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.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
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.
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
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