The things we think but do not say

It was the summer of 2000 and I was pressed into service working as a cook at the summer camp I’d spent my summers at since I was 8, it was scolding hot for that summer, the sort of unbearably humid heat Connecticut likes to throw down on those who spend the full 12 months here. For roughly sixty days a year, for eight years I proudly considered Camp Laurelwood and Madison, Connecticut my home.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be my final summer at Camp, working a tremendous amount of hours for what amounted to a slave’s salary in a hot kitchen. On the chance times when we did receive several hours break during the day, I found myself running to my room in a little bungalow affectionately called “the Na.” It was considered an honor and a privilege to live there as it was where all the cook’s lived, their time spent in hell’s kitchen marked on the walls in permanent ink along with other crude commentary that teenagers under tremendous workloads might scribble. Perhaps the best feature of “the na” was its air conditioning in every room, allowing each chamber to reach arctic levels of cool despite any weather conditions outside. In my room that summer I had the bare minimum, a TV/VCR combo and a handful of VHS tapes I’d bought or taped off television. Needless to say, by week two I had all but run out of new choices and my programming like my network counterparts, turned to reruns as filler.

My collection of tapes from the early to mid nineties included: Little Man Tate, Forrest Gump, Jerry Maguire, and several (what was then) WWF Pay Per View Events. While each selection certainly held its own in terms of entertainment value and intrigue, I continually found myself popping in Jerry Maguire. It was as if something new would emerge from these multiple viewings, and before I knew it, something did. I began to see the film not based on its story content, which offered us countless pop culture references including “Show Me the Money,” and “You Had Me at Hello.” I was able to see beyond Jay Mohr’s viscous portrayal of Bob Sugar (although I yet to forgive him for his dishonor to his mentor) or Tom Cruise’s now all too real performance as Jerry, and see the movie at its atomic stage. I began to deconstruct scenes, look at shot construction, editing timing and patterns, the way we held on a glass of water as the ice melted as a way to establish more tension, I stopped watching the film, and began to watch the film. It was at that moment when I decided I wanted to make movies.

I have read that Cameron Crowe fell in love with Rock n’ Roll based on Zeppelin’s Stairway; Jerry Maguire was my stairway. Until that point, I was a sixteen year old completely unsure of where I wanted to take my life. It seems almost laughable now to say it given Cruise’s recent transgressions, but Jerry Maguire changed my life.

In high school I took several classes on television and video production, teaching me a great deal about production along with a smattering of film theory. I went on to attend Syracuse University, majoring in Film with an emphasis on drama. I can’t say that I’ve watched Jerry Maguire in several years, aside from occasionally catching a scene or two on TBS some random Saturday night. Its as if my watching Jerry Maguire mirrors my innocence and affection with films and filmmaking. I say that with a heavy heart as I now take my tens of thousands of dollars worth of education and apply it to ordering lunch, Starbucks, and office supplies for a postproduction house. I have traded in my filmmaking for a paycheck, sacrificing all creative aspirations for the time being. I am left lost, humbled, and searching for the direction I should turn towards next, knowing full well that even my eventual goal of editing commercials for products I don’t wish to own is an empty pursuit.

At the end of the day, like my inspirational counterpart, Mr. Maguire, all I want is to be inspired. We are in a business of paychecks and box office results. Lost among all these result-oriented figures is the heart that we have seen slowly sacrificed for the paycheck. It is no wonder audiences have retreated from the theater’s dark cavernous screening and the hollow projected images on the wall. There is no proper answer to the question that has infested Hollywood over the past several years.

I find myself on page two of what I had hoped to be a single page entry, as Jerry once said “and I’m not even a writer.” I find myself going back to what really mattered to me since I first picked up a camera, long before I was taught how to “properly” do anything. Back then all I cared about was the entertainment value of whatever I was working at, and more specifically, could I make my audience laugh? I think I was naturally drawn to comedy because it was the easiest to gauge success. If the audience liked the piece they would laugh, silence was deadly. This simply equation guided my student film career resulting in my senior thesis film entitled Below the Rim, a comedy about a young Jewish boy with high aspirations of being drafted out of high school to play in the National Basketball Association. Why I ultimately wrote the story and filmed it, was not only to entertain, but because the story spoke to my fears about “making it” in the entertainment industry.

It is my greatest fear that I will wake up the next morning, be fifty years old with a hangover and find that the ten-beer model is actually my worst nightmare. I don’t want to wake up when I’m fifty regretting never haven taken a chance.