Nearly four months after starting this project; this reliving of my film school days, I am finally nearing the end. The metaphorical credits sequence, as it were. This final article represents the last semester at NYFA, in which I wrote and directed my Big Final End-All-Be-All Film that, in theory, was supposed to represent the sum total of my teachings. The reason why it’s taken me so long to write this conclusion stems directly from the experiences I had making said movie and well… we’ll cross that shoddy-rope-bridge-over-a-rocky-canyon when we come to it. First…

The Beginning of the Semester

When I arrived back in New York, after missing my plane in Dallas, thus making me miss the first day of classes, I was greeted with the information that my class had been dissolved. And not in a fun acidy way, either. Apparently, not enough of my fellow students had shown up for the first day of class, so they split the remainder of us up amongst the other sections, which though convenient for the NYFA staff, meant that I would have to make new friends. If you’ll skim the first article in this series, you’ll note a running theme of me not handling change very well, in much the same way slugs aren’t good at dealing with salt. I freaked and got really angry and said some mean things about certain staff members’ mothers (to myself of course, I’m not stupid) and then, after a stiff drink and the realization that Melissa would be joining me in The New World of Unfamiliar Students… I chilled the hell out.

After the initial bout of xenophobia, I came to realize that these new folks were pretty great and in fact BETTER than my old class by leaps and bounds. Seriously, except for the bitchy drug-lord’s daughter and the creepy Russian chick (who still gives me the night terrors), I would give the shirt off my back to any of the good souls in that class. Even better, I managed to fake a charming personality well enough to secure a couple of what I consider to be Friends for Life, which is really surprising considering my initial “Bite Me” attitude. First there is Luke, a British cinematography hopeful that just flat out made me laugh nearly every time he opened his mouth. Not to mention the fact that he’s so damn dreamy that, straight-as-an-arrow though I am, even I want to hump his leg on occasion. Then there is Brian. What can be said about a man who loves horror movies as much as I do and is always up for some karaoke when I am, which is, like, always (I sing Macy Gray’s “I Try” with a conviction and passion usually reserved for Shakespearean tragedies). Brian is the guy with the life I want to have when I grow up and beyond that, he’s just absolutely wonderful to be around. And he makes the best goddamned chili on the East Coast. Truly, and I say this without irony, he is a man amongst men. If what I say about this ubermensch tickles your fancy, then visit him on the web at www.campblood.org, which is truly the finest website in existence ever with the possible exception of the website that is currently employing me to write this.

Things Go Smoothly Until…

The semester galloped along. We split ourselves up into groups, “crews” actually, to use the filmmaker parlance, and we began preparations for our Final Films. It was around this time that I wrote my screenplay for my film… a charmingly bitter little story about a broken relationship that is thrust back together by the death of a mutual loved one. Again, I turned my back on my horror roots, which still smarts a bit when I think about all of the great gore I could have done with all that beautiful free equipment. But hey… nothing I can do about it now. Besides, in all humbleness, that screenplay I wrote, bloodless though it was, was damn good. Too good, I would venture. My confidence in said script began to border on cockiness as I started the initial pre-production work on my film. “This script is so good, it’ll direct itself! I write better than JESUS!” were not entirely uncommon thoughts for me around this time. But before that, I had to crew my groupmate’s films. I should have known that things were all kinds of doomed when, on the third day of the first shoot, I got myself arrested.

Yes, that’s right readers, you’re talking to a real, live jailbird. Okay, let me preface this little tale by saying that I was really, really, really tired. We had just finished a 20-hour day and were in the middle of what was shaping up to be another one when we were released by our director for a lunch break. We headed into the subway station.

Maybe it was the primal urge to avoid paying for things. Maybe (and more likely) it was just plain old stupidity that caused three of my fellow crew members and myself to walk through the open gate next to the turnstiles. When we did this apparently heinous crime (Technically: Fare Jumping), we were shoved up against the wall by a gaggle of plainclothes police officers, handcuffed and promptly put in a jail cell while we were booked and processed. They say prison changes a man… I can say with a grim certainty that that’s true. I went into that cell a weak, pale-skinned little boy and when I emerged seven brutal hours later, I was… well… a weak, pale-skinned little boy, but now with a misdemeanor charge on his record and an unpleasant odor from the flop sweats caused by being in FUCKING jail! Of course, I can make smartass jokes about it now, but at the time, it was really scary. Of all the things I wanted to do in NYC, getting an inside look at the city’s penal system wasn’t one of them. 

At any rate, it all kinda sorta limped downhill from there. To go into all of it would cause near-toxic levels of boredom for both me and you, but suffice to say there were a lot of late nights, inner crew fights and in general ill will to merit our own season of The Real World.

Then Came My Shoot

Before I start the vivisection of my project, I first have to give a “mad crazy shout-out” to my cast.

Matthew: My leading man. I don’t know how I got so lucky to find, amidst a sea of completely useless Star-Of-The-High-School-Stage pretty boys, a real, honest to Christmas actor. Handsome without making you sick and talented without making you sicker, Matthew was the perfect choice for a part that I basically wrote for myself. Then, if that weren’t good enough, he one-upped me by playing better than I would have. Bastard. Look for him some day soon in the places where the celebrities hang out.

Amy: My leading lady. Oh man… This girl. I’ve known Amy for a lot of years and to this day, if she asked, I’d marry her in a heartbeat. I have, in my life, found so few women to be truly worthy of the word “bewitching,” but I count Amy amongst their ranks. And talented too. Working with her was like watching a galaxy being formed. One day, you just know, it’s going to be huge.

If you think I’m being, shall we say, a bit over-effusive with praise… hell, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think so. I’m probably not the most objective person on the planet, but I think the two of them were as perfect a cast as any director could hope for.

Which is why it absolutely kills me that I let them down.

My Movie… A Eulogy

There’s dropping the ball and then there’s catching the ball and dropping it by choice. I chose to make a sub-par movie because it was easy. Easier than planning and preparing and making sure that when I walked on to that set I knew exactly what was going to happen. Of course, this wasn’t conscious action. I just thought that, “Hey, I’m Clinton Davis, everything I touch turns to gold, so why won’t this. Hell, I survived New York City Jail… it’s gonna take a lot more than poor planning skills to bring this bastard down!”

But, as it turns out, this bastard can be brought down quite easily.

I rushed through my shoot, too wrapped up in my own delusions of grandeur to notice all the little things I was doing wrong or, even worse, just flat out NOT doing. The sound was bad; all echo and static, like I’d shot the film in a bus-station bathroom. I used two different cameras (to maximize time) and failed to get them color-balanced correctly, thus leaving me with shots that, though filmed at the same time, looked as if they were shot in two different dimensions. I spent so much time rehearsing with my actors that I neglected to rehearse any of the camera movements or positions, forcing me to make a lot of it up on the spot. Let me just say this… improvisation… not a great idea for the first-time filmmaker.

When I got the footage back, I was so stunned by how amateurish it looked, that I went into some serious denial, convincing myself in the face of overwhelming evidence that I could fix it all in editing. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha… That would of course lead some of you to believe that I actually knew what the hell I was doing in the editing room. Don’t be silly. I could no more fix things in editing than a drunken monkey could… well, fix things in editing.

But I made a rough cut of the project… enough to be able to screen it with some of my fellow classmates at the big Final Screening; a night that I’m hoping will soon become less traumatic with aggressive therapy and heavy doses of lithium. I cannot describe to you the pain of having 25 or so people all tilt their heads at you in sympathy and say, “Well, the screenplay was good…” Okay, I probably could describe it, but it would involve lots of weeping and a good deal of shouting. Very socially unacceptable. Better for everyone if I moved on.

Then I Left

After that, it was all over. With NYFA and various eateries in New York now in possession of all my money, I was forced to leave the city that I had grown to love and move back to Texas to live, hopefully only briefly, with my parents.

And that’s it. That’s the end of my film school story. All that’s left is the eternal question, “What now?” Truthfully, I don’t know. Currently, I am residing in a career-limbo; to be honest, the first job I’ve had fresh out of film school has been waiting tables, which you might think would get me down, and you’d be right on the money. It’s becoming more and more apparent to me that I was born to be a writer and that I should only be let behind a camera in the case of extreme emergencies (say, the eventual heat-death of the planet leaves me the only filmmaker alive to document it). Unfortunately, just saying that you’re a writer doesn’t make it so. For some reason, people want actual proof of this claim before they turn over any money. Jerks.

So I guess since I can’t end this thing with a story of my rise to success, I can summarize what I learned:

Hmmm… the fact that I’ve been sitting here staring at that last sentence for the last 20 minutes worries me a bit. Did nothing stick? Did so much money get spent for nothing? Am I that big of a dumbass that I couldn’t glean anything from the available information? But of course, the answer to all those questions is “No.” I learned. Things stuck. I am not a dumbass. It’s just that to quantify knowledge, short of actually making lists of everything I know, is near impossible, like filming without a script or, for me, filming in general.

But I can say this. NYFA and, really, New York itself, changed me. And I mean that wholeheartedly and without movie-of-the-week sentiment. I am a different person now than I was a year ago. I am a stronger person. I am a talented person. I would even be so bold as to call myself a writer and, what’s more, actually believe it. I am someone who now has something to offer the artistic community. If that’s what I get for the $25,000 spent, for all the pain and humiliation and brief incarceration, for the self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-deprecation then… hell, sign me up for more. Because all of that is the life of a filmmaker, in whatever capacity you might find yourself. And I am ready for it to begin.

Action!

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