First,
hijack the clunky family video-camera and refuse to give control of it to
anyone else on vacation. Get sixteen different angles of a dead pigeon you found
in the gutter in Chinatown. Protest
when your mother drags you back to the motel for take-out. Audition for every school play and
memorize the lead's lines before you're even cast. Harass the underpaid drama
teacher with questions like, "Yeah, but what does Juliet want? What is her objective?" Turn every project you are given into a
movie. Find rich friends and get your dad to drive you forty-five minutes to
their house after school so you can use the editing program that you couldn't afford
even if you didn't buy another Mt. Dew for the rest of your high school
career. Graduate and be
disappointed that you weren’t nominated for class speaker because you know you
have interesting things to say that nobody’s ever said before.
Don't
go to film school. Everyone will tell you not to go to film school. You listen,
nod, plan. You go to film school. Meet a lot of people, all of whom talk
exclusively in acronyms: "I upgraded from the HVX to the DSLR and we shot
1080/60i, although 35mm would’ve been just sick; oh god, Jimmy did you grab the
RCA adaptor?"
Realize
that you are not terrible. Shortly
after this, realize, quite possibly for the first time, that you have no idea
what you are doing.
Someone
will ask you to “pull focus” on set.
Stare at them blankly when they hand you a tape measure. Or someone will ask if you reserved the
BNC converter for the Marshall 7" and you may have an idea that cords and
a monitor are involved, but you will have no idea what BNC stands for or what
the other doohickey is that the BNC thingamajig attaches to. Forget, in the middle of a shoot, to
switch the scene dial from 24p to high-speed and spend fifteen minutes turning
the camera on and off in hopes that it will magically reset itself. Upper classmen will still ask you to
work on their projects, nothing big, just a PA, just moving sandbags and
hauling C-stands. Proceed to acting
in someone’s production one project, then learn how to slate, then maybe even
do script consultation on the screenplay of someone who is older, but
miraculously knows less about one tiny specific area, say, three-act structure
or one-word outliers or even that Celtx is better (and free-er) than Final
Draft (which you know because you are still poor and broke and racking up student
loans like Jesus made it the 11th commandment and you want a lot of
gold stars on your heavenly report card).
Find
yourself directing something, or behind the camera as DP, or producing. Make mistakes, find solutions. Be elated, at first, that you are
capable of solving problems (even though they are problems you created in the
first place), but realize that this is a trait that is expected of you, that is
expected in general, and if you cannot do it, you will fall off the map, out of
people’s minds, out of the industry.
Tell yourself that you can do this. Believe it until the next crisis.
Become
addicted to caffeine. Drink the
sweetest, most heavily caffeinated beverages you can find. Monster, Rock Star, Mt. Dew,
triple-shot mochafrappawhatacinnos.
Ask nursing majors for spare syringes so you can skip the whole
“digestive process,” which is for losers who have something called “spare
time.” Your roommates will never
know if you are dead in a ditch or just passed out on the couch, incapable of
climbing the three prongs up to your bunk bed. Consume more caffeine.
Shortly, you will have headaches if you do not have some form of coffee
within thirty minutes of waking, no matter what time of day you are waking
at. Do not mind.
Hear
that all special effects explosives technicians are complete drunks. Be concerned, since some day you plan
to use special effects explosives in some phenomenal script that you plan to
write, and you’d rather not have bits of special effects technicians all over
your set, not to mention the insurance nightmare; God, you’re so poor. Hear that Hollywood marriages last
fifteen seconds and first vow to beat the odds then backtrack and vow never to
get married. Flip-flop between
these two options until you become disgusted and say that you’ll just become a
nun or a monk or maybe an astronaut, and then start thinking of Apollo 13 and
how cool it would be to film in space or maybe under the polar ice-caps like
the Discovery Channel team and maybe you don’t want to do narrative after all,
but documentary, because even the people on the History Channel get to go into
those tiny Russian subs to scavenge the bottom of the Atlantic for bits of the
Titanic. Then watch Zombieland again and remember how much fun stories are and go
back to worshiping your idols: Tarantino, Hitchcock, Jackson, Welles, Allen,
Kubrick, Bergman, Scorsese, heck even the Lumierre Brothers kind of inspire
you.
Fail
a few more times. Say the word
“epic” a lot.
Other
people have their favorite porn website.
You have IMDb. The trailers
page sends you into nerdgasms.
Giggle when you say nerdgasms.
Then giggle again when you remember that you stole the phrase from you
sci-fi prof.
It
does not hit until much too late that the entire experience is a constant
ocean, a series of violent troughs and crests and rises that you allow yourself
to be tossed around on because a part of you likes the thought that you have an
excuse to do what you love to do, which is, fairly simply, to drive yourself to
the edge of reason and look down into that dark, awesome abyss and whisper your
name and wait for something to whisper back.
Graduate.
Probably.
If
not, it will be in frustration against the whole concept of film school, that
you don’t need an education to do what you’d do for free learning hands-on in
the industry. If yes, it will be
because you have a deep faith in understanding and articulating the aesthetics
of story and image and sound in which you believe there is an inherent artistry
that should not be ignored.
Either
way, take what you have learned and go out into the world.
The
world will bite you on the ass.
Flounder,
sniffle, cry. Call your old
professors and say, “You didn’t warn me.”
They will reply, “Yes, we did.
Why do you think we’re professors now?” Hang up trembling.
Call your father (even now, you can’t admit failure to your mother; she
wanted you to stay in-state and do something like business or, well, something
you hate and aren’t good at at all).
Rub the pad of your thumb over the green SEND button, rub and rub until
you can’t feel the ridges in your fingerprint anymore, or maybe you can, you’re
not sure if you’ve ever noticed before.
Go
on YouTube to look at your old films.
They’re bad. Spot the
mistakes instantly, the stupid amateur moves and the places you compromised on
because you were a film student and you thought it was okay to get away with
shit like that. Don’t get
depressed. Paradoxically, become
energized. The 23.98 frames per
second flash and flicker in a constant, perfect stream, like the energy-field
of a stargate. Remember what it
was like to swim in the cool, addictive waters of your own personal Shangri-La,
the elusive, allusive world of word and sight and humanity. Watch your old films and smile.
Call
your professors. Apologize for
whining. Ask, for the hundredth
time, if they have any more contacts you can contact. One of the old ones will remember a friend from fifteen
years ago who may or may not be doing something anymore and may or may not need
a P.A. Grovel, thank, rip the
telephone number from their telephoned lips and call their old, old contact who
does not remember at first who your professor was, but they are, in fact,
looking for a production assistant and do you have a car? You do not, but you lie.
Get
the position. Don’t eat because
it’s not paid and you have no food.
Take the city bus for an hour and a half every day to get to set, but
arrive earlier than the Kraft Services people, earlier than the coffee cart and
the security personnel and the director.
Haul sandbags silently; only take a bathroom break when your muscles are
trembling so bad you’re sure someone would notice. Constantly ask, “What else can I do?” When they run out of things for you to
move from Point A to Point B, pointlessly, just to mess with you, ‘cuz they
hate this project and this is the most amusing portion of their day, ask, “What
else can I learn?” They feel a
tiny prick of guilt somewhere in their suppressed conscience and remember when
they were young and eager and they stick you with Larry, who shows you things
you thought you’d mastered, but which film school never really elaborated
on.
Your
roommate’s significant other will be in culinary school and they will make
delicious meals once a week. Eat, drink,
be a little too merry. Manage to
get by.
The
project will close and you will be without work for two months. Get a job at McDonald’s, Denny’s, a
7-11, the shoe department at Payless.
Scrape by. Succumb to that
familiar feeling of desperation, of maybe there isn’t going to be more work,
ever.
Get
a call. It is your mother. She says that you look too thin on your
Facebook profile, should she fly out and make sure you eat properly? Assure her you are trying a new diet,
that you are perfectly fit. Get
another call. It is a mid-level nobody
from the previous film that is now a part of a new project with a slightly more
prestigious position that remembered you and is wondering if you’d like to come
on as their assistant, you seemed like you knew what you were doing. Accept. Be overjoyed.
Fall down your apartment stairs and break your ankle. You will be young still, and think that
you are invincible, so you do will not have health insurance. Pack your ankle in ice up until the day
before you are called to set and then hobble to the bus where a fat woman will
step on your foot on her way to her seat.
Go to the doctor’s because you can hear the bones flopping around. The constant reminder of PAIN, PAIN,
PAIN that your nervous system will send to your brain will feel redundant. Call your mom. She will loan you $3000. And mail you a package of Rice Krispies
bars with M&Ms baked into the center.
You will try to make them last but you will fail.
Arrive
on set thirty minutes late wearing your crutches like they are a Lady Gaga fashion
statement, not your new mobile appendage.
After scrambling around for a day, your contact will tell you that the
crutches just aren’t working out, so maybe you can help out on the next shoot,
which is Cinema for, “You’ve made me look stupid by bringing you on this proect,
I am never going to give you the opportunity to do it again.”
Feel
guilty, even though none of this is your fault.
Quit
your job at McDonald’s or Denny’s or Payless (especially Payless, since your foot
is engorged to the size of a fair-winning watermelon). Find an unpaid gig as a script-reader.
The scripts will inevitably be the worst things you have ever read. Feel sorry for the trees that
sacrificed their pulpy carcasses in pursuit of the paper these scripts will be
written on. Sit down and write
copy on all these terrible scripts and turn them into your superior, who will
nod and put them into the pass pile, which is not, as you first thought, a pile
that gets passed on to upper management, but a pile that gets passed on to the carnivorous
incinerator in the basement. Get
the bright idea, one day, mixing tiny marshmallows into your stale instant hot
chocolate, that maybe you should take a crack at writing something. Sit down
and cut up all the reject scripts into paper chains to decorate the office with
even though it’s July and everyone hates Christmas anyway, because like Scrooge
they have no souls.
Run
low on pain meds. Spend three
feverish nights chugging coffee and ibuprofen. Finish a Shitty First Draft, which is still better than the
crap you read at work. Pass out
for nineteen hours and barely make it to your unpaid script-reading gig where
your copy of Phoenix, Ash Dawn, the Musical
(a gag sub-title you put there because it was funny at 4 a.m.) will make it
there with you. Urinate coffee. Wonder, briefly, if that’s a bad thing. While you are gone, your superior will
pass by and see Phoenix: Ash Dawn, the Musical. They will
be in an extremely chipper mood because their divorce was just finalized and
they managed to keep their car this time.
They will pick up your rough draft and read it thinking the writer (you)
was serious when they wrote the sub-title. They will ponder this script over lunch and pitch it to their
superior at two o’clock. Come back from your pee-break to
discover the missing script and spend the next four hours cursing Zeus and Ben
Stiller and Oprah, because insanely, that is the only copy of Phoenix:
Ash Dawn, the Musical you have.
Despite
the fact that you have been working as a script-reader for two months by the
time your superior pitches your script, they will have neglected to learn your
name, and when the pitch is green-lit for pre-production, they do not inform
you of this fact until someone in the lunch room goes, “Phoenix: Ash Dawn,
the Musical? Oh yeah, I heard Thin College Kid talking about it down in
the bowels.” Your superior will
suddenly remember your name, tell you about the pitch and its acceptance, and
offer you a few grand for the rights.
You are still be too new at this to try and bargain, plus you are a
little delusional from a month straight of Ramen and the coffee and the ibuprofen,
plus the three grand you owe your ma, plus the rent and the fact that they’re
offering you money, money, money, any money, it’s beautiful and green and you
will say yes.
Phoenix:
Ash Dawn, the Musical will never get made,
and if it does, it will tank.
Luckily, a whole slew of no-name writers will have completely destroyed
it by the time production rolls around, so your name does not get slandered. Get a job as your superior’s paid
assistant. You’ll mostly get their
dry-cleaning and take notes during meetings, but you’re still technically in
the industry. Or, your leg
heals. Run around Los Angeles as a
PA for a few more years until you know enough to start demanding things, like
respect, or at least that the assistant director not call you “Gimpy Leg”
anymore. You will not write, let
alone direct, that great script with the action that would call for an
explosives technician, drunk or otherwise, to be present, but, by the time you
are thirty or forty, you will have produced a few cute shorts with decent
production value that don’t do too badly on the festival circuit. Make friends that make it
worthwhile. Drink much beer. Wear baseball caps and tennis shoes and
forget what the word “formal” means.
Eventually, die from lung cancer or a sexually transmitted disease or
from a special effects stunt gone wrong or from exhaustion. The one thing you are guaranteed is
that you will not be remembered through time by anyone outside your immediate
circle of influence, and you will not die of old age. But, looking up from your coffin or urn, floating away into
whatever afterlife you do or don’t believe in, you will not regret your
life. Because despite everything,
you really did what you set out to do.
And despite everything, you loved it.
That
is how to become a filmmaker.
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