The opus. My crowning masterpiece. I came up with the idea. I shot a large chunk of it. I edited it. I held it together. This was supposed to be just a little film, only my second. With my two friends, Dibs and Paul, we came up with magic.
The film is a faux documentary about the life and times of Sterling O. Anderson, a bad filmmaker who has made it big. The film centers on Sterling’s student career, and we learn of what he was like as a student and see how he progresses as a filmmaker. The films he made were complete and utter crap.
All of the documentary material was off-the-cuff, acted by Dibs, myself, my parents, various others. Only one page of script was ever written down, and that was for the film critic part. The rest was off the top of our heads. The funny part that Dibs and I came up with was that throughout the movie, you would never see Sterling speak. The only glimpses of Sterling we hear are what others say, and outtakes from his films, on tape. The tape reveals an egocentric bully with no tact.
I played Apples McKenzie, an embittered wash-up cameraman (based on one of our teachers) with a speech impediment. Dibs played Sterling’s best friend Garret Stranger, who it seems never really got along with Sterling. Sterling O. Anderson was played by our friend Paul, much an enigma and based on himself, I guess.
Sterling’s student films were written separately, with each of us spearheading certain of these short films. We collaborated with each other, performing different duties on each of the films. One of the student films that I wrote was Magical Mystery Train, where I recreated shot for shot the opening sequence of Magical Mystery Tour movie by The Beatles, but transferred to a train.
How to Make the Film was a little goofy number about making a student film, being self-reflexive in a self-reflexive movie. Tribute to Harry was a quick little tribute to Harry Chapin. Another was Painted Sleep, where I tried to make fun of the early Warhol films. Aerosol Man was a short about a man who tries to combat everything in his life with an air freshener can. I helped greatly on the other two short films as well which Dibs and Paul directed, with me acting as photographer and editor on Paul’s.
Dibs film in the movie was Slapping, based on a little bit of slapstick we use to do everyday with each other, every single shot was shot somewhere different, so when it was edited together it looked like it was meant to be all together. It was a poke at the Kuleshov Effect, however, I think it was fairly effective; alot of people didn't notice that we went from outside to inside, and from small confines to open areas. His other films didn't pan out so well; one of them the film was destroyed, the other just didn't make it. They were so funny though, one of them being a scatalogical poke at the beat poets, shot in a park. This film was to be at Sterling's low point, where he bought used film stock from a porno house, and there is already exposed on his film a porno movie, which Dibs shot, rerolled the film back, and shot the movie. It would have been such an excellent point in Sterling's story. He was indispensible in the filming of the movie, being the cheif cohort and "wrote" large chunks of the comedy material, including the critics part. I believe he even came up with the Joey Bishop scene, where I am screaming "Joey Bishop" at the critic. My scene-stealer!
Paul came up with Anderson's 45 Cents, a combination of Fellini's 8 1/2 and Jim Morrison's student film. I'm not exaggerating, that's what he said when we were making it. I collaborated with this one, helping with the shooting and editing, as well as adding Iggy Pop's Lust For Life five years before it became popular in the movie Trainspotting. The film was basically a collage of different images, ranging from my guniea pigs, a broken egg, a roach, soap, all the way to ejaculating on a pile of Paul's favorite authors (faked, of course), Dibs eye getting licked, an acid party, outtakes of my Typewriter film with Dave acting silly. It should have been the worst of the bunch, the idea being that Sterling was starting to get odd at the moment; however its' the best film in the movie. It was pieced together mostly at random, and yet it kind of makes its' own sense.
The best part of the movie, the cake-and-eat-it-too part is that the teacher said we would have never been able to make or complete the film, and that even if we came close, it would fail and be horrible. The film clocks in at around thirty minutes, holding the record for longest student film at the school, still. The teacher is still at the school, teaching.
