Well, well, well. I received a few questions over the past few days, some posted publicly in the comments and others received in my e-mail, and as I promised (for my benefit and your interest?) I will respond to them. The interview is in a few days, the clothes are ironed and the faux hawk is shaping up, so really all I have left to think about…

… is the interview part…

Here are some of the questions you asked, and my best attempt to answer them.

Are commercial success and artistic integrity mutually exclusive? At what point does wideness of appeal trump complexity or subtlety, if ever?

They are not by any means mutually exclusive, but often times one can sacrifice artistic integrity for commercial success, but the success is always fleeting. As I look at the list of top movies from the past year, so many will be forgotten (if they haven’t been already) because they were just riding a wave of popularity.

They got made because of demand, not because it was a story that needed telling. But that’s not to say artistic integrity is the end-all, be-all of filmmaking. You have to make the film for the audience. Obviously, you should tell your story or a story you feel connected to, but you’re making a film, not a painting.

Films are for audiences to connect with, so if you weren’t aiming for that connection, then you won’t have commercial success, however you define ‘commercial success’, either financially or otherwise.

When films are made with an eye for the artistic but with the mindset that an audience will be seeing it, that is what gives them the best chance for lasting success, both critically and culturally. That’s why movies like the original Star Wars, Godfather, and others were so popular then and remain popular now. The stories stood out then and stand out now. They weren’t passing fads to be capitalized on, and they weren’t made to appeal only to the director.

This reminds me of someone trying to write the Great American Novel. You can’t aim to write something like that, it’s by writing a novel as well as you can about something you care about that it begins to get recognized as possibly Great… if that makes any sense. You achieve it by not aiming for it.

How many bubbles in a bar of soap?

Several hundred, depending on the quality and brand.

What is your ultimate fantasy profession (not relating to filmmaking)?

I’d like to be a journalist or reporter for a magazine like Sports Illustrated or Wired. I find all those stories really fascinating and when writing for magazines you have the flexibility of time to explore something and really develop it.

Top five movies you’d take on a desert island (no explanations, just the name)

Pulp Fiction, Rushmore, Se7en, Fight Club, Zoolander.

[As a side note, what would you guys pick?]

What books are you reading now?

A Wrinkle in Time for my Children’s Literature class, some Oscar Wilde short story collection, and the Un-TV and the 10MPH Car (I’m going to start reading this tonight so I’m not lying when it actually comes to the interview…).

You’ve just graduated film school and have your degree framed about your bed. The first project you’ve been given is to make a porno. How would you film it? Would you do anything stylistically or artistically to make it stand out from other pornos? How would you direct these “actors” who have absolutely no skill in saying lines and showing emotion?

I’d film it in HD, naturally. My camera has this ability to recognize and give a great quality to skin, so that could really come in handy to capture all those intimate details. Since my actors, as you have defined them, don’t show emotion well and have no line-reading ability (though I don’t know how you know this… personal experience in the field?), I might consider the high-budget action porno. Here, as in the corresponding genre in normal film, the lines are expected to be over the top and the scenes each more ludicrous than the last.

I mean, in XXX (get it?!) Vin Diesel leapt off the tallest bridge in California in a realllly nice car. Can you imagine now two people leaping off that bridge while copulating?

Box office gold! The other idea: Become the Peter Jackson of porno and make an orgy epic…

Okay, that’s enough dirty nonsense. Thanks for playing along though!

For everyone, thank you for your questions! I hope this was semi-interesting to you, seeing some of my brain’s insides.

I’ll leave you with this quote I heard today as Kia and I were leaving tutoring. I had been talking to this kid about his future in basketball, so I wished him “good luck in the NBA”.

I don’t need luck, I got skills on my side.

I let some of you know, but I was trying to keep this a secret until I could tell my parents in person…

By some struck of luck or clerical error, I will be interviewing for one of the 15 spots at the UCLA Undergraduate Film School next Friday. It is with some degree of sadness that I move on to the next level because I know some perfectly qualified people who did not get an interview. Though they now turn their sights to graduate school and other projects, I wish they could be giving film school a go, as well.

From what I have heard about the interview process, it ranges from normal and nice to absurd and insane. There are usually two or three faculty members administering the interview, and that is the only thing I know about the interview that seems standard. Some people have been asked to explain which of the following boats has the most to do with filmmaking, a rowboat, a sailboat, or a motorboat.

Another person was told to stop what they were describing and start to describe it as a movie, to describe it cinematically.

Sometimes the interviewers are pleasant, sometimes disagreeable, sometimes downright mean. The only consistency that I can put together is that the interview will be a fun little challenge.

That being said, I’m not going to go into this interview cold. That’d be tempting fate too much for my taste, so I plan to prepare some every day, and I would love your help in the process.

If you could post questions to me that you’d like to know about me and my interests in films, favorite movies, genres, directors, random questions to get me thinking on my feet, anything at all, I’ll respond to one a day and hopefully gain a better insight into what at all I’m going to say next week. I appreciate every question!

Ask away. Anything you want to know about me and my interest in cinema.

For those of you who went out and about today, you noticed the weather was a bit odd (and to my liking). There was clouds, then heat, then drizzle, then heat, then thunder, rain, and supposedly hail, and then it was pretty cool. Not so much a freak storm because it wasn’t powerful enough to be a storm, but it was definitely like some god sneezed over campus or something.

If anything, I love that smell of weather. I was at the Campus Events office taking this all in by myself, just hanging out on the computer and messing with the template for upcoming portfolio simplification/redesign listening to the weather.

I really love that room, with all its history and character. It’s got so many signed posters from movie stars, bands, speakers… old events calendars from the 90s that name bands coming to campus that I’ve never heard of… some things are aging and I have no connection with… but then there’s the two or three that are in a row that I have a direct connection with and either helped with or was around for and it’s something I can be proud of.

Plus the building is old. Kerckhoff has that worn, collegiate feel about it, and I’m trying not take it for granted. In comparison to the sterile hotel I live in and the day-in, day-out sameness of classes, it is refreshing to have the Campus Events office. Plus, it has this amazing balcony area that overlooks all of Bruinwalk and Ackerman, with a ladder up to the very top of Kerckhoff.

Just sitting in there and reflecting on stuff and the great group of people that is CEC pleased me a lot. I thought about the people applying that I rejected because it seemed like they were just trying to get another thing for their resume… that’s not what CEC is, and that’s why they don’t get this opportunity.

I open every interview welcoming people to our storied room, telling the quiet kids how one could spend so much time just looking at every sticker, every ad, every piece of free swag we have to give away. They look up and around, and eager to get to the interview I’m sure what I say about the room doesn’t have much merit. I’m still trying to get over the fact that these little ones aren’t the same as the people they are replacing. The seniors that I have become so fond of grew into who they are, but it is hard to imagine them not there.

As I gear up for my new position, I realize that I’ll be spending a great deal more time in this room, on that balcony, and generally on campus dealing with executives and marketing directors and Event Services and coordinating people and figuring out how to spend my weekly stipend of $37.50 … It’s nice to have a comfortable spot to go to.

My goodness! Thank you all for coming today! It was really quite amazing to see everyone there, especially after a morning of such doubt and unease… To go from moments of hearing people’s cancellations to waiting with ten of you and saying that there were still another six or seven for sure coming, it makes a guy feel good.

I checked out the footage and it all came out quite sharp and (to my surprise) the dollying actually worked pretty flawlessly. There may be a bump or two, but I’m human (still…). Also, there may be people walking backwards in the video…? What the heck? Way to completely ruin a take… Anyway, for the majority of the footage everything is beautiful, everyone did beautifully… just a picturesque little world.

Still left for me to do is travel to Westwood to capture some buses in their natural environment, as well as people walking to and fro, being busy beavers and what not. Maybe some Bruinwalk footage if I’m feeling adventurous?

Then there needs to be some sound capture (so the footage doesn’t just have me yelling “BUS NOISE!” or “BUSBUSBUS” to cue people to move), and maybe create a little song out of foot noises (Kelley may help me with this). There might need to be some sort of animated title sequence, because we know how fond I am of animation.

For those curious, Grace Lee’s marvelous photogs will be uploaded to Facebook soon enough!

Anywho, I’ll definitely keep you posted, but the project is moving along, and I’ll say it again, I’m really blown away by your continuous support of this little film addiction of mine. It means so much.

<3

He seriously did. We were watching a clip from the first season of the Jerry Springer show and I commented on how nice his hair looked back then! That’s all! Just an innocent little quip!

Of course, he was just joking around. All in good fun.

I guess some background. Because I am part of Campus Events, the Speakers part (the triumvirate of Campus Events programming is Speakers, Concerts, and Films) asked if I would moderate this Jerry Springer event. He was coming to talk, there would be clips from his show, questions, answers, a few of his bodyguards, all in all a pretty good evening, so I agreed with full gusto.

And the evening turned out pretty well, I must say. The people at NBC have a good sense of humor, so there was lots of joking around. I cracked a couple jokes to Jerry and amused him mightily (and one comparing the food fights to the Splash Zone at Seaworld got spatterings of laughter from the audience!), though he barbed back about my “failure” to dress well (I WAS DRESSED JUST FINE).

What was interesting about Jerry was how much more a politician he is than a talk show personality. He definitely has the comedic timing and storytelling ability of a talk show host, but he talked endlessly about politics, the value of the common person (we’re not better than any of the people on his show, we’re often just luckier in life), and other fairly serious matters. I, and others from the CEC staff, were surprised at this part of his personality. I felt a little bit like a tool having to segue to stupid clips from his show about transvestites or a man married to a horse when he just finished talking about members of his family dying in the Holocaust…

He’s a really interesting person, but he talked… and talked… and went an hour over how long we were supposed to chat, and we had to forfeit the Little People Montage. Freakin’ sad.

The evening, though I had many audio difficulties (mic cutting in and out, switching mics for me halfway through, for Jerry at the beginning, speaker cutting in and out…), was pretty good.

The ensuing Q-and-A was hilarious. It definitely is a “you had to be there” situation, but one guy did have the courage to ask Jerry about his infamous encounter with a prostitute (he paid with a check), to which Jerry revealed…

The check was never cashed! Nothing illegal happened!

Jerry did a bit of a dance afterward and it brought delight upon all the lingering fans.

cec. jerry jerry jerry!

Oh, and then he checked the score of the Lakers game for us on his Razr before leaving to catch his plane. Nice guy.