The film that made me want to make films was Reservoir Dogs. It was gritty, violent, funny. Gangsters with guns, suits, and aliases - this was the perfect stuff to engross any teenager. I was obsessed with how Quentin Tarantino toyed with timelines, created whatever-the-hell dialogue he felt like, and left you feeling like you got socked in the face.
Later, as a film student at USC (for which I still get an automatic monthly bill of $117.87), I realized that every one of my classmates were influenced by the same films. Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Rear Window, A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather. We all thought we were destined to be the next George Lucas. You could tell a film student by their dorm room wall covered in a completely unoriginal choice of movie posters. All hail Kubrick, Coppola, and Scorsese.
After a third or fourth viewing of Reservoir Dogs, my high school friends and I got hold of a digital camera, and started shooting our own scenes in our kitchens and backyards. We pilfered neckties and coats from our fathers’ closets, bought the most realistic-looking handguns we could find, and taught ourselves how to make stage blood with corn syrup. The stuff was a pain to wash out of hair. It took us several Saturday afternoons to shoot enough film for a 3-minute segment. We all joined the school film club with the sole purpose of having free use of the editing room. The film club itself was a joke, mostly working on inane projects like getting footage of the football games, or producing morning announcement segments for the school. We spent late afternoons editing our own stuff, while fantasizing about winning awards at the Sundance Film Festival.
On my own, I started writing my own screenplay. It was an absurdist one-act inspired by Samuel Beckett, featuring three characters sitting in a van. Their names were Tom, Dick, and Harry (get it?), and they had all been contracted by a mystery person to pull off a mystery heist. I was big into mystery. I titled my creation “Waiting For the Caged Canary in Room 409.”
When I read my first draft of “Waiting For the Caged Canary” to a few friends, they all gave me blank stares. “Wait,” someone said, “so the characters are waiting the whole time? And that’s it?” I tried to explain the high concept of absurdist theatre, and my vision of bringing the genre to modern film, but it didn’t seem to land with anyone.
I never completed the screenplay. I had so many romanticized visions of it being a perfect blend of humorous, edgy, and insightful, I got stuck. To this day, I have a file titled “Random Ideas,” stuffed with half-baked screenplays, sketches, and stories. One scrap of paper has the note, “Character idea: Dave, the guy who hates everything about his life.” Seriously. In the folder lies the dormant “Waiting for the Caged Canary in Room 409,” my potential seminal work, waiting to get turned into a masterpiece film.
Later, as a film student at USC (for which I still get an automatic monthly bill of $117.87), I realized that every one of my classmates were influenced by the same films. Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Rear Window, A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather. We all thought we were destined to be the next George Lucas. You could tell a film student by their dorm room wall covered in a completely unoriginal choice of movie posters. All hail Kubrick, Coppola, and Scorsese.
After a third or fourth viewing of Reservoir Dogs, my high school friends and I got hold of a digital camera, and started shooting our own scenes in our kitchens and backyards. We pilfered neckties and coats from our fathers’ closets, bought the most realistic-looking handguns we could find, and taught ourselves how to make stage blood with corn syrup. The stuff was a pain to wash out of hair. It took us several Saturday afternoons to shoot enough film for a 3-minute segment. We all joined the school film club with the sole purpose of having free use of the editing room. The film club itself was a joke, mostly working on inane projects like getting footage of the football games, or producing morning announcement segments for the school. We spent late afternoons editing our own stuff, while fantasizing about winning awards at the Sundance Film Festival.
On my own, I started writing my own screenplay. It was an absurdist one-act inspired by Samuel Beckett, featuring three characters sitting in a van. Their names were Tom, Dick, and Harry (get it?), and they had all been contracted by a mystery person to pull off a mystery heist. I was big into mystery. I titled my creation “Waiting For the Caged Canary in Room 409.”
When I read my first draft of “Waiting For the Caged Canary” to a few friends, they all gave me blank stares. “Wait,” someone said, “so the characters are waiting the whole time? And that’s it?” I tried to explain the high concept of absurdist theatre, and my vision of bringing the genre to modern film, but it didn’t seem to land with anyone.
I never completed the screenplay. I had so many romanticized visions of it being a perfect blend of humorous, edgy, and insightful, I got stuck. To this day, I have a file titled “Random Ideas,” stuffed with half-baked screenplays, sketches, and stories. One scrap of paper has the note, “Character idea: Dave, the guy who hates everything about his life.” Seriously. In the folder lies the dormant “Waiting for the Caged Canary in Room 409,” my potential seminal work, waiting to get turned into a masterpiece film.
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