Action!

When I was younger, I loved going to movies on opening night, gaining that prestigious title of being among the “first” to see a new film. I would target the “sneak previews” too, and I remember the pride I held in having seen “Top Gun” three times before it even opened. In high school I was sure that this fascination with movies would lead me into film-making, eventually becoming the next Steven Spielberg. Dreams die hard in the multiplex. Anything is possible when it’s projected on the big screen.

But once the credits rolled and the lights came up, reality started creeping in and eventually wrapped itself around me as I walked to the car. By the time I unlocked the door and sank into the worn cloth of my 1979 Chevy Caprice, the popcorn smell was gone and my eyes adjusted to the real time monotony of my life. No fast edits…no sweeping crane shots…just the slow drive down Bardstown Road and the dangerous Kentucky version of the Autobahn called the Waterson Expressway.

I had lots of ideas for movies of my own. Most were related to things I knew in my life, which made them interesting to me, but probably not to anyone else. I imagined a film where my high school was taken over by foreign mercenaries, holding the entire student population hostage. The takeover would happen during a pep rally, while all the students and faculty are gathered in the gymnasium. A ragtag group of students would escape, leading to exciting chase scenes on foot, motorcycles and even horses through the corn and tobacco fields surrounding the rural school. Not all of the student escapees would make it, which would increase the tension for the audience. One would hide in a church, and after a protracted game of cat and mouse, he would eventually spear one of the mercenaries with the pointed end of an American flag pole (I envisioned this to be quite patriotic, probably receiving applause or even a standing ovation in theaters across the USA).

The finale would find our hero returning to the school to save the girl he loved (although she didn’t know it), precariously climbing across the rafters of the gym to disable a bomb that would kill all the hostages. Of course, he would have to survive gunfire and hand to hand combat before stopping the bomb at the last minute. In my mind, it was spectacular.

I tried writing it, but could not get my vision to conform to words. The hero, of course, was not a jock or the typical handsome, muscled leading man, but just an average high school student, probably involved in chorus and maybe a chess player. He might have worked at the library, and definitely didn’t do well with girls. He was a bookworm (which is how he learned to disarm a bomb at such a young age, I guess). He was a bit of a loner. I envisioned him as a younger, quieter, smarter, chubbier James Bond. Ultimately, the failure of my script lay in my lack of understanding for this character.

Later, in college, I decided to set my sights lower. Instead of a large scale action film, I realized that the best way to get my foot in the door of Hollywood was to make a low budget horror film. As an avid reader of Fangoria magazine I learned how young filmmakers with no experience or money were making films with nothing more than a passion for film, a camera and some of the their friends. I had the passion, all I needed was a camera and some friends and I would be a filmmaker.

At a midnight showing of Evil Dead in Louisville’s Uptown Theater in 1983, I grew more inspired. I had read about this film and how writer/director Sam Raimi had filmed it for practically no money in the woods of East Tennessee and his parent’s basement in Michigan. I learned that he couldn’t afford to rent a “steady-cam” unit to film smooth flowing shots through the woods, so he and his friends invented the “shaky-cam,” which involved mounting his camera on a “two by four” and having two people grab the ends and run. The visuals they created, as the camera rushed along the ground, leapt over stumps and swooped around trees, was dizzying but amazing. Out of their empty pockets, they created a new language for film.

I decided that my horror film would be more atmospheric than explicit in its gore. Unlike Raimi, I was not surrounded by movie geeks, so I couldn’t draw inspiration or assistance from anyone else. I had to keep it simple. A group of teens, lost in the woods, stalked by a silent, crazy, probably supernaturally resilient killer. Horror movies didn’t need to make a lot of sense. They just had to be scary.

I thought about the movie while I worked. I thought about while I was in class. I thought about it while driving. I thought about it for most of my waking hours and dreamed about it often while sleeping. I played out scenes in my mind, tweaking them for maximum impact. The finale would take place in an old abandoned barn, where the surviving teens take shelter as the killer taunts them from outside. It would be terrifying.

The death of my horror film was slow and based on a number of factors. If the high definition video technology of today had been available then, I would like to think I might have forged ahead. The lack of quality video option in 1983-84 required the use of actual film cameras, and since I have always been brutally aware of my own limitations, I started searching for a “cinematographer” to actually do the filming for me.

I spoke on the phone with a young man from North Carolina for over an hour, explaining what I wanted and offering him the chance to jump on the dream train. He listened, sometimes excited and always polite. He understood the process of filmmaking much better than I did. He explained that since the entire film was to take place at night, we would require very careful lighting. My vision of frantic chases in the woods, preferably using Raimi’s “shaky-cam” technique for long, uninterrupted shots would be very difficult. It would be impossible or at least prohibitively expensive to light large areas of the forest. He pointed out that most of those shots in Evil Dead were filmed in daylight for that very reason. The majority of that film had been done in a basement, where lighting could be controlled and movement limited.

I listened quietly as this film tech gave me a practical lesson in guerilla filmmaking. His education went farther than sitting in a dark movie theater or reading some fan magazines. He asked a lot of questions, most of which I didn’t have an answer to or hadn’t even thought about. Who would edit the film? Who would do the sound? What type of film stock would I use? Where did I plan to rent the cameras and lights?

As the air slowly seeped out of my balloon, I realized that I was severely unprepared to make a movie. Most successful filmmakers (and I classify that as anyone who has made ANY film that has been shown in a movie theater…no matter how bad the movie might be) had been making movies since they were kids. Spielberg filmed elaborate war films with his family’s old Super 8 camera. Real directors immersed themselves in the process, attended film school, and hung out with other filmmakers. I had not just missed the boat, I had not been aware that a boat existed.

Standing on the shore as my filmmaking aspirations sailed away from me, I could have dove into the water and swam after it. I could have increased my determination and made an effort to gain the knowledge and skills I needed to accomplish my goal. I could have…and on rare days of particularly bitter introspection I insist that I should have…but I knew the truth then as clearly as I know now. It was not mine to have.

That was a long time ago.

Last month, I stood on a street corner in DuPont Circle of Washington, DC…the closest I had ever been to a real movie set. Across the street a swarm of people were moving equipment, setting up screens and lights and cameras. There were at least 15 people whose job appeared to be primarily crowd control. Trucks, vans and RV’s with their Teamster drivers hovered nearby. I lost count of the people milling around on the set, some looking relaxed, others hurriedly responding to some urgent request.

The crowd of spectators broke into applause at the site of Jack Nicholson emerging from his trailer, and we all felt a chill when he flashed a quick “Jack” smile. Moments later there was a bit of swooning when Paul Rudd nonchalantly drifted into view, and I was afraid I would have to stop the two young women standing next to me from jumping into traffic to try and reach him.

We were all caught up in the bedazzling glamour of celebrity, but I am pretty sure that I alone recognized Director James L. Brooks when he stepped out of a tent in the corner of the set. Looking calm and assured, he spoke to the camera operator and someone holding what appeared to be a script. Even with “Jack” on the set, he was the center of attention as far as the crew was concerned.

I watched intently as he guided this massive operation toward what would be just a few seconds in the finished film. The crew hushed and remained still at his command. I watched and tried to imagine standing in his place, creating something visual out of the thoughts and words he’d put on paper. For a few brief moments, I sifted through the stack of “what if’s?” that I had hidden pretty well in the back corner of my dusty brain, and then for several nights afterward, I questioned why I didn’t have what it took to follow through.

Eventually, I remembered a great book by Ken Grimwood called “Replay.” The story follows a 43 year old man who dies and wakes up as his 18 year old self, but with all the knowledge of the next twenty-five years still in his mind. He decides to fix mistakes he believed he made the first time, starting with getting wealthy from bets and investments based on his knowledge of future events. When he tries to reconnect with his wife, however, he is now a different person; rich, slightly cocky, and much more knowledgeable. She wants nothing to do with him and his life moves in a totally different direction, without her.

He “replays” multiple times in the book, all of them ending with his death at 43 and his return to his youth. Each new life he lives follows a different path based on the choices he makes, some good, some bad…and all shedding a clearer light on the phrase, “if I could do it all over again.”

Looking back on what was such a vivid dream of mine, which at the time seemed like the only possible choice for my life, it strikes me once more, as it did during that phone call so long ago, that it was not mine to have. I realized that if I actually could do it all again, I would not risk losing what is so much more precious to me now for the opportunity of something I probably wouldn’t have been good at anyway.

Whatever person I was back then, with whatever creative limitations and personal lack of ambition I may have been burdened with, I still achieved some manner of greatness beyond anything I could have imagined. Somehow, despite myself, I married the superstar girl of my dreams. I fathered three great little rascals. Together, they light up the movie screen of my life. They are my epic.