see if he could put an actor on it for a couple of minutes while he filmed. There was no response.

The kid's dad said he was sure they'd let him use the tank, but they might be a bit nervous after what happened to their submarine a few years ago. 'Maybe you should go and talk to them?'

'What happened to the submarine?'

'Some students painted it yellow.'

Frustrated, the kid finally screwed up his courage and rode his bike across town to talk to the war memorial people.

'No way,' said the bearded curator, looking over his desk at the kid.

'Why not?'

'It's too fragile.'

'Um, it's a tank.'

'The Centurion is a sacred artifact, like everything we hold here.'

'No it's not, it's a tank!'

'I think you need to leave now.'

'But it's just sitting there, rusting!'

The curator didn't want to listen, or even read the script. Clearly he wasn't a Bob Dylan fan. And so, the dream of a 'Masters of War' music video died that pale afternoon.

The kid lived to fight another day though. Unlike so many other young people, his blood wasn't buried in the mud.

***

I wrote this (mostly) true story in March 2025.

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