NYU Film: Fork in the Road

I took screenwriting my first year at NYU, taught by Jackie Parks, who was enthusiastic and encouraging but hardly inspiring (nothing against Jackie; she's a great lady who I love). The book we studied was Aristotle's Poetics, which was as lofty and intellectual a tome as I'd ever encountered. Filled with concepts like protagonist, antagonist, conflict, the "chorus" who commented and narrated the performed theatrical event, this was like reducing drama to some alien abstract science.

I viewed Poetics as intellectual sludge. It did not resonate inside me. It was dry and studied and about as alive and contemporary as its author. I was not particularly moved.

I recall we wrote these artsy-craftsy short scripts and exercises. Our final was a short narrative script and the class was an easy "A". As I was very much caught up in the proactive and time-consuming production process, this course was a necessary evil I endured, like the inane NYU first year required "Expository Writing" class that my niece had to take 30 years after I was forced to slag through it. I guess English majors need jobs, for this course kept plenty employed over the years and the tens of thousands of students NYU grinds through like so much hamburger.

My second year at NYU, I took 16mm film production with film chairman Haig Manoogian. During the first couple of weeks anyone who wanted to direct a film had to submit a short script that would be voted on by the class. Only 5 scripts would be selected and the class would break up into production crews and start production.

Obviously, most people wanted to direct, for NYU's rep was a director's school with Scorcese as its prototypical example. I don't remember how many, but my best guess is over 15 scripts were submitted for review.

The previous summer I wrote a short genre script titled Seppuku, which is Japanese for ritual suicide or hara kiri. After a decade of watching all those Japanese samurai movies, I cooked up a story about a NYC Buddhist priest who is a sword master and teacher (much like at the NY Buddhist Church, where I wanted to shoot). The priest is assaulted by criminals and gets so enraged he goes after them with his sword. After he exacts his revenge he realizes the great sin of killing he has committed and commits suicide. Not the happiest ending, but this was the 70's era of the anti-hero with movies like Easy Rider, Death Wish, Dirty Harry, The Godfather, and scores of B-movies that would no doubt be direct-to-video releases today. Luckily in the 70's the video revolution had not yet occurred, so theaters were the primary distribution method.

I turned my script in, considering it some masterpiece, and was once again deflated when it barely made 5th place. This whole process was political with friends voting for friends (what the hell did I expect? I was just so damn naive and egotistical) and alliances formed way before scripts were turned in. But my script made it by the hairs on my ass (and there aren't many). I was going to make a damn movie!

The other scripts that were voted in were pretty masturbatory pseudo-artistic suffering artist type flicks - but I remember at least one was an ambitious comedy written by classmate Henry Park, Out to Lunch, which depicted the outrageous antics of three loser Brooklyn buddies during their 30 minute lunch break from a fast food purgatorium. It read funny and fast; on-screen it was marred by second-rate amateur performances, sub-par sound (a common student film problem as it's the job no one wants) and poorly lit, disturbingly grainy black and white cinematography.

Mike Negrin, son of IATSE NY cameraman Sol Negrin, was the only person I remember who complimented my script. He said it was "commercial" and was "what the industry wanted to see." I took this as a supreme compliment, for Mike was one of the few chosen ones who were pretty much guaranteed a career path after graduation. Another almuni, John Vorisek, son of famous movie soundtrack mixer Dick Vorisek, was another anointed one, as was famed Exorcist make-up artist Dick Smith's son David (who made a great documentary about his dad at NYU). These guys had a gold ticket, the free pass, the industry nod. The rest of us would have to claw our way into part-time film biz employment, dog-eat-dog NYU style. There was a method to the madness.

Seppuku was doomed from the start. As the Lotsofs and I scouted locations, broke down the script, made equipment lists, and got wrapped in the all-consuming throes of pre-production, I didn'[t realize how hard this story would be to cast. First of all, there aren't that many Asian actors in NYC to play principal parts, and the lead needed to be both a good actor and a competent swordsman. After weeks of looking I finally found an actual from-Japan sword instructor who was a convincing actor. A few days before production commenced, he got cold feet and dropped out.

I was left with a ton of equipment that would not be used, short thousands of dollars in savings (I projected a final cost of $10K for the production -- and it's a little known fact that film students have to bear production costs in addition to tuition and living expenses which can amount to big bucks fast), and a very hard lesson: movie production was incredibly risky and expensive. I was extremely bummed. I came this close. The funk would last at least 6 months. Some rethinking was in order here.

My 5 minute color sync film, Morning, cost me $800 - which seems like a pittance today, but at the time I was astounded by how much a 5 minute movie cost me. I paid nothing for the equipment or editing (actually, it was paid by tuition), so this additional cost was film stock, processing, food, transportation, communication, the whole nine. I had begged, borrowed, and prostituted myself big time to come up with a $10K bankroll, only to spend over $2K with nothing to show. Just bitterness and agita.

I could'a been a contender. I could'a been somebody, instead of a bum.

It suddenly hit me like an ice pick through my ear hole: I could not afford to make another film. I was going to concentrate on putting my stories down on paper, directing movies in my mind, sitting on a chair using a Selectric. I would become a screenwriter.

Little did I know...