Haunting, the Eye of Hurricanes

The eye of a hurricane will pull you in, the words will shock you, and the meaning will entice you. This is perhaps what the advertiser of the film want. The film is An Inconvenient Truth and what I’m looking at is one of the posters used to bring people into the theater. As a whole the poster is almost threatening. The ominous hurricane eye, filling the top two-thirds of the poster, over takes the hazy blue-grey, evening sky, with a terrifying swirl of white smoke. The smoke is supplied by two of three, tall chimneystacks, centered in the middle of the ad, pulling the eye from the hurricane down. Not all the way down, to the left (the posters’ stage right) is the copy stating, “By far the most terrifying film you will ever see.”
Terror upon terror, your eyes will still follow the smoke stacks down to the main body of the factory they support. Behind the factory you can discern the fading dusk. The eye continues down into a black fade until the bottom fourth of the poster is a black matte designated for the title of the film. An Inconvenient Truth stretches across the blackness in bold lower case lettering larger than any other group of words; they are printed without any more space between the letters than had they been one word. The only way to tell them apart is the fact that the middle word, “inconvenient” is in an eye catching orange-red color. Below the title is the subtitle, slightly smaller yet just as tricky as the words above it. This time the lettering is in all uppercase, still all white yet once again red is used to draw your eye. The subtitle reads, “A Global Warning,” with “warning” slightly crooked and all in red looks as though it had been stamped there with a sure hand leaving the stamps rectangle shape around the words.
Less interesting and common on all American movie posters are the film credits placed at the bottom center in white lettering so they may be seen by curious parties but make no more statement about the film then the "who made it," question only geeks like myself ask.
When I look at the smoke coming from the building on the bottom left I find that the two plumes of smoke present in the middle of the poster is repeated here. This time, it seems, the eye is lifted up in almost a heavenly way back into the haze to be abruptly stopped to read the copy, either for the first time or for a second time. “By far the most terrifying...” Haunting, the way this poster was designed. The “two plume” devise is used again on the bottom right of the page, though only for the purpose of symmetry.
I am left with so many questions I’d like the to ask the advertisers: why is the third and most prominent smoke stack empty; why is it not filling the air with hurricane smoke; why the lower case letters; why the upper case letters?

Why did this poster have so powerful of an impact on me?
When I was a boy, the trip to my grandmothers’ house was always long and boring for a kid in a time predating Gameboy’s and portable DVD players. It would be a trip of car games like finding the alphabet on license plates and Slug Bug. Then of course there was always the inventible punching of the younger brother and the pestering of the older one. My brothers and I would drive my parents crazy. Then about fifteen or twenty minutes away from her house we would see the large chimneys that rising into the sky as if they were built for a giant’s fireplace. We called them “cloud makers.” We knew that as soon as we saw the cloud makers we were almost there. But these great chimneys didn’t make the clouds, as we found out when we hit the fourth grade, they were the smoke stacks for the local factory burning up wood chips to power whatever machines they used behind those sheet metal walls.
To see the cloud makers of my child hood used to strike terror into others, hit me in a way I am still contemplating, then to include the hurricane... Let take you back to when I was in stationed in Iraq, when Hurricane Katrina and her sister Rita hit the Gulf of Mexico and devastated New Orleans and so many towns and cities of our great country. I remember sitting in the cafeteria on our base, barely eating as the reports came in on the big screen TV we had in there. The Fox News reporters telling us of the massive devastation wrought by Katrina and then, so soon afterwards, Rita... Maybe it was the all too familiar image that hit me the most.
“Warning! Danger! Destruction! Disaster!” The poster shouts at us, urging you to see this film and learn what it is that we must avert, avoid. Images of disasters flood my mind and my thoughts are filled with previous knowledge of the consequences we already face from a changing earth. The sands of African dessert pulled off the continent by powerful winds, sweeping them across the Atlantic to settle in the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of miles away. The coral started dying at alarming rates affecting every form of life in the sea. What other horrible things have been happening? Most importantly, is there anything we can do to stop it? Can this destruction be averted? And finally, will this movie tell us?
I found out the answers to my questions when I became an audience member sitting in the theater. I couldn’t believe what was going on. The world is in danger. The advertisers did their job well and I learned something that will challenge me for the rest of my life. I left my seat in that dark theater not only believing the copy on that inspiring poster but today I’ve added my own take on it and tell whom ever will listen: This is the most important film you will ever see!

http://www.climatecrisis.net/downloads/images/poster.jpg

Observing Those Observing

It is late as I pull into the Cineplex parking lot. I do a slow drive by passing the movie posters with the show times posted below them. I missed the seven-thirty show by almost two hours but I can still catch the late show at nine-twenty. I drive around back and park near the theater exit, like always. I look around quickly to memorize my spot and briskly walk to the ticket counter.
I’m not to late. I ask for my ticket and hand over my card. I look at the attractive young woman as she prints out my receipt and ticket. My mind wonders and I think about how nice it would be to be young again and then laugh at myself over the silly thought of a 29 year old wanting to be young again. She hands me the receipt to sign and then my ticket. Our fingers touch for a half second, hers are soft, mine are rough, I think again about being younger.
I enter the main lobby still thinking about my own youth when my eye catches the flickering light of the arcade. There a group of teenagers are playing a pistol game. It looks like one of them is telling the others that the movie is about to start, as he is shoving his watch in their faces. I turn to look at the concession lines and decide that they are short enough for that I may buy popcorn and something to drink and still enter the theater in time to see the previews of coming attractions. In front of me, a couple orders a large tub of popcorn, two sodas and then adds Red Vines and Junior Mints, their total nears thirty dollars. They don’t seem to mind; they flirt with each other as the progressive woman shells out the cash. I’m next. The same girl that sold me my tickets has swapped places with a co-worker and is now taking my order. I ask for a medium coke and small popcorn. The young woman goes through the regular suggestive selling routine and asks if I want to up size my snacks for a buck more. I look at my watch, the show has started by now and I kindly decline. I pay for my snacks with cash this time to speed things up.
I hand my ticket to the kid ripping tickets. The teenagers behind me, joking and play fighting, hand their tickets over to get the official rip as I walk down the maroon carpeted hall to the door of my theater. I glance at the screen before I look for a seat. I relax a bit when I see that commercials are still playing so I haven’t missed the trailers. I continue looking for a place to sit and find one in the middle that is still empty but then I remember the excuse I gave my wife for “wasting money” at the theater and choose a seat that allows me to see the audience as well as the movie.
I watch as other latecomers trickle in. Some stop in the walkway looking for that perfect seat. Some are like the teenagers that followed me in go straight for the front row, or like the young couple that was in front of me at the concessions, go straight for the privacy of the find in the back for. Then the guy who had his buddies save him a seat comes in and when his friends spot him one of them shout, “Over here!”
If you had been raised with theater etiquette you would not believe you were in a room of people about to see a show. There are people laughing and joking and having a good ole’ time. The previews come on and the audience’s whispers’ float all over the room as they discuss which movies they want to see. Then a sound arises from the speakers, it intensifies to a louder and louder hum. This movie is presented in THX Surround Sound. The audience is quiet and tensely waits for the movie to begin.
The initial credits are placed in front of a backdrop of a slow pan over skyscrapers of a modern city. Geeks like me comment on cast and crewmembers we have read about or seen the other works they’ve done as their names appear. An abrupt and commanding, “Shhh,” is heard, someone is annoyed. A laugh and chuckle follow but is quickly silenced when a gunshot is heard from the speakers. The action has finally started and the audience takes note, finally buttoning up. They begin to really watch. All that is heard of them now is the sucking on straws and the crunching and munching of candy and popcorn.
Of course not everyone is watching intently. The young couple, in the dark, corner shadows, are giving more attention to each other than the film and the teenagers are still at it in the front, presently, tossing popcorn at one another. This all brings to mind the question of why people come to the theater at all when they can spend a 10th of what they pay here on a rental. Why come to the theater to for faux privacy like the couple or to play like the teens?
Why do Americans pay so much money for this experience? I don’t think I can answer that question with out looking into myself. But of course my answer may only fit me. I have a love for the theater that comes from childhood experiences. It is the first place I saw a man fly, the first place I saw a galactic space opera, where my favorite television cartoons were blown up to larger than life size in action packed movies. It was the family time I experienced. The popcorn and candy and soda my parents would buy for me. When the lights would go down and our dreams became reality. You could laugh along with everyone else and cry with everyone else or scream as the whole audience screamed. To peak through your mothers fingers as she blocked your eyes from the parts that were too scary. I guess for me the dark theater is a place where one can forget the outside world and be surrounded by people who enjoy the same stories as you do.
Maybe it is as simple as that, to escape without having to leave our community, to be a part of a community and separate from it at the same time. What ever the reason I do know that I will always love the theater more than renting and watching at home and I am sure that America will go on doing the same for times to come.

What Dreams May Come: Examining A Career in Broadcast Journalism

I was a clown. There were five of us crammed into a toy box on the corner of the stage with only enough room to maneuver out of it when we heard our cue. The lid closed left us saturated in darkness. I was to be the first out. My ears strained to hear the toy prince say the line that would deliver us from this sardine can. Three clowns were cracking jokes and behaving rather unprofessionally for actors in a stage show. I turned and “shh’d” them, shouting in a whisper, “this may not matter to you but, you’re not gonna ruin it for me. I going to be an actor!”
That was a long time ago, when children dream big and before the world crashes down on their shoulders. I was thirteen years old when I auditioned for The Oregon Coast Children’s Theater (O.C.C.T.)and was bitten by the acting bug. Ever since I have dreamed of being an entertainer, a story teller. With journals full of short stories and notebooks devoted to novels, I am constantly building stories in my head. At one time I thought I would be satisfied with simply acting stories out. Yet, I continued dreaming up more. I concluded that I could be a director/writer and that would satisfy me. My stories became greater, more epic. I spoke to my mentor, the Director of O.C.C.T., he told me of the many stories that he wants to tell but knows he will die before he tells them all and, I panicked. What if end up like him, a great guy living his dream but one who remains a starving artist. I grew up poor, and I have no intention of living poor my whole life just so I could be an artist. So, I gave my dreams the status of “hobby” and went to work for high pay and extreme boredom. I was being practical and told myself that through my “hobby” I was still living my dream.
I wasn’t living my dream and I learned that when I was on the set of a spur of the moment no script/no budget short. I was the happiest I had been, while working, and it was very apparent that I could not be satisfied with a job just because the pay was good. I needed this, I needed to tell the stories. I had to do this for a living.
First, I needed a wake up call.
Years had passed and I had joined the Idaho Army National Guard and my perspective on life changed. Those things you think are so important at the time seem so trivial when you see people blow themselves up because they let someone brainwash them into believing it was the right thing to do. I had grown less concerned with the silly stories I had been writing for years and began investigating things a little closer to home.
Working with the Kurdish people gave me inspiration. I began studying their history, culture and myths. I even picked up enough of their language to communicate... a bit. I was inspired to tell their stories. To tell the world who these country less people are. I left Iraq with plans to return someday to make a series of documentaries, when I was ready...
I completed my tour of duty in Iraq. My wife and I bought a home and moved in. One day as I was sifting through a box of old journals and papers I came across a script I had written years ago. I thumbed it over and was surprised that it still made me laugh. I sat there and began to read it from beginning to end. I grew more and more flustered. How could I have spent so much time on this script just to throw it in a box? Why did I not produce this? I became angry at my own weakness of not completing what I start. I took it to my wife and asked her. She reminded me about my passion for storytelling and my talent for telling stories. However, she did could not answer my question.
I spent much of my time in the next year pondering on this. Obsessing over it. I had told my Iraqi friends that I would be back someday, to the ones that understood more english than I kurdish, I promised I would tell their stories. I wouldn’t let them down. I began doing research on film schools and online schools. When those didn’t pan out, cost and need wise, I began looking at schools in the area and finally settled on UI. That wasn’t enough because, if I was going to quit a high paying job, with benefits, to follow a dream I had to prove to myself and my wife that I could actually earn a comfortable living.
I returned to research mode. What I found was motivating. The Moscow/Lewiston area offers a variety of jobs and even local internships in both TV and Radio. Fisher Communications, INC. being the most prominent offers an internship for broadcast journalism at KLEW in Lewiston. They brag on their web site of internships that often lead to careers spanning their vast media empire from Coos Bay, OR to Great Falls, MT. And should I get an internship it will open the doors of their 10 television and 26 radio stations.
To really do what I want to do, the documentaries and such, I would use said internship to develop my skills at producing. It is my plan to become a producer. I got this in my head when I read a book by Buck Houghton called What a Producer Does. He defines his title as, “[a producer] has an idea and pursues it... [he is] an inspirer of creativity... “ (Houghton viii-ix) as do I have an idea and am so inspired to pursue it. I left my comfortable wages and my comfortable life style for pen and paper; books and all night cram sessions and the life of a twenty-nine year old college student.
My plan is to work hard in school and work, as often as time allows, on projects that will build my resume. Before college ends I will have produced at least one 30-minute documentary on a global issue and develop a production plan for my kurdish docu-series. I will use these to promote my ability to get things done and to apply for internships. In my junior and senior years of college I will work for college credit with an internship at KLEW or other local station to gain experience in “on the floor” producing and learn the journalistic style of telling stories. I will take that experience out into the world and use it to sell my self to television stations and land myself a the starter job I will need until I can then sell my ideas and move into independent production, producing documentaries on topics that mean something to me. which I hope to parlay into producing independent film and later a television series.
I do understand that this will not be easy, but nothing worth doing is ever easy and there are a lot of “what ifs” in there however, what would the world be like if Spielberg never snuck onto the Paramount lot; what if Fox laughed at George Lucas; what if Christopher Reeves passed on Superman?
My wife tells me, I am not intimidated by my huge dreams and that I will make my dreams come true if I remain true to the passion that has always burned inside me. The passion that fueled my decision to serve my country in Iraq; the passion that forced my hand to turn in my resignation at work; the passion that has me working for a degree I thought I’d never get to earn; the passion that has my wife believing that a man can fly. And so I will be true to my dream and keep my promise to the Kurds. I know that I can make a living doing what I love and that is my goal.


Bibliography

Houghton, Buck. What a Producer Does: The Art of Moviemaking (Not the Business). First. Beverly Hills, CA: Silman James Press, 1991.

"Inside KLEW." KLEWTV.com 3. 29 Mar 2007. Fisher Communications. 29 Mar 2007 .

"Internship Program." Fisher Communications, Inc.. 2007. Fisher Communications, Inc.. 29 Mar 2007 .

“Mammas’ Boy..?”

Relationships are complicated; none are so complicated as the one between mother and son. From the frosty winter day I was born on, I was a mammas’ boy. Everything I did, I did it to please her. She was my life, always looking out for me and I, in turn, was always looking out for her. Life was easier back when my mom would look at me with her beautiful blue eyes and gently whisper, “everything is going to be alright.”
Mother’s don’t tell you all the lies they tell just to comfort you. When I learned of my parents divorce my mind went back several years to a comforting promise my mother had told me when I was upset by an argument her and my father had… How things change, the promises that are broken with time, along with hearts and innocence. How did a little comforting lie cannon ball into such a strained relationship with my mother as we have today?
It started with the broken promise but, my mother eased this when she told me I was her favorite. Of course, I knew this already, as I have always been favored. Which may be why my brothers didn’t like me that much when we were young. I’ve often wondered about this and about why I was the favorite. What about me set me apart from my siblings? Was it my calm demeanor and never getting into or causing trouble? Or maybe it was that I had a creative side much like her, after all I did look like her and maybe she liked me a little more because she saw herself in me. I’ll never really be sure but, what I do know is that after the divorce she came to rely on me more, to the point that she had me playing dad to my baby sister.
I spent the next six years taking care of my family and raising my sister while my mother worked two jobs just to pay the rent and feed her four children. I did the dishes, changed the diapers, cleaned up after everyone and even cooked dinner for the family and saved left overs for mom. I continue to do what ever I could to please her… but the broken promise kept eating at me everytime she would tell another comforting lie…
I grew up, fed up with the lies and mis-truths and moved out as soon as it was economicly feasable. I became independent of her or, so I told myself, as I walked to her house one day when she called me for help. I may not have lived at her house but, I did spend a lot of time there. I thought I was being the noble son, always there for his mother however, I was merely enabling her to trap me as man of the house, always at her beck & call.
Then one day I met a brilliant young woman who would rock my world in more ways than one. My future wife immediately saw in me a man capable of anything his heart desired and made it her personal mission to see to it that those desire would grown to fruitation. She challenged me like no one ever had. She taught me that I could be independent and I could get the high paying job I always wanted and I would make my dreams come true. I fell in love, hard, but when I brought her home to mother, my mom (I later found out) feigned happiness for me. All she saw was her son was being taken away from her forever and she was not going to stand for that.
I was married and had finally moved onto a path that led to some where other than my mammas’ door step. I moved to the nieghboring city and aquired the highest paying low level job in the valley, coveted by everyone I knew. I was learning what independence really meant. I had begun an identity other than, my mothers’ son.
Yet, still at mothers’ beck & call.
It was after my wife had taken time off of college when we were married. A few years later she had come to the conviction that it was time to finish her education and as bold as ever she pursed it, only pausing long enough to ask me if I was ok with moving away from my family. I hadn’t always been supportive during her time at college so I really wanted to make it up to her. I had never been away from home but, when I saw the look on her face when I told her it wouldn’t be a problem… my mind was made up. We sat down and made a plan. We were to leave on January 1st. All I had to do was tell my mother I was moving nine hours away.
Easier said than done. That September, shortly after we had made this momentous decision my mothers’ little sister died. How could I tell her, her baby was leaving town for good? So I waited. I had thought two months would be enough. It was coming close to the dead line and I wanted her to have time to deal with it before I left so I could help her with what would be to her a huge transiction. I was not prepared for her reaction at all. She compared me moving from Albany, OR to Moscow, ID, only a nine hour drive away, to her sister leaving her by dying…
What was I supposed to do? I was improving my life. Don’t most parents rejoice in their childrens success? The worst of it, she still holds it against my wife and I.
So, how unfortunate was it, after only three months since our arrival that my wiifes’ National Guard Unit was called for duty in Iraq? As much as this scared me, it also excited me. I finally had a strong enough reason to join the army, something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid but, was strongly discouraged from doing. So, I would sign on the doted line and join the wife and family over seas but, first I wanted my mothers blessing. When she came up for a visit the weekend before I planned to move forward and I told her. I spent the next few hours talking to her through the bathroom door she had locked herself behind crying like a baby. She expressed her thought that I was going to die and how she would have to kill herself if that happened…
“The bible says, “Honor thy parents.” I looked at her and told her what I felt in my heart. “I can not follow this commandment if I let my growth as a human being be stunted by fear. If I donot take the opportunities life presents by the fullest then what will become of me? I want to have children and tell them that I did some good in this world. That I helped give freedom to the middle east. I want to be a part of this great change the great good that can come from this conflict. If I do that, am I not honoring you?”
She told me she would rather me be alive and so I told her a comforting lie, “I promise, I’m not going to die.”

“If I knew then what I know now…”

Regret can be a terrible burden. One doesn’t always know that they will grow to regret an action when they are taking it. I have three failures, together they make up one, large regret. I had failed the seventh, eighth and twelfth grades. It is not easy to admit failures let alone the regret of these failures.
My mother had regret too. She regretted marring my father. This became apparent one day when my dad told her he was quitting his job again for a better one and we would have to move again for the seventeenth time. That is when the screaming and yelling started and the throwing of fruit. This event has been labeled the “Peach War” because when the smoke cleared, my siblings and I found decimated peach parts all over the kitchen. But wouldn’t you know it, my mother stayed with married to my father for four more years for the kids, she said.
The new town my father moved us to was the very rural two street coastal town of Nehalem, OR: population 126. I went to school there from fifth grade to the end of ninth. It was near the end of seventh grade when my mother had had enough of my father and kicked him out of the house. Later, she had my father tell my siblings and me that they were getting a divorce. When I heard that word I could only thing of one thing, a promise made to me long ago by my mother. She had found me drenched in my own tears after my parents had a huge fight when I was still very young. I told her as best a crying child can that I was afraid they were going to get a divorce. To ease my pain she bent down and embraced me and looked into my eyes and said, “I promise, your dad and I will never get a divorce.”
Suffice it to say when I was told that my parents where divorcing it hit me hard, very hard. To say I was devastated still wouldn’t explain how I felt. My world collapsed on me and they only way I survived was by building a shell around my self and creating a world of my own in my head. My imagination ran wild and paid little attention to anything other than my comic books and my own short stories. My school grades began to suffer and by the end of the year I had achieved one of the strangest report cards in history: three A’s and three F’s. I stopped caring about the subjects I didn’t really enjoy and focused only on those that involved art, writing and crafts.
When my mother saw this, she knew right away I would fail seventh grade if she did not intervene. Intervene she did; she went to the principle and convinced him I only failed those courses because I was depressed about my parents’ divorce and that holding me back would only hurt me. And so I was moved to the eighth grade through no effort of my own. If only my regrets ended there.
The strained relationship between my parents increased when my mother, in a classic divorcee move, refused to let my father see us if he didn’t pay up, like he was renting us or something. This strain affected all of my siblings and I asked to see my mother’s “shrink” needing someone outside of the family to talk to. I wish that had helped but by the end of eighth grade talking to someone didn’t raise my grades and my report card looked the same as the last year. My mother, ever the heroine, stepped in to save the day once again and the next year I started high school feeling very lucky I had such an understanding mother.
That’s about where my luck ended. My mother began having economic problems that left us homeless for a week right after school had ended for the year. However, she cleverly disguised this by taking us camping until she could arrange a place for us to stay. For the next seven months she moved us from her friends’ house to an apartment and finally back to her hometown of Albany, OR where we stayed. I was in the middle of the tenth grade and had failed every single class so far but something happened in Albany, kids liked me there. They found my dark and mysterious posture attractive and I became very popular in my clique, the drama geeks. My grade point average rose and I made it all the way to the last month of twelfth grade without any problems, or so I thought. I came to discover that my habit of choosing an equivalent elective to cover my required course had left me shy of graduating by one credit. Come graduation I found myself in the stands rather than walking across the stage with my peers…
I was eighteen now, and master of my own destiny. My mother could no longer protect me from my mistakes. So I walked away from school and never looked back. I joined the work force moving from one job to another, just like my father, always looking for the better deal. Then I married a woman who showed me my own worth and I tried for a job I thought I was to dumb to get. Working at Hewlet & Packard gave me a great pay check and a huge boost in self esteem. It was because of her that I finally broke down and admitted I dropped out of high school and then earned my GED which let me join the Army National Guard, in turn led to a life changing experience in Iraq.
When you are faced with death on a daily bases it really makes you think about your life. I looked back on the last ten years and I did not like what I saw. So little accomplishment on my part in such a large space of time but, I had learned that if I had the courage to live under fire then I could face my greatest fear and return to school. Here I am. I am completing my education and moving forward in my life for the first time. I am finally making up for my failures. I am going to reach for the stars and refuse to pull back until I have changed them and in the process alleviate a great regret.