Film School (28 page)

Then our film appears on the screen. It's perfect. It's not just perfect, it's fantastic. Every image is as sharp as a tack. We're using our actor's eyes as the focal point, and on some scenes he fills the screen, his face perfectly lighted, perfectly focused. Dan and I still don't say a word.

Then the scene with the snow globe comes in. Even though we're shooting in color, our set and actor are so muted that nearly every previous shot looks as if it was in black and white. But the snow globe is a burst of color, and the orb reflects a perfect circle of light onto the actor's young face. We can see his pupils following the falling snow in the globe. Our cinematography instructor can't help himself. “That's
gorgeous
,” he says out loud. Suddenly, we see our magic footage and it's bursting with orange. Every reel is perfect.

We're saved.

The lights come up. The other students clap and cheer. The instructors—who had lamented our earlier awful work—now trip over themselves with praise. Pablo says the footage was “extraordinary.”

Dan jots down a comment on my notebook:
Saved by the snow globe
.

I grin. I write back a simple one-word answer.
Yes
.

We're like squabbling teenagers who have decided to be friends again.

When class ends, Dan and I are euphoric. We high-five and yell. It's as excited as I've been in film school. I want to high-five everyone I meet on the sidewalk.

Dan's film is fantastic. When
we display it to an audience of several hundred people in the Norris Theater, the crowd roars. We have the best film of the class, and, we think, the best film of the semester so far of all the 508 groups. After we finish shooting, Dan adds some terrific stop-action animation he shot with a thirty-five-millimeter still camera. The film is just magical. The music score is beautiful. It's a great short film.

Our reputation is now secure. Just like that, we're now
Dan and Steve
, those cool guys in film school. The 508 screenings are where reputations are made or lost. Much of the film school turns out to watch the screenings, and it's a great evening. Dan has named his film THE ORPHAN.

This is not to say the editing and sound mixing are a piece of cake.
Noooooo
. There is a time during editing when I'm ready to take Dan's thin neck and squeeze it between my hands. I have thoughts of homicide. He moves his hands a bit and says a few words and expects me to understand. He's exceptionally impatient with my slow editing. I remind him that I'm a quick writer, and it took him until shooting started to write a five-page script, but it doesn't have any effect on him. He sits in an editing lab and watches my cuts. “No no no no! I don't want
that,
” he says. He desperately wants to grab the keyboard from my hands—a no-no according to the class rules. I ask him what he
does
want. He wiggles his hands in the air. “I want . . . it's gotta be different,” he says. “Don't you get it?”

I come home late and tell Carl and Irene of my day's tribulations. They have pity on me and take my side in every story. I appreciate it because I'm really getting sick of Dan. Yes, sometimes I can imagine being Dan and watching me, his fat-handed film partner, slowly plonking on AVID. As much as I try to walk in his shoes, I still feel hostility toward him.

I'm also upset at Dan because he leaves my name off the producer credits. In 508, film partners typically share producer credits on both films. But Dan, on the final cut, shows his graphics. He lists himself as director, producer, sound designer, and animator. I'm listed as editor and cinematographer.

We have another after-class discussion. I ask him why the hell I'm not given a producer credit. “Well, you were gone a lot in the beginning. I had to do everything then,” he says. True, I add, but since then we'd been working together on everything. I remind him who bought the TV, the stepladder, various do-dads, rented the low-wattage lights, supplied the video camera, bought the food, used the Suburban. It has no effect.

Pablo intercedes and recommends Dan share the producer credit. But Pablo explains that Dan has the final word, as it is his film. Dan goes with a solo producing credit.

With Dan dropping my producer credit, I vow I will return the favor. But in my case, I will expect Dan to do absolutely no producing whatsoever. His job will be to shoot and edit the film, that's it.

Revenge is an excellent motivator.

W
hen I had my stroke, I thought a lot about mortality and my place on this earth. I thought about my relationships with other people and my own legacy. I felt ready to live each day as my last. I thought about Dan, who I often wanted to throttle. Did it mean I was going to forgive Dan? Did it mean I was going to be a
nicer
person, warmer and more generous and kinder?

In my honest moments, I realized I didn't know.

For my 508, I wanted to do a film about redemption, about spirituality, about desire and greed and human nature. I started with some simple premises. What would happen if wood from the Ark of the Covenant turned up in modern times? And what would happen if it did indeed have the power to allow people to see God? What would those people do?

I then took it a step further. In the Bible, the Son of God is born in a cold and dirty animal stall to a woman so poor and without status she isn't even accorded space at an old-timey motel, even though she is extremely pregnant.

So what would happen in our modern age if the vessel that allowed humans a glimpse of God was similarly low in stature? What would happen if that wood from the Ark had been transformed into a roll of toilet paper?

When I pitch my idea to Pablo, he grimaces. “Are you sure?” he says.

I think about it. Yes, I am sure. I tell him I want to incorporate the tale into a modern retelling of the Three Wise Men. And I want to use a porta-potty.

Pablo is still skeptical. “But porta-potties are so . . . ugly. I mean, outhouses can have some real beauty. I know, I've built them. But a porta-potty? They're so—industrial. There's no beauty in them at all,” he says.

That's my point, I add. If a lowly place on earth two thousand years ago was a cold and dirty animal pen, then certainly one of the lowliest places on earth now is a porta-potty on an industrial job site. Pablo isn't convinced.

I kept honing my idea while running around the USC track. With my work on Dan's film done (he was mixing sound into THE ORPHAN at this point), I have time to exercise again. I head out to the USC track every day at midday and run three miles. At first, I am slow, but I keep upping the pace. Soon I am running my three miles in twenty-four minutes. Then twenty-three minutes. Finally, I'm at twenty-two minutes for my three-mile jog. At that point, I have my script figured out. The porta-potty is gone, but everything else remains.

I talk to my parents on my cell one day while cooling off after a run and tell them my film idea. I'm soaked with sweat, shirtless, walking around the USC track. They like my idea. They're both devout Lutherans, and I'm surprised they're receptive to it.

Here's the story: We see an empty desert landscape. Morning sunlight. The middle of nowhere. Then we see a truck. It's got a sign on the side: ARIZONA SURVEYING. Inside are three surveyors. They stop, get out, stretch, take a piss, have some chewing tobacco, and wordlessly get to work. They load up their gear and head into the wilderness, where they begin laying a line with their tripod-mounted surveying gear. We don't know exactly where they are, but it may be close to the Mexican border because a brown-skinned woman darts through the brush unseen by the surveyors.

During a lunch break in the shade, the three men take a nap. From out of the empty blue sky sails a roll of toilet paper, its tail flowing. It hits the smallest surveyor. He looks around, sees no one. He uses the toilet paper for a pillow.

As soon as he puts his head on the roll, he's transported. Our dirty, sunburned surveyor is suddenly a doctor, examining a patient in a busy hospital. But then his reverie is interrupted when he's toed in the ribs by his boss.

The boss tramps off into the wilderness, but the little surveyor is in awe. He doesn't follow. Instead, he shows the roll to his coworker. When the coworker touches the roll, he, too, is transported to a dramatically different place—he's a pianist, playing a concert.

When we see them again, the two have built a little temple to the toilet paper out of rocks. They both kneel before it, touching it gently.

The boss enters, angry, and pushes them out of the way and grabs the toilet paper. Before he can throw it away, however, he, too, is struck. Suddenly the pissing, spitting boss is standing in an ornate, candle-lit cathedral.

But then he blinks, and he's back in the desert. He looks at the roll, and he understands.

He runs, carrying the roll with him. The other two take chase, and now there's a footrace through the desert. The boss is intercepted in a narrow draw by his second-in-command, who holds the sharpened survey pole like a spear. The roll changes hands. The second-in-command is then chased across the landscape by the third-in-command and is finally caught at the top of a cliff, where the two engage in a fistfight on the very edge of the precipice. With a mighty swing, the tiny third-in-command surveyor punches his coworker in the chin, sending the toilet paper roll flying from his hand down the cliff . . . right into the hands of the boss. The boss laughs, gets into the truck, and guns it. He's free and clear, looking at the other two suckers in his rearview mirror when . . . 
Wham!
He hits the brown-skinned woman with the truck and runs her over.

She's sprawled in the dirt, bleeding, dying. The three surveyors gather around the woman. Then, the smallest surveyor pulls toilet paper from the roll and applies it to her bloody wounds. His coworker takes some of the paper and applies it to her head.

The boss, the guy who started the fighting, finally takes the last of the toilet paper and puts it under her head. Then the woman opens her eyes.

The film ends.

My script has everything my 507 fiction films lacked: conflict, action, adventure, humor, surprise, suspense, and depth. It also has a bigger cast—this little film features four characters—and it tackles a bigger issue. The central theme is what might happen to people when they see God or when they
think
they see God. My script is also ambiguous. It doesn't try to tie up every loose end. It doesn't answer questions. I want people to keep thinking about this little film when it ends.

When writing the script, I feel a freedom I didn't in my first semester. Then my stories were simple little affairs. Short hits to the infield. Now I'm swinging for the fences. I work as if there may be no tomorrow, and there's a lot of freedom in that. Before I had my stroke, I'd joke I would die at 105 after being shot in the back by a jealous husband. Now I don't know what the future holds.

T
he script is easy. Now comes the hard part. I need a location, three surveyors, a truck, survey equipment, a Mexican woman, and about twenty-four rolls of toilet paper.

I put a notice on Nowcasting.com, the online matchmaking site for actors and producers. I write I'm a USC grad student shooting on sixteen-millimeter color film who needs actors who can work in extreme heat or cold out of doors for six days over three weekends, in difficult terrain. I warn there will be no dialogue—so no speaking parts. I note that the shoot will take place somewhere outside of Los Angeles, rain or shine, dawn to dusk. There is no pay, just free food. It sounds like that famous advertisement for the Pony Express:
Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.

I now need to find a location, which is complicated by yet another fire season that's being called one of the worst in memory. I've now been in California five years, and every fire season, the locals seem to have short memories. Every year is bad, one of the worst, according to the locals. This year is no different. As a result, all National Forest Service lands are closed to all filming. That means almost every bit of public land in Southern California is off-limits. I call Film LA for help. They never return a call. As usual, they're worthless. I go online and find nothing.

After several days researching via the computer and working the phones, I go back, fill up the Suburban with gas, and start driving. I'm looking for private land. I stop at horse farms, ranches, shooting ranges. I drive up canyons, get out and ask.

No one I talk to wants to have a crew of USC film students on their property for six days. Despite my assurances, the owners worry about fire risk and liability. It crosses my mind they think I might be a thief—I'm sure I sound preposterous when I say I'm a film student—or that I'm looking for a location to shoot porn or do something else illicit. I go to a paintball range, quarries. No luck.

I'm driving late in the afternoon, and I've been on the road for eight hours. I'm in northern Los Angeles County on Highway 14 when I see a promising road off the highway. I turn onto it and see a sign advertising a
Film Shooting Ranch
. I follow the sign.

The place is closed. But off in the distance, I see some very cool rock outcroppings, and there's a sign for Vasquez Rocks County Park. I drive in right before closing time and find an unbelievable location. There's a weird slanted rock outcropping and uninterrupted vistas to the east. It's a small park, less than a thousand acres, but it seems eerily perfect.

I go to the ranger's office and knock. When I step inside, I realize I'm not the first person to find the area unique for filming. On the wall are photos of movies and TV shows the park has hosted: STAR TREK, THE FLINTSTONES, BONANZA, and THE LONE RANGER to name just a few.

A grandmotherly park ranger greets me. I tell her I'm looking to shoot a student film, and she asks me which film school I attend. I say USC, and she says, “Oh, that's good. You give us the least amount of trouble.” I ask her to clarify and she says she's had some bad luck with other Los Angeles–based film schools. She shrugs and won't explain any further. She pulls out her scheduling book, and I see how many other production companies are slated to use the park in the coming two months. She says the set for the next STAR TREK film is under construction, so we can't use the park Monday through Fridays. She looks down her ledger and announces we could shoot weekends later in the month. “You'd be the last group I can take. There's already an AFI crew coming those weekends.” AFI is another film school—American Film Institute. She needs me to fill out permits and a site map where we'll be shooting and lots of insurance paperwork. And, I'll need a filming permit from Film LA.