It is a trait of the mercurial spirit to want to know what has come before. Being creatures of the moment, we wish to enshrine memory. That’s what makes a photographer: a willingness to freeze time. Or, perhaps it’s a willfulness. I think it’s probably the only place we feel solid ground beneath our feet.

When I first met Michelle Wallace, we were both on an adventure. We shared a passion for photography. Even after we stopped talking, she would still sometimes send me pictures.

**

Not long after the turn of the current century, I had pitched moviemaker Kevin Smith a writing project: I would visit the set of his movie Jersey Girl, and interview many, many people. Then, I’d publish an interview almost every week on his websites. My aim was to give normal folks like me a peek behind the curtain of the making of a movie…and also to educate myself, firsthand, how a big movie was made.

At the time, I was living in my hometown (pop. about 25,000). My job prospects were questionable. I minded the door at a bar down the street for cash and free soda pop, did a little computer work during the day, and was generally pretty lost on all fronts. Visiting a movie set on the East Coast was big news. I mean, word was George freakin’ Carlin was going to be there.

I’d always admired Kevin Smith. He was one of us. The fanboy-made-good. And now I was on the hook. I had to deliver, and if I didn’t, Kevin would know I was a total fraud. Of course, he probably knew. To his credit, Mr. Smith granted me unfettered access to his film’s set. In doing so, he took a chance on an untested scribbler whose entire writerly education consisted of aping the articles he read regularly in Premiere Magazine.

It’s strange to think, now, these years later, that my time on that movie set is a matter of (admittedly poorly archived) record. I really did talk to everyone. It was an astounding and eye-opening experience for a kid from a small town. But before it all happened, I realized something: I was going to New Jersey. And I had no idea how to do anything there. I was also very, very, painfully broke.

Kevin Smith’s fans were well known for being voracious participants on his message boards, primarily because Kevin himself would often pop in on various discussions. This was the ancient times, the year 2002 B.T. (Before Twitter). 1-on-1 interaction with a movie personality and his fans was a relative novelty, even in virtual form. I did something then that I had not done before, and have not done since: I reached out to people I did not know through an internet forum and asked for real-world help. My posting on one of Kevin’s messageboards indicated that I needed assistance getting around, and was hoping to hear from someone who had answered Kevin’s request for movie extras. We’d likely be on set on the same days.

A few answers came in, and people were non-committal. All except one. She told me her name was Michelle Wallace. She had long, straight dark hair, a killer smile, and a deep pixie twinkle in her eye. She sent me multiple photos, was very attractive, very direct, and clearly full of mischief. I liked her immediately. We traded notes on Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings and Kevin’s movies. And she said she would be happy to pick me up at the airport, and take me anywhere I wanted to go.

All of these factors immediately convinced me that “Michelle Wallace” was obviously a male serial killer in his mid-40s who was looking for leg bones for a new lamp.

She was, quite simply, too good to be true.

I don’t have many regrets in life, but I do regret politely declining Michelle’s offer. I figured it would be safer to see if she was who she said she was on a movie set full of hundreds of other people. There, I figured I was less likely to be chloroformed and locked in an ice chest in the back of a van. I was taking no chances. The internet is an unlikely place. And Michelle was as unlikely a girl as I had ever met.

My decision introduced me one of Michelle’s other qualities, and one I came to know well: her temper. She wasn’t shy about letting me know that she thought I was being lame and untrusting, and that I’d find out in a short while that I’d made a mistake in turning down her help. She wasn’t mean. But she was definitely no-nonsense. I’d find out, she said. And I’d feel dumb when I did. I admit it, Michelle. You were right.

I wasted money on cabs that got me from the airport to my hotel, and then to the set. She was one of the first people I saw, and I was in disbelief. Standing skinny as a stick, with a stance that indicated she’d not fold in a hurricane wind, there was Michelle Wallace. She looked like her pictures. She talked like she wrote. She spotted me, and gave me a punch in the arm, and hugged me before I ever said a word. It appeared, for the moment, that all was forgiven.

She was there to play an audience member in a scene Kevin Smith had set up at a local high school auditorium. Classes were in session. I remember thinking, were I one of those students, that I would have been driven foaming-mouth mad. It would have been too much, knowing that as I sat in Alegebra for The Hopeless Math Invalid, there were movie stars in my school. An arrest for trespassing would have been likely.

Instead, I stood there, in the back parking lot, with Michelle Wallace. We talked, and she smoked, and every once in awhile one of those students would pop their heads through a window looking for movie stars. Sometimes they saw them. Sometimes, they saw us. The disappointed look on their faces did not betray the fact that they wondered who we were, what we might do. There, in that moment, with Michelle Wallace by my side, I realized my real attraction to movie making. To me, the people who got to go under the yellow police tape, or through the doors where the spotty Production Assistant prevented outsiders from entering…those people were special. And now, by association, I was special too. Even if there had been no giant movie trucks, no lovely food spread, talking to Michelle Wallace would have made me feel that way.

Michelle and I struck up a quick and intense friendship. She stayed with me several times throughout my fantasy visit to Kevin Smith’s movieland, and on days I was not allowed on set, we explored the rainy streets of Philadelphia. We got cheese steak. We made friends with other people who got to be extras, and even one of the cast members. Betty Aberlin, who played a teacher in Jersey Girl, and a nun in Dogma, shared a drink with a small group of us one night.

There was an element of unreality to that time; days spent in the presence of movie stars, nights spent goofing off and partying with people I’d only just met. It was all delightfully out of character. But Michelle was a constant; she made it clear she could care less about my involvement in the movie. She’d hang out with me either way, and help keep my feet firmly on the ground. If there was one thing she was great at, it was deflating egos.

That’s not to say she didn’t involve herself in the film as well. I do know that she charmed a crew member into getting her access to the set on several days. Said crew member shall remain nameless, but I will say this: he was many years her senior, and had plainly outlined his less than honorable intentions. His seedy, certainly amorous expectations seemed to amuse Michelle. I’d be there working, and I’d see her off to the side, simultaneously enjoying the atmosphere while successfully fending off the advances of her access-granting suitor.

And now, Michelle Wallace is gone. My friend Tommy told me in a text message the other day that she had passed away. Complications from a car accident.

Disbelief. Shock.

For whatever reason, Michelle Wallace took a shine to me. After that short, intense period on the set of Jersey Girl, only ten days long, I went back to my hometown. I set to work writing, and Michelle and I stayed in touch. We stayed friends for almost a decade, had dinner a few times when I returned to New York for other writing jobs. I’m sad to say it, but in the last few years, she didn’t seem to want to talk to me much. I think I asked too many questions.

Like me, I don’t know if Michelle ever really found a comfortable foothold in life. She hinted at changing jobs and difficult relationship situations…but at a certain point, she stopped going into detail. Unless she was talking about her children, of whom she was very proud, and loved with that white-hot intensity she carried everywhere in her heart. I saw a joking reference she made to being injured in some way a few months ago, but I had no idea how serious the situation was. I wrote to ask her what had happened. Had there been an accident? She didn’t answer. I don’t know. Maybe she wasn’t able to answer.

We had drifted apart. I felt that was the way she wanted it. I should have bugged her more.

**

Pictures. That’s what this all started with. Michelle and I liked to take pictures. I have some in which she appears (sixth photo down…with Tommy, and Mikey V, and Glenn, friends I also made during this time…this photo is precisely how I remember Michelle. She was so rock’n’roll). But the pictures I wish I could put down on paper and frame…those are the images burned into my memory.

Not many people leave an indelible mark on the paths of those they cross; I think it’s clear Michelle holds a special place in my history. Ten years have come and gone. The time I spent with her on Jersey Girl was the start of a strange and wonderful life. The movie didn’t do terribly well, but I think it was unfairly panned. I still like it to this day. And if you watch carefully, I’m there, in the crowd of reporters at the Hard Rock. Michelle’s in there somewhere, too. I don’t know that she ever ended up clearly on camera. I’m going to have to pop the movie in and, frame-by-frame, find out.

That, in the end, is possibly the real magic of the movies. It’s not that they make people famous. It’s not that they make us special. It’s not even that they bring us together, as the did with Michelle and me. It’s that they capture a tiny bit of our souls. And because of that, even after we’re gone, we were part of that film. We helped make that film.

Thus, we live on.

Rest In Peace, Michelle L. Wallace: May 9th, 2013.