Bill Cran was a colleague and a friend. He ranked among the best documentary producers anywhere. There seemed no subterfuge, no matter how illegal or immoral, that he could not reveal in an hour of broadcast daylight. Bill, 79, died in London on 4th June 2025. His life received generous obituaries, in Britain (BBC, ITV), the US (PBS), and elsewhere. I stand in for CBC-TV’s The Fifth Estate, for which Bill worked several years in Toronto. Returning to London, he expanded InVision, adding independent productions.
In a pub near his Hammersmith studio, Bill pondered my question: “Why study Classics at Oxford to go filming humanity’s sins for TV?”
He replied, “The more you learn from the Roman Empire, the faster you recognize corruption in the modern world.”
I threw in, “Only one Roman emperor smothered his dinner guests under flower petals.”
Bill smiled, “Weird behaviour may be unique, but not the motives driving it. Lust, fear, paranoia, hatred, malice, greed — ambition, even jealousy: It’s all in the human basket. Now, as then.”
Bill made many of his 50-plus documentaries for The Fifth Estate. Two of these featured aerodynamicist Dr. Gerald Bull, a professor of aeronautics at McGill University. Bull had developed high-speed wind tunnels, and was marketing the notion of launching rockets by firing them from guns. Ultimately, he designed a massive artillery piece using compressed air rather than explosive charges as propellant. Saddam Hussein bought into Bull’s supergun, so Bull developed a monster cannon called Big Babylon. Other governments took umbrage; five shots into Bull’s head were the propellants that launched him to another world. He had been either an asset, liability, or both to many parties, and governments. That was Bill’s tale for The Fifth Estate.
Bill’s second Gerald Bull documentary? Dr. Bull had acquired a former US military base with two wide gates. One gate let into Quebec, the other to New York State. Early in World War II, while the US was still neutral, American-built aircraft were towed through from the US gate and into Canada for delivery to Britain. Later, in 1977-’78, Bull used these gates to export 30,000 artillery shells, illegally, contravening UN Security Council Resolution 418 by shipping arms to apartheid-South Africa. Bill’s story built from there. Principal figures in such tales may be dead, or deliberately missing. Found alive, they may decline to speak. A producer needs ingenuity, patience, restraint, courage, and the discipline to go silent and listen. In Bill, such qualities merged in a gracious, thoughtful personality. He seldom lost it, even in challenging times. / Robert Fripp