The Video Generation.

There was no “Star Wars Kid” when I grew up: our childhoods were strictly our own and those in our immediate vicinity. I’m grateful that I get to tell you my story here, and fib as I see fit, although I’ll try not to:

 

I spent my first two years in college at Boston University living in the same dorm as the national champion hockey team, and most of my weekend nights standing in the snow after some genius hockey player thought it would be fun to pull the fire alarm at 2am. And 3am. And 4am. Film was not on my mind; survival was. And beer. And girls.

 

I became fully reacquainted with my creative self when I was accepted into the Horace Gregory Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College; alma mater of Yoko Ono and Brian DePalma (at least one of which is creative). My classmates were the likes of Cary Elwes (Princess Bride, et al) and Sam Robards (son of Jason Robards and Lauren Bacall and a fine actor in his own right), and my teachers were the esteemed writers Grace Paley, Allan Gurganus, and Joe Papaleo. There were also lots and lots and lots of girls.

 

But while I showed my old films there (and had them stolen), I never made a film at SLC, even in the face of all that creative inspiration. I painted thirty paintings and wrote scores of short stories, but never made a film. Why? Because at that time, making a serious film was an expensive, complicated, and overwhelmingly daunting task (and we were very serious at SLC — so much so that it was fashionable to pretend you were Ernest Hemingway or Sylvia Plath: tortured, drunk, and constantly on the brink of the abyss. It went well with the berets and clove cigarettes).

 

You see, and I date myself here, video recording was not yet readily available to the masses: the war between VHS and Beta was just heating up. Remember Beta? A marketing war that Sony lost, despite a superior technology.

 

But shortly after I graduated from college, I bought one of the very first consumer video cameras: a gigantic shoulder-mounted affair (Sony again, I believe) that looked very professional (lots of useless buttons) and attached to one of the first “portable” VHS VCRs that fit in an equally gigantic shoulder bag that would permanently cripple you if you tried to actually use it, not to mention a battery that lasted a little longer than a Hollywood marriage.

 

When I bought it, I imagined that I would make instant movie after instant movie: no waiting for the drugstore to process the film, no projector melting the results. Nirvana: instant filmmaking gratification.

 

The reality of the situation was that the gear was so unwieldy that it was relegated to my living room and a tripod, where I used it to practice my presentations for the Manhattan corporate communications company I had joined in order to avoid starting in the mailroom of the ad agency for which I thought I was too superior (gimme a break, I was twenty). I still have some of the tapes. Works of art, not. Although I looked better in a bathrobe then.

 

Reflecting on this, I’m glad my life hasn’t been recorded in excruciating detail as this generation has. While I’ve been able to modify my true history in my mind as it suits me, today a fish story is as likely to be greeted with the exclamation “let’s go to the videotape!” as with a solemn nod of commiseration.

 

Today, there’s no such thing as legend, or convenient memory. Just endless reminders of our own embarrassments.

 

Just ask the “Star Wars Kid.”