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| I made this poster. I used to know how to do things besides blog. |
Through most of the 1990's I worked with a sketch comedy group in New York City called Bangers and Mash. The performers were all British but the writers - myself, the aforementioned John Reynolds and a funny guy named Jim who doesn't like me (although I think he's a fine fellow) - were all American.
Makes perfect sense, right?
The group performed around the city for years. At our peak we were selling out the cabaret stage at the Duplex in the Village for entire runs. We even filled the Triad up on 72nd street a few times. It was great fun, built a lot of commeradere and not only did I make some life-long friends from that group, but I met my wife who was a performer in the troupe.
In late 1998 I decided to shoot a film version of one of our successful sketches called Editing Is Everything. The sketch had always worked on stage and I had a vision of shooting in a black and white "Howard Hawks" style - a name I frequently dropped when referencing my idea although I have no idea if that was even correct or appropriate. I wanted to do the 40's newsroom thing, slatted blinds, fedoras, cigarette smoke, rapid-fire patter etc. Honestly my knowlegde of non-Billy Wilder movies before the 1970's is limited to say the least. I don't know how many - if any - movies in that style I had ever seen all the way through, but I used "Howard Hawks" to describe the look I was going for undaunted, the way people who don't read use "Kafkaesque" to describe having to pay a parking ticket they don't think they deserved or the time the cable company didn't show when they said they would.
Anyway, thanks to the hard work of my wife, Paul McCartney and Mick Reed on the production end (which is of course the "heavy lifting" end) and the actors and crew we made what I think is the greatest possible version of this short. It was shot on 16mm black and white film over two full shoot days. Everyone who worked on the film brought their A-game as I think the short shows.
My wife submitted us to a ton of film festivals and we got in almost every one we submitted to! Back then there were nowhere near as many short films in the world as there are since the internet blew the format up, and we were on programs with some top notch stuff from around the world. Of the many showings of our short, the high point was definitely winning the New York Shorts International Festival (comedy category) in 1999. We beat out a very popular short at the time known as George Lucas In Love which was "viral" before there was such a thing as viral. I think those guys did okay though.
We got into a film festival in Gent, Belgium and since we wanted to go see my wife's family in the UK around that time, we planned a whole two week jaunt around the festival. We flew into Brussels, arriving at dawn, and rented a red Peugot that we promised to return in Paris in ten days or so. We hit the highway to Gent with morning rush hour traffic, the first song on the radio was Sexx Laws by Beck which had just dropped and I was feelin' BALLER! (Although that term had not yet been coined and honestly I'm not 100% sure I'm using it correctly now.)
We arrived in Gent, which is a beautiful medieval city that has become a modern college town, parked the Peugot and checked into the Hotel Gravsteen which is just as awesome as it sounds. I was probably as on top of the world as I had ever felt before or since. My li'l movie was showing in Europe. It had won awards in New York. It would be showing in Los Angeles later that year. What could possibly go wrong?
The night of the screening my wife and I arrived at the theater early and met the festival staff and participants and some of the other film makers. Meeting people has never been my strong suit but I was feeling pretty invincible at the time so it went fairly well. I was sure big things were going to come from this!
Our theater probably seated 300 or so and it was packed. The lights went down, our movie was opening the bill. The film starts with Handel's Hallejuia Choir and I knew something was wrong the moment it began. It sounded like it was being sung by a choir of hungover baritones.
The film was showing at half speed.
It was as if everyone in the film had slammed a handful of quualudes and the room was full of ether. I kept expecting someone to say "nighty night, Rabbit."
My wife frantically ran to the projection booth to try to figure out what was going on. The audience, to their credit, sat patiently and watched the now over-ten-minute-long film and even laughed at two jokes. Granted these were scattered titters and probably as much out of nervousness and confusion as actual humor but they were laughs nonetheless.
My wife came back, defeated. They didn't know why the film had run half speed and they weren't going to run it again at regular speed even if they could figure it out. The festival had a schedule to keep.
Now this is the point where I was supposed to melt down. I was supposed to freak out about how we had come all this way and spent all this money and how our entire careers were ruined and how un-fucking-fair the universe was that this would happen to ME! I had frequently lost my shit over much less than this disaster in a professional setting. I mean at that point in my life, if an account executive at work politely asked me to rewrite a piece of generic radio copy (per the terms of my employ) I would hissy-out as if I'd been asked to alter my artistic masterpiece or sacrifice my creative integrity!*
(*If I did this to you, I apologize profusely)
But I didn't hissy. I shrugged it off and went to a bar where we sampled every trappist ale on tap and regaled the bartender and anyone who would listen the hilarious tale of how we had come all the way
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| Trappist Monks: The original bros. |
I don't know why I handled that moment so well. It honestly wasn't like 1999 me. But I did and that moment changed my outlook on everything. Yeah, we had big expectations and they had been blown to shit by cirucmstances beyond our control - but that's exactly it - they were BEYOND our control. Nothing worth getting worked up over.
Now, if you're a functioning human being this story may not seem significant to you. But I consider this a truly formative moment. I look back on that trip to Belgium as a major turning point in my life when I realized that it's not what happens, it's how you react to it that defines if the situation is a success or a failure.
We spent a couple more glorious days in Gent before driving up to Amsterdam (natch) and over to Paris before Chunneling it to see my wife's family in London.
I loved and appreciated every minute of that trip.
