Making It...
Life. Craft. Moviemaking. And learning how to be.
I fell in love with moviemaking in 1991, when I stumbled across The Films of Steven Spielberg in the school library. While I’d always enjoyed watching movies, it wasn’t until I found that book that I understood what exactly goes into creating the images we see on screen. Spielberg’s origin story was catnip for a kid wading through the trenches of seventh grade, and the worlds depicted in his early films, particularly the latchkey realm of suburban E.T., struck a nerve. Spielberg used the camera to control the things that scared him, from trainwrecks, to childhood bullies, to fractured family life; if he could capture it on film, he could decide how the story ended. For a thirteen year-old kid with little control over anything, that sounded pretty good. From that point forward, I wanted to make movies.
The fun of making movies as a kid was that there were zero expectations. I wasn’t trying to get into Sundance or break into Hollywood. Sure, I imagined those things happening, but that was just daydreaming. The fun came in cooking up the stories, hashing out the scripts, and hounding friends, coworkers, and classmates to show up for haphazard weekend and after-school film shoots. The process was the entire point.
I might start a project with high expectations, aiming to make a moody film noir or a gritty murder mystery, but I had a weakness for silly costumes, pie fights, and ridiculous chases. Even in the most earnest scenes, there was usually some outlandish beatdown taking place in the background.
None of it was high art, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. It was a chaotic, romanticized view of filmmaking – completely unrealistic – but it was likely the thing that got me through high school. A total escape from reality.
Looking back, I think that’s the key: I was a painfully shy kid who didn’t know how to be. I couldn’t talk to girls. I didn’t go to school events. I had no clue how to socialize. Going to movies and making movies was the full extent of my social life. When I eventually went to film school and started forging real friendships, I began to understand things that most of my friends likely knew years earlier.
For one, there is far more to life than career goals and making movies. For another, filmmaking involves a ton of other people, it’s a business where a handful of people get to be the dreamers, and countless others do the grunt work. That kind of hierarchy breeds resentment. Film crews and sets can become quite toxic. The more I worked on film shoots and student films, the less I enjoyed the experience of making movies. My focus drifted… In high school, I took every class the art department offered (and a few they created for me). In college, I took sculpting, photography, and ceramics courses whenever I could convince a professor to sign off on them as electives. If I had it to do over, I often wonder if I’d have been better off going into something like industrial design. I just loved making things. (That’s the throughline to this day.) Most of my friends in RIT’s School of Film and Animation transitioned into computer animation in our sophomore year, but as I’ve likely mentioned in the past, when it comes to computers, I’m a certified idiot. By my junior year, I’d had enough of the live action production atmosphere and shifted my major to screenwriting, which became the focus for my BFA.
Twenty-five years later, I’m not sure that degree has done a damn thing for me professionally (the one thing I don’t know how to make is a living), but college gave me a life. As my friend Jay said at my wedding, when he first met me, all I talked about was movies, but after I fell for Steph, all I talked about was her. That pretty much hit the nail on the head.
These days, surprisingly, I have a day job that actually uses some of my sculpting and art background. And when that doesn’t quite scratch the creative itch, I have my own projects going on the side.
I fell out of love with moviemaking in 2002. The romance of Hollywood just… dropped away. After an extended job hunt in Los Angeles in 2003, I returned to Seattle, tested the corporate waters at Starbucks — learned that definitely wasn’t for me — and swapped screenwriting for book writing. Aside from a couple of brief relapses, I’ve been following that path ever since.
Now that Charley is the same age I was in 1991, they’re starting to enjoy watching some of the movies I loved back then. This week, while Steph was traveling for work, we again made our way through the original Star Wars trilogy. Watching films through Charley’s eyes brings back much of the magic. These days, it often feels like I’m at a turning point. Moviemaking has changed, the tools and possibilities are more powerful and accessible than ever before. I occasionally wonder if I should try producing a micro budget film if I could find the right collaborators. While I don’t have the same all-consuming love of the movies that I had as a kid, it’s slowly coming back.
I find that more and more, I’m drawn to memoirs written by actors and filmmakers, as well as books about the making of classic films. I’ve mentioned a few such titles in previous posts, but my favorite is still The Big Goodbye. Others include The Jaws Log, The Last Action Heroes, and The Future Was Now. I’ve been feeling around for a subject I might tackle for an ongoing series of posts for this Substack, something I might want to collect and expand into a non-fiction book, and I’m beginning to thinking I should write about the making of a favorite film. Maybe Sneakers or Wonder Boys? I’m not sure yet, but finding a subject that would garner the same broad interest, with as much behind the scenes drama and intrigued is crucial. I need something with larger than life personalities and stories that haven’t been covered again and again in other formats. Many of the obvious candidates have already been claimed (At least for the time being…I had very high hopes for Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli), but there are just as many prime subjects that haven’t been tackled yet. I have a couple of ideas kicking around, but I’d love to hear of any movies you think deserve a full behind the scenes treatment.
If you're enjoying Shelf Talkers by Mike Attebery, you might enjoy Mike's books, which you can find at the online retailer of your choice by following this link.