Episode 1—The Rockiest Of Starts

In January of 2002, I was living deep within a rut of my own making, outside of which existed the city of Austin, Texas. Sleep late, go to work, play video games, dislike myself, go back to sleep. And again. And again. And again.

Something had to give. Very soon.

Earlier in the year, I mentioned to my family and friends that I was kind of miserable and that, hell… I don’t know, maybe I should go back to school or something? I, of course, didn’t really mean it because I’m about as scholastically inclined as a stack of lumber, however the notion stuck in my mind a bit, like a wad of electrical tape.

I had never really done the college thing. I mean, sure, I did a few months at the University of Texas and some half-assed, barely-there semesters at community college, but I didn’t count any of that because, well…  the schools certainly didn’t. I had to admit, the idea intrigued me not just a little. I pictured myself hanging out in the quad, discussing the finer points of Bergman and Bresson, a sweater tied jauntily around my neck. My hair perfect. I liked that image, as it starkly contrasted my current status as slacker emeritus behind the counter of the local video store. But of course, the magnetic pull of the rut is far greater than the desire to self-improve. So I forgot about it.

Back to January.

I get a package from my grandmother and amongst the contents I found salvation on a torn-out magazine page. Out of her Newsweek, she had clipped an ad for the New York Film Academy, a new-ish film school that was only a year and didn’t require grades and such for admittance. All they required was money. And my grandparents really wanted to see me succeed.

Eight months later. I arrived in NYC, ready to become that which I knew in my heart I already was… a filmmaker of the highest caliber. But first, I had a nervous breakdown.

The cab driver, I’m pretty sure, was a serial killer of some accomplishment and it was raining hard. I had four giant bags to contend with, which contained the sum total of my possessions. I didn’t know where my hotel was and I was chest-deep in a soul-sucking whirlpool of loneliness that threatened to snap me in half like a baseball bat over a disgraced player’s knee.

But I kept it together. I managed to decipher my cabbie’s grunts and eye-rolls well enough to help him find my lodgings and I tipped him large so as not to provoke his, I’m sure, considerable ire. All the while, still, I kept it together. I wrestled my bags up to my room, and then, sitting on my under-sized bed, I completely, thoroughly, and without shame, lost my shit.

I’m not afraid to admit that there was tears.

A fetal position was reached.

I barely slept and when I did, I dreamt of drowning and falling, simultaneously.

For about three days straight, I was a raw wound, a quivering package of jangled nerves wearing the look of a man who, for the first time in his cushy life, had been rocked to his very core.

But why? This was what I had wanted, no, NEEDED for so long. I was finally, after four years of suffocating aimlessness, drawing deep breaths of the crisp air of purpose. Or was that the answer? They say that long-term inmates, once released, will commit crimes with the sole purpose of landing them back in jail. Where it’s safe.

The cageless prison of my old life in Austin now lay behind me like a favorite shirt that no longer fit. I was in the real world. And more importantly, I was responsible for actually doing something with my time spent here. Responsible. Something I hadn’t been for… well, ever really. Whether or not I fully grasped that during those next few days is, to me, still unclear. But what was clear was that I was scared of something bigger than me and, for a little bit, it had it’s foot on my neck, pinning me down for the count.

Finally, after the ninth or so weepy phone call home, I grabbed myself by the metaphorical collar and gave me a stern talking to. It was long and boring, but the essence of it was “Shape up, you pussy!” That, mixed with some quality NYC pizza, finally put the brakes on the runaway circus wagon that had become my life.

That same day, I was able to move into my apartment, a one-bedroom which I shared with a British guy named Ben. I wish that I had some great roommate horror stories to spice up this article with, but Ben… well, Ben is one of the good guys. I felt like, for the first time in a week, that I was on even footing again.

Then school started.

NYFA’s deal is this: They offer an intensive one-year film program for those of us who are completely averse to actually attending a traditional school for four years. They pride themselves on turning kids into the “total package,” by which I mean a student who can write, direct, shoot, and edit his own film. By and large, they do a good job, even in the face of some of the poorest administrating this side of Colonel Klink (more on that later). The teachers there are all industry professionals and it shows. The level of talent and class found in the NYFA faculty is, almost across the board, unparalleled by any 10 film schools you could name.

Perched, red-faced, above a discount liquor store, NYFA occupies a genuine piece of historic real-estate. What was once Tammany Hall, what once housed the Democratic party of NYC, now houses Hollywood’s newest class of talent. Or at least public access’s newest crop of failures. The history of the building lends an air of import to the proceedings that, I hope, most of the students sense. But, like playing poker in the Taj Mahal, making movies in this place does seem a little odd, a little off. It’s that feeling of messing around with your father’s stuff when he’s away. Invading the grown-ups’ private offices.

The first weeks of classes were intense, sucker-punching exercises in humility that brought we of the inflated egos down to our wretched knees. As it turns out, making a movie is hard. I mean really, really, bang-your-head-on-a-wall-in-hopes-of-ending-the-misery hard. We made, in the span of the first month, three short films and all of mine were varying degrees of terrible. Looking at them now, I can appreciate them as the learning experiences that they were and only want to suck on a bottle of whiskey a little bit. But at the time, seeing my failed ideas smeared onto the celluloid like so much dog shit made me deeply sad and ashamed for long stretches of time.

Of course, there were bright spots too.

One of them was a teacher, Deena Lombardi. She wants me to say, up front, that she isn’t a teacher at all. She’s a filmmaker, first and foremost, and there is no doubt in my mind that that fact is true. She teaches at the Academy to pay the bills in between industry jobs and she made the first few weeks, not just for me, but for all my classmates, easier to handle. Under her tutelage, we learned our first camera, the Arri-S 16mm non-sync sound for those who care, which incidentally is the same kind of camera used in WWII for combat footage. Deena taught us the basics of filmmaking. She handed us our rifles, as it were, and sent us off to the great war (with our battle-ready cameras) ready to shoot our visions for the first time.

It is not in any way her fault that my movies, as I mentioned above, were uniformly abysmal. One other thing about Deena: It was an odd, X-Files-ish moment when, standing outside on a lunch break, all the guys in our class admitted with glassy eyes that they were madly in love with our Ms. Lombardi. Never underestimate the school-boy crush, as it has surely leveled stronger men than I.

Then there was Melissa. My neighbor and classmate, she and I seemed almost pre-destined to meet and it’s fortuitous that we did, because I would not have emerged on the other side of this gauntlet without her to lean on. What makes our relationship odd is that, though we get along perfectly, there is absolutely no way that we would have been friends in the “real world.” She takes film and filmmaking very seriously, where as I tend to take the movie world on with a liberal amount of whoopee-cushion-and-rubber-chickens humor. And she’s really into the whole Goth culture thing, while I’m really not. She’s also a bit of an obsessive-compulsive wacko, which I find endlessly amusing.  But somehow, we compliment each other like peanut butter and dill pickles, which sounds disagreeable until you try them together. Like us. It also bears mentioning that we have never even discussed the possibility of the two of us becoming a couple. Never dated, never kissed, never nothing. Though I’m pretty sure she’s got a little thing for me and I think it’s time she admits it.

Anyway

Film School was, I believe, the topic at hand.

Things smoothed a bit after the 100-yard dash that was the first month. We settled into our rhythms and even got used to “presenting our movies,” which consists of standing in front of the class and qualifying your work without wetting yourself. It’s a pain known only to those who have experienced a really solid, cleats-on kick in the groin or whatever the female equivalent to that would be.

It was around this time that I started to sense something, like rotten meat fallen behind the refrigerator.

Our schedules were constantly being shifted around. Often times, our classrooms were double-booked for the same time slot. Way too much time was being allotted for easy projects and not enough time for the harder things. No one in the administration office seemed to know what was going on. Ever.

Though we didn’t know it then, we would soon recognize these instances as symptoms of a greater problem. However, at the time, they came across as minor inconveniences. Mere crumbs of irritation in the bed of our academic existence.

Besides, we were still the “freshmen” around the school. Who were we to criticize? And it’s tough to monitor these things when you’re wrapped up, mummy-like, in your own particular brand of self-involvement.

We’d learn soon enough, though.

--CD

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