Ihappened to visit Portland, Ore. to help celebrate a good friend’s birthday last December.

A dozen years ago John Harrison decamped from Southern California and moved into a high-ceilinged two-story loft in the arty Pearl district, the walls filled with framed posters from the many TV movies he directed over a long career.

During his wedding ceremony to the lovely Gretchen Miller, co-founder of a Portland visual effects company, in their living room, I choked up reading a Walt Whitman poem to the assembled guests. John’s first film — not for TV — was “Beautiful Dreamers,” starring Rip Torn as Whitman, based on a true story about Whitman’s 1880 visit to a hospital for people with intellectual disabilities in John’s hometown of London, Ontario.

I just sentimentally lost it for a bit, thi

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