Memorial Day

Back in high school and college, I made a few movies with my friend and creative mentor, Doug Smith. Prior to our teaming, Doug had participated with Skiff Bailey and Lee McCroskey in making the "Nocto, the Boy Vampire" series, and I had made some commercial parodies and "art" films for school projects with fellow trumpet player, Tim Carson.

(In our case, "art" meant that the protagonist ends up getting a pie in the face. We were deep, man. Like, totally.)

The first project that Doug and I did together was a kung fu epic that borrowed liberally from Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon". I played the part of Lee, and spent most of the film beating up my swim team buddies in the name of vengeance for the murder of my best friend. The highlights of the film include deadly ping pong matches, an evil mafia boss with a snake fetish, a corrupt policeman who kills himself by leaping off a 10-story parking garage, and ironclad, courtroom-ready evidence collected by hiding a cassette tape recorder in the bad guy's trashcan.

The following summer, we made our Ian Fleming Tribute movie, "Dr. Thunderfinger is Forever", starring Doug as James Bond, and my college roommate Mickey Canaday as Dr. Thunderfinger. This movie had almost all of the Bond requisites—high-tech gadgets, giant lasers, fast cars, mute-but-deadly henchmen, and sophisticatedly clever dialog. (The only missing element was Bond women, but since none of us actually had the nerve to talk to any girls, we were unable to recruit any ladies to participate in the project. Sigh.)

We shot both projects on Super 8 film (videotape hadn't been invented yet), edited the scenes by cutting and gluing the fragments together, and then recorded a cassette tape soundtrack by gathering all the actors in the basement and repeating our lines around a community microphone. Any ambient sounds (tires squealing, doors opening, bodies falling, etc.) were provided by the actors doing their best to simulate the noises with whatever vocal or hand-clapping techniques they could. (It's obvious that a couple of the karate yells are made by multiple voices...but we were pressed for time, so we went with it. If asked about it, our answer always was, "We meant to do that. It adds drama, don't you think?")

These movies were a huge hit among our swim team, primarily because all of the actors were swimmers themselves. We played our films whenever we could get an audience, and the reviews were always positive. (Hey, laughter is positive, isn't it?)

Over the years, a couple of problems arose. Film, being a fragile strip of celluloid running repeatedly through a set of metal gears in front of a hot lamp, tends to break on a regular basis—and each repair required one or two frames to be sacrificed to the cutting and gluing process. In the case of Dr. Thunderfinger, there was also editing required for content.

No, it wasn't anything offensive...just boring. You see, Doug had bought a special suction-mounted tripod to use in the driving scenes. We mounted it on the hood of the car for some shots, and on the side door panels for others. It made for some pretty dramatic camera angles; definitely impressive for a low-budget high-school project. But therein lies a paradox; since the tripod purchase used up a significant percentage of our entire budget (it cost about $30), we darn sure wanted to get our money's worth out of it. So we shot a LOT of driving footage.

Therefore, our first "director's cut" contained about 10 minutes of driving in a 40-minute movie. We're not talking stunt driving, either...no flips, crashes, skids, or donuts -- just scenes of Mr. Bond travelling from one location to another. It was all very...boring.

So we hacked out the majority of those scenes. Unfortunately, we had no way to edit either of the cassette tape soundtracks to match the cuts and repairs we'd made to the films. And if that weren't bad enough, over the years the tape itself stretched, so the run time varied significantly from the original takes. The sound no longer matched the picture.

On top of that, the films themselves were getting pretty beat up from repeated showings. Scratches, cat hairs, and faded colors all marred the quality of the images that could be projected. So the films went back into the can, and the cans went into deep storage.

A couple of years ago, though, I dug them out and paid a photolab to have the movies transferred to DVD. All I needed to do after that was to use my new digital editing software to manipulate the soundtracks to once again match what you see on the screen. And that, my friends, brings us to Memorial Day, 2008.

I had started this editing project a while back, and had finished synching up "The Tiger and the Dragon". But this was the weekend that I planned to finish "Dr. Thunderfinger". Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to locate the original soundtrack cassette tape, so I had nothing to work with. I knew I had it, somewhere, but would have to dig through all of my storage boxes to find it.

And you know how that stuff goes, right? Open a box looking for a cassette tape, but find your old sock monkey instead. "Oh wow, my old sock monkey!", you exclaim, and then waste the next 20 minutes lost in nostalgia about the good times you had once shared.

OK, perhaps I exaggerate, but what I did run across a lot of forgotten memorabilia, including my old VHS tape collection. Lordy, what could I have been thinking with this collection? Why on earth would anyone even bother to record "Biodome"...and why would I bother to put it into a storage box rather than beating it to death with a hammer? How many PBS specials (complete with the obligatory begging interludes) do I need to remind me of the do-wop sounds of the Sixties? And what's up with the 30-plus episodes of "Bill Nye the Science Guy?"

OK, I'll keep the Bill Nye -- he's cool. But I do not need to retain instructions for the Dell computer I threw away three years ago, nor any recorded episodes of Hardcastle and McCormick, nor Entertainment Tonight reports on the dietary habits of John Travolta. They're all going in the trash.

But to decide which tapes to discard, you have to know what's on them...and that means watching them, if they're not well-labeled. And you guessed it, there were dozens of unlabeled tapes in the boxes.

Hours and hours later, I had several sacks of trash to throw out, and brand new descriptive labels on the tapes I had decided I wanted to keep. Not one iota of editing had been accomplished, and my back was really starting to hurt from swinging at baseballs and bending over to open boxes...but the good news is that I did find the soundtrack to Thunderfinger! That means that the next weekend could be used to synch it up with the pictures and build a DVD that could ultimately be distributed to anybody on the old swim team. Or to some Hollywood producer who would recognize the talent involved and offer Doug and I huge contracts to make "E.T., Part 2—Judgement Day!".

Anyway, give me a week, and I should have the DVD ready for distribution. If you are one of the actors in either of these films, I'd be happy to get you a copy. Same goes if you're a big moneybags producer. Just let me know. I'll be waiting by the phone.

Have a great day!