loving the film

"Film has brought me to some of the most surreal moments of my life," I said to my neighbor from under the brim of my 30's-era newsboy hat.

He, the student writer and director of a film about a Orthodox Jewish vampire who drinks menstrual blood, nodded. "It kind of makes you do things you would never do otherwise."

Our other neighbor, who had scaled a snowy wall earlier that morning before donning his checked fedora, practiced his snarl.

The director yelled action, and the three of us pretended to snap photos as, in the boxing ring, a baby-faced sophomore punched a 110-pound girl to the ground.


I am a film major at one of the most prestigious film programs in the country, and I spent much of the fall of 2005 applying fake blood. Sometimes it was spit out of mouths, as with the 110-pound boxer. Sometimes it was applied to body parts--fortunately not for the film about menstrual blood. In one memorable incident, it was sprayed out of a high-pressure deck sprayer at 4 a.m. in a basement where we did not have legal access. I wore my running shoes to that shoot, just in case.

I was never one of those huge film geeks who make digital videos on weekends, so I'm not sure if students enter film school with high-minded notions of yelling "Cut!' or if they understand the cheap, cold, exhausted reality that awaits them. For the general public, however, I imagine behind-the-scenes documentaries on Hollywood DVDs have given a skewed impression of what filmmaking is like for most of us. Let me put it this way: Steven Spielberg probably never gets pushed up a hill in a grocery cart so he can get a tracking shot.

Needless to say, my personal forays into filmmaking have not met with great success. I took one film production class my junior year, and my final project was a combination ELO music video and iPod commercial that included the aforementioned tracking shot. Turns out, when I got that shot the film wasn't properly exposed, so I didn't wind up using it. My boyfriend at the time, who was pushing me in the cart, had sprained his ankle for naught. With earlier films I made that semester, every disaster that could happen did, from the film loading incorrectly to the lens being out of focus. The very word "reshoot" began to make my blood curdle.

When it came to senior year and time to make a thesis, I thought for a while that I would make my own film. I had visions of dance numbers and fantasy sequences and snappy dialogue, and figured I would pull it together when the time came. Then I came to my senses and remembered how I felt when I found out I had been shooting for an hour and a half in slow motion. I decided to crew other peoples' films instead.

So getting back to this "things you wouldn't do normally" thing. In the course of working on student films, I have inserted a plastic plant into the ass of a man I had only met a few days earlier. I have broken into a basement by actually shattering a window. I have worked for 12 hours and then driven across state lines to work for another four. I have lied to innocent townspeople and pretended to interview them about Osama bin Laden. I have convinced a 19-year old boy to climb an unstable ladder onto a roof coated in ice. Perhaps most dangerously, I've almost put milk into the non-dairy sink at the house of Orthodox Jews. That was a close one.

When all the thesis shoots were over last fall, I thought my surreal life was finished. Being a film student isn't nearly as dramatic as being a student filmmaker, even though the head of the department, one of the most respected names in film scholarship, insists we wear costumes for class presentations. When my presentation date came, I was getting into my French chef costume and heading to the film department kitchen, where we were warming up the lentils and potatoes au gratin we had prepared for the class. Business as usual.

I had never been to the kitchen before, and it was a little jarring to walk from the big, hyper-modern film department atrium into the cozy kitchen that was like any standard 1960's-era kitchen, wallpaper and all. Then I noticed the framed painting, which was actually a map of the U.S. Senate floor signed by the cast and crew of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and given to Frank Capra as a gift.

I stirred my lentils and stared at James Stewart's signature, intended as a memento for Frank Capra from one of the most successful and best-loved films of his career. Instead it was there for me, a 21-year old college student who had failed in her filmmaking attempts and was relegated to applying fake blood to extras. They say the Hollywood produces the American dream, and there it was, keeping me company in the film department's kitchen.

the doppelgang

My ex-boyfriend has a doppelganger who has already stolen both of our careers.

His name is Joel Stein, and I can't decide if I hate him or, in some way that is probably psychological and fucked-up, want to jump his bones. He's had columns for Time, Entertainment Weekly and Time Out New York, all of which I have read at one point or another with some interest. He really caught my eye, though, when I saw him on a vh1 clip show so generic I can't even remember what it was about. And this is what really earns my ire-- he's a fundit.

I'm relatively certain my friend Justin invented the word "fundit," though it seems too appropos and brilliant not to be in common usage. Fundits are the people who are not Paul Begala, Bill O'Reilly, or anyone else with marginally meaningful commentary; these are the people who explain to you how much Nicole Richie spent on her most recent handbag, and make you feel like you should care. Their primary domain is the Vh1 clip show, where they could be commenting on anything from celebrity mansions to Hurricane Katrina; don't worry, their commentary on the hurricane is probably along the lines of Mardi Gras and jazz rather than America's inherent racial tensions. Fundits in no way pose any danger to making you think too much, and that's why I like them.

The thing about Joel Stein is he kind of manages to do both. He has a column for Time, which gives him at least some measure of respect, but also knows the ins and outs of on-set celebrity hookups. He's some kind of postmodern Renaissance man, and could most definitely kick my ass at Trivial Pursuit.

My ex-boyfriend has a more legitimate claim to hating and/or worshipping Joel Stein, as they look exactly alike and both of them write humor columns for their various publications. As I took a different tack and now edit every word in my publication, I write here instead and pretend people read it. It almost works as well.

What Joel Stein managed that both of us want, however, is becoming famous for essentially being himself. He writes about whatever is going on in his life-- going on hotornot.com, visiting a high school, whatever-- and turns it into part of the public record. Years from now, some college student trapped in a microfilm room will use one of Joel Stein's columns as a piece of research in some ill-planned research paper, and maybe even get an A. For right now, the best I can do is maybe write one of my news editors a recommendation, and she hasn't even asked me yet.

Ideally my career will not take me in a direction that will earn me fundit status; when it comes down to it I'd probably prefer a Pulitzer to a 5-second spot on Vh1. But what if Joel Stein does both? The first-ever Pulitzer-winning fundit? Frank Rich might have already done this, but I haven't seen him on Vh1 yet so the jury is officially still out. I don't know who it says more about-- American culture, my generation, or just myself-- but pseudo-celebrity is almost more valuable than actual accomplishment these days. I'm not sure which, if either, I'll actually manage to obtain, but I know one thing-- if my ex-boyfriend does in fact become the next Joel Stein, as he's well on his way to doing, I am riding those coattails all the way to "I Love the 00's." Or, if I'm lucky, "The Fabulous Life Of..."