Claude Smith
The best thing
about Brooklyn College is that they encourage you to take courses in things other than writing, like pottery and
sculpture and filmmaking. They make you get out and do things, as if there’s a correlation between the lead in your
pencil and the lead in your ass. It worked. I gave up writing and became a
filmmaker.
* * *
My
first film was a disaster. It was supposed to be a pattern film, for Joel Zwick’s Cine-Tech 101. I shot it at Green-Wood
Cemetery. I spent hours planning all the shots.
Cemeteries
are really interesting. And heavily symbolic. The gravestones are like so many
sculptures. At certain angles they line up in neat rows. But from other angles
they’re all a-jumble—like the scenes of my boyhood in my head. I was going to
shoot the stones with a long lens to get a foreshortened effect, so they’d all
look packed in tight.
As if people were dying to get in
there.
I
shot for three hours on a sunny September afternoon. There was a fine interplay
of stones and shadows. I could hear the camera whirring away. It was an old
16mm World War II documentary Bell & Howell that looked like Mickey Mouse
ears turned on end. It had a big wind-up key.
As
I shot I kept humming Beethoven’s 9th, the tune I intended for my
soundtrack. I could see the film
unfolding before my eyes.
Later,
when I opened the camera, I noticed that all the film was still in the top
canister. I turned the camera upside down to make the film be on the bottom
where it should have been. It didn’t work. I had threaded it improperly. I’d
been shooting air all afternoon.
* * *
At
Brooklyn College I met Agnieszka Holland, the famous Polish director. Her work
has won at the Cannes Film Festival and that impressed me. The film of my
boyhood is destined for Cannes.
Aggie
was a guest lecturer in Calvin Zwick’s Cine-Tech 101. “For ze filmmaker,” she
said, “zair is ze technical hump. Unless he first gets over ze technical hump,
he will never be a filmmaker.”
I
knew what she meant. I asked her if she had any secrets about threading film. She
thought I said shredding. “Not enough
filmmakers shred zair films,” she said.
I
smiled, undaunted. If I couldn’t thread it, I couldn’t shred it.
* * *
My
second film was much improved. I returned to Green-Wood but with a crew this
time. His name was Larry. He was a photographer from Bed-Stuy who hated films
as much as he hated filmmakers.
“A
single photograph is all you need,” he told me.
“Then
why are you taking Zwick?”
“It’s
a requirement of my program. To make sure the photographer sees things in
continuity.”
“Sounds
familiar,” I said. “Why don’t you try writing?”
“I
got nothing to say.”
Zwick
paired Larry with me as crewmates on the first day of class. We all had to
stand up and announce our intentions in hopes of pairing up crews with similar
interests. Most crews consisted of three or four students.
When
it was Larry’s turn he said, “I hate films as much as I hate filmmakers.”
I
said, “I’m going to win the Cannes Film Festival.”
After
the crews had been picked, only Larry and I were left. Unfortunately, he was
sick when I shot my first film.
“How’d
it turn out?” he called to me as my VW pulled up to the curb at his Brownsville
apartment.
Larry
was a wimpy-looking guy but his girlfriend was gorgeous. She was sunning
herself facedown on an air mattress by the fire hydrant. As I approached, she
reached behind her back to unsnap the top of her bathing suit.
“Didn’t
shoot it yet,” I replied to Larry. “Decided I needed your help.” I told him I
was thinking of freeze-framing a few shots in my graveyard film and that got
him all excited. It was almost photography.
“I
made some peanut butter sandwiches for lunch,” he said, holding up a paper bag.
“Why
don’t you thread the camera as we ride out?”
* * *
Now
the 16mm World War II documentary Bell & Howell is quite a piece of
machinery. It’s heavy and sturdy and indestructible. It took pictures of Hitler
and pictures of Hiroshima. After the World War II the Army bequeathed a number
of them to Brooklyn College. Ours was a functional antique.
The
camera carries three lenses that screw into a revolving turret. There is a long
lens, a medium lens, and a short lens. I told Larry to use the long lens. He
wanted the short one, the wide angle. “It’s my film,” I snorted. Larry screwed
in the lenses and snapped the long one into position.
It
was another sunny September day and I was getting excited. “Dum dum dum daaa,” I sang to myself as I
lifted the light meter from the camera case. I took a reading and we began
shooting. Larry, surprisingly enough, was cooperative. The afternoon flew.
“Enfin, c’est fini,” I announced like
Truffaut himself.
But
when the film came back from the lab it was all washed out. And out of focus.
Instead of a graveyard it looked like a ghost yard. Vague ashen stones stood
against a white sky. It was haunting. My blurred rhythmical pans looked like a
military review of the Ku Klux Klan.
“What
the fuck went wrong?”
Zwick
was pragmatic. “Light meter was probably out of calibration. Everybody just
throws ’em in the case.”
“What
about the focus?”
“The
lens wasn’t screwed in tight.”
“Ze lens wasn’t screwed in tight!” I
aped Aggie. “Once again ze victim of ze technical hump!”
When
I saw Larry I was furious. “The lens wasn’t screwed in tight!”
“I
told you we should have used the wide angle.”
I
wanted to shred his head.
* * *
My
next film was a technical masterpiece. (Zwick had given me a “D” for my
previous effort.) I shot it at Waldbaum’s,
and I had to hassle the manager to let me film in his store. “Listen,” I told
him. “This is the crazy ’60s, for Chrissakes. The whole country’s freaked out
with people doin’ their own thing. Nobody’s gonna flip over somebody with a
camera in a grocery store.”
After
a while he consented. I positioned myself behind the Cheerios.
Zwick
wanted us to do a non-directed film,
a sort of documentary in which you have no control over the action. I decided
to shoot the checkout girls. There were seven of them all lined up in their
chutes, whanging away at the cash registers, too busy to notice my head popping
up and down behind the Cheerios.
I
shifted to 64 frames-per-second for some slow-motion shots. I was having a
great time.
Then
something happened that taught me a great truth about filmmaking. Some guy
walked right in front of me, pushing his basket of groceries. But when he saw
the camera he suddenly stopped, ducked, and retreated as if he’d committed a
sin. The great truth about filmmaking is that people think filmmakers are
sacred. With a camera in tow you can get away with anything. It’s the
conditioned Hollywood response, a lesson that would prove helpful in making my
boyhood film. If you ever want to get away with anything outrageous, just carry
a camera along.
Anyway,
my non-directed film turned out to be mainly about one of the checkout girls.
Her name was Maya and she was very pretty. She was seventeen and it was a
pleasure to watch her check out groceries. She had long black curly hair that
flew about her baby face as she punched the keys and bagged the goodies.
I
went over to her after I’d finished filming and said, “What’s a pretty girl
like you doin’ in a joint like this?”
She
was apprehensive. “What?”
“You
oughta be in pictures.”
“What?”
“How’d
you like to be in a movie?”
“No
thanks.”
“Well,
you already are. I’ve been filming you for the past half hour.” I held up the
magic Bell & Howell. It was too much for her.
“What?”
“I’ll
see you outside when you get off work.”
The
only problem with Maya was that she was pretty only from the waist up. From the waist down she was chunky and thick-thighed.
She’d been eating too many bagels. She was wedged into a pair of Levi’s so
tightly it made me wince. It had all been hidden beneath the counter. How could
I have known? I’d been too hasty. And
now I was stuck with Maya for my next film, a film I hadn’t even planned yet.
I’d just have to make sure to shoot her from the
waist up.
“What
kinda film you makin’?” she said outside, all excited now.
“Not
sure yet. But with you, how can I miss?” I was trying hard not to stare at her
thighs.
Maya
beamed. “What’s it for?”
“The
Cannes Film Festival.”
“Oh
yeah,” she said. “Andy Warhol.”
* * *
I
got a “B” on my Eagle film. “‘A’ for technical aspects,” Zwick wrote on his
comment sheet. “The lighting was perfect. ‘C’ for conception: the slo-mo hurt
the rhythm. ‘B’ for the film.”
I
was ecstatic. A two hundred percent improvement! I had threaded the film,
calibrated the light meter, and screwed in the lens all by myself, all without Larry
who had to take his gorgeous girlfriend to the doctor.
I
was climbing ze technical hump.
* * *
At
this point in time I didn’t know I’d be making a film of my boyhood. The film I
had in mind for the Cannes Film Festival was what Zwick called my “Cine-Tech
101 Wonder.” It was a combination of the films I was making in his course.
The
idea came to me while watching a Bergman film at Beekman’s not long after I’d
met Maya. I saw it all in a flash, and it would use every foot of film I’d
already shot plus the new roll allotted for the assignment.
Our
third film was to be a directed film.
Here we could control the action, direct
the actors, and make significant
weighty statements. In the Bergman film, Liv Ullman went running through a
field. I saw Maya running (in waist high grass).
The
story came quickly. The pretty checkout girl at the local Waldbaum’s mourns the
recent death of a loved one—father, brother, lover (on purpose we don’t make it
clear). She visits his grave after work
and then repairs to a serene and natural setting for solace. Out of focus graveyard shots show the
confusion in her mind. It was fall now, November, and the season itself would
reflect the melancholy mood of the film.
I
took Maya out to Green-Wood Cemetery. Larry came too. I only wanted him for one
shot with his own camera—a single still photo of Maya looking down sadly at a
gravestone, shot from behind the stone so the name (along with her thighs) was
hidden.
Larry
was inspired. I figured I’d have him blow up his shot to an 8x10. Then I could
film it back in the studio, pinning it to the wall and shooting it from a
tripod close up. It was all much easier than freeze-framing—the endless
duplication in the lab of a single frame of film, a technique reserved for
Cine-Tech 102. I figured the lone still shot would lend the film an air of
poignancy.
I dismissed Larry
after his photo and sent him home to his darkroom and his lovely girlfriend.
“By the way,” he said in parting, “she’s pregnant. Let me know how your film
turns out.”
“Will do.” Then I
took one long lyrical shot of Maya running through the graveyard directly at
the camera, screaming and flailing her arms in classic grief. I shot it in slow
motion thinking, “Fuck you, Zwick. I’ll
get the rhythm right.”
In
my head I tried out different tunes—from the Beatles to Bolero—while Maya ran at me screaming like a sixth grader at a
snake. I focused on her head and arms.
Then
we moved over to Sylvan Water, where brown leaves, so symbolic of death,
were falling from a nearby grove of
trees. I instructed Maya to walk to the shore, pick up a fluttering leaf, and
set it gently in the water, where, like a somber boat, it would be borne out to
the little lake beyond—like her father-brother-lover crossing the bar.
And as Maya walked
back whence she had come, she turned once more for a last look at the scene,
the breeze spread her curly black hair, and—the look on her face wasn’t sad
enough. Just sort of cute. I knew then I’d need some heavy music before the
credits.
* * *
Zwick
gave the film a “B”. “The story line’s not clear,” he wrote. “There are no
bridging shots. It’s like three separate films. The girl is happy in the
supermarket. Then we see her sad in the graveyard with no transition. She’s not
right for your story. The best shot is at the end, when she looks back. She
looks good there. You should have built your film around that look.”
I
concluded that Zwick had no imagination.
* * *
Maya
loved the film. She wanted to make another. I told her I’d used up all the film
the course allowed me. The semester was ending. I didn’t tell her I’d signed up
for Cine-Tech 102. There we would learn freeze-framing, dissolves, fade-in’s
and fade-out’s, sync sound and lip sync (until now my sound had been played on
an accompanying cassette), and A & B roll printing—all the assorted
mysteries that produce the magical effects on the silver screen, the technical
camel’s second hump. But I shan’t bore you with how I mastered them. Suffice
it to say that I did.
And
I did, finally, get an “A” out of Zwick. The film that did it was the
masterpiece my film of Maya should have been. And for this one I
never touched a
camera.
All
second semester, when in the editing room, I picked up scraps of film thrown
away by other filmmakers. The editing room closed each night at ten o’clock.
Each day I’d show up at nine-thirty and grab pieces of film from the
wastebaskets at the twelve editing stations. This began as an editing exercise
for practice in splicing film, a hassle that involves cutting the film,
scraping off the emulsion with a razor blade, applying glue, and sticking it
all back together again. I did it daily to master the technique, so my films
would stop falling apart in the projector.
One
day, just for fun, I ran the film to see what I had. To my surprise the random
shots fell into rough patterns. There were shots of a Circle Line tour boat, a
black girl throwing a rose into the East River, a man playing with a dog, cars
in a junk yard, a record player, a wheelchair on its side (one wheel spinning),
a man raking leaves (spliced in upside down), a bulldozer, a collapsing
geodesic dome, a student giving the camera the finger, a little boy with a
dirty face, the foyer of the library, a still shot of a Playboy centerfold, desks in a classroom—and on and on.
I
added loud rock music and called the film Garbage
Cannes.
Zwick
raved. “It’s life!” he wrote. “So many slices of life!”
I’d made my
best film from the scraps of other filmmakers.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere, Aggie.
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