The unpredictable start to my unpredictable career
I don't have a Hollywood past. In fact, none of my family has anything past high school musicals on their resume(and ironically, that wasn't even me). Hell, this wasn't even considered till I turned 22 years old. Late start, I know, especially in this business.
It didn't even start by conventional ways. As I mentioned before, I wasn't an actor at 14 or 15(although I was in a little school play at 8 years old, playing a newspaper boy), I didn't have lots of modeling experience, and I wasn't noticed in a gas station or anything like that. My life in this unreal world started in the least likely of places.......Cleveland, TN.
Cleveland, TN was one of those podunk towns even Mayberry would consider podunk. It had 50,000 people, but it had the feel of a town of 3,000, and the job market of a town of 20. The only reason I was there was the reason 90% of the town was there, which was the school. Lee University was a school of 3500 students(4200 now, and continuing to grow), and the second biggest private school in Tennessee behind Vanderbilt(I later found out that it's now the same size as Wake Forest, which pleasantly surprised me). The beautiful campus and the crummy town around it made it look like someone placed a Lamborghini right smack dab in the middle of a used car lot full of 1960s Ford Fairlanes, all on blocks. I'm not kidding.
Anyway, the way things started had to do more with my grades than the love at first. I was in a Chinese culture class, and language also. Long story short(because this is a film blog), I was not doing well in the class, and my teacher offers me a chance to forgo the final for a different approach. She was starting this English as a Second Language course, and wanted someone to film this. If I did it, and made it look good, she'd make that my final. Well, considering my acumen for foreign languages, which is somewhere between scraping the bottom of a barrel, and dogshit on a shoe, I definitely took her up on the deal, even though I had never held a camera in my life. That showed too, as my camera skills were the equivalent of a Tourette's syndrome patient in the Parkinson's ward of a nursing home. Eventually, that improved(a little bit), I got the thing done, and ended up getting a B for the class.
I was hooked on film now, though. I'd always loved being creative, and since I have the art skills of a dead Pablo Picasso with his hands chopped off, this was the perfect way of being creative. I went out and bought this little $500 Panasonic camera to start filming things, and I came up with an idea. Our basketball team, the Lee Flames, were starting to win a little bit, and I asked the coach at the time, Rick Hughes, if I could make a movie on the team. He gave the OK, and I got started.
See my original idea was pretty small. Our local high school team in the town I grew up in used to do these video recaps of their seasons. It was cool because you got to see them play on the road, which the local news never aired highlights of road games. They lasted about 30-40 minutes or so, and had lots of music videos in the background. I expected something like that. About 20-30 minutes, music videos, a season recap. Something for me to practice on and go toward the future.
I should've known better with my personality. At the end, the movie was 85 minutes long.
Yes, my very first film was a full length feature documentary. It mixed that crappy little $500 camera with the production department's $5000 camera for the games. Plus I got the luck of the production department giving me full reign to every single game for the past two seasons. Everyone pitched in to help get this going. The school even pitched in for the last $300 to get it out of post-prod hell......which was not being able to afford the last $300 to finish the movie. Not wanting to be Ed Wood before my time, I appreciate that to this day.
Once the movie was finished, I actually had some pretty lofty plans, and they could've gone through. I was actually talking to ESPN about a story in which one of our players had a heart attack before that big season, and used it to his advantage. This would promote the movie too. They actually told me to see how the next season would finish, then talk. It looked good. Lee was #1 in the country after the first half of the year, and I was seeing big film festivals in my future.
Oops! Lee went 6-17 in the second half, and everything went to hell. No promotion for this movie after that. It ended up going on this little cable access station in North Georgia. Ahhh well, things happen.
You know though, I do look back and say that, even though it didn't get as big as I envisioned(not even close at the end), I did get it on TV, and got a full length feature finished on my very first time. Sometimes you have to look at the bright side of things, and I look at it that way.
Plus, the crazy way my career has gone, the way that movie turned out was very appropriate.
The way of the world, I guess. Gotta take the speed bumps before hitting the highway.
And sometimes, the speed bumps lead to some interesting stories, and no regrets.
It didn't even start by conventional ways. As I mentioned before, I wasn't an actor at 14 or 15(although I was in a little school play at 8 years old, playing a newspaper boy), I didn't have lots of modeling experience, and I wasn't noticed in a gas station or anything like that. My life in this unreal world started in the least likely of places.......Cleveland, TN.
Cleveland, TN was one of those podunk towns even Mayberry would consider podunk. It had 50,000 people, but it had the feel of a town of 3,000, and the job market of a town of 20. The only reason I was there was the reason 90% of the town was there, which was the school. Lee University was a school of 3500 students(4200 now, and continuing to grow), and the second biggest private school in Tennessee behind Vanderbilt(I later found out that it's now the same size as Wake Forest, which pleasantly surprised me). The beautiful campus and the crummy town around it made it look like someone placed a Lamborghini right smack dab in the middle of a used car lot full of 1960s Ford Fairlanes, all on blocks. I'm not kidding.
Anyway, the way things started had to do more with my grades than the love at first. I was in a Chinese culture class, and language also. Long story short(because this is a film blog), I was not doing well in the class, and my teacher offers me a chance to forgo the final for a different approach. She was starting this English as a Second Language course, and wanted someone to film this. If I did it, and made it look good, she'd make that my final. Well, considering my acumen for foreign languages, which is somewhere between scraping the bottom of a barrel, and dogshit on a shoe, I definitely took her up on the deal, even though I had never held a camera in my life. That showed too, as my camera skills were the equivalent of a Tourette's syndrome patient in the Parkinson's ward of a nursing home. Eventually, that improved(a little bit), I got the thing done, and ended up getting a B for the class.
I was hooked on film now, though. I'd always loved being creative, and since I have the art skills of a dead Pablo Picasso with his hands chopped off, this was the perfect way of being creative. I went out and bought this little $500 Panasonic camera to start filming things, and I came up with an idea. Our basketball team, the Lee Flames, were starting to win a little bit, and I asked the coach at the time, Rick Hughes, if I could make a movie on the team. He gave the OK, and I got started.
See my original idea was pretty small. Our local high school team in the town I grew up in used to do these video recaps of their seasons. It was cool because you got to see them play on the road, which the local news never aired highlights of road games. They lasted about 30-40 minutes or so, and had lots of music videos in the background. I expected something like that. About 20-30 minutes, music videos, a season recap. Something for me to practice on and go toward the future.
I should've known better with my personality. At the end, the movie was 85 minutes long.
Yes, my very first film was a full length feature documentary. It mixed that crappy little $500 camera with the production department's $5000 camera for the games. Plus I got the luck of the production department giving me full reign to every single game for the past two seasons. Everyone pitched in to help get this going. The school even pitched in for the last $300 to get it out of post-prod hell......which was not being able to afford the last $300 to finish the movie. Not wanting to be Ed Wood before my time, I appreciate that to this day.
Once the movie was finished, I actually had some pretty lofty plans, and they could've gone through. I was actually talking to ESPN about a story in which one of our players had a heart attack before that big season, and used it to his advantage. This would promote the movie too. They actually told me to see how the next season would finish, then talk. It looked good. Lee was #1 in the country after the first half of the year, and I was seeing big film festivals in my future.
Oops! Lee went 6-17 in the second half, and everything went to hell. No promotion for this movie after that. It ended up going on this little cable access station in North Georgia. Ahhh well, things happen.
You know though, I do look back and say that, even though it didn't get as big as I envisioned(not even close at the end), I did get it on TV, and got a full length feature finished on my very first time. Sometimes you have to look at the bright side of things, and I look at it that way.
Plus, the crazy way my career has gone, the way that movie turned out was very appropriate.
The way of the world, I guess. Gotta take the speed bumps before hitting the highway.
And sometimes, the speed bumps lead to some interesting stories, and no regrets.
