My Dream Job? That’s Easy

I was one of those people who didn’t know what I wanted to do after high school but drinking and partying seemed good at the time. That time didn’t last long.

Every now and again I get asked by students, what is your “Dream Occupation”. That’s easy.  Filmmaker and Author. 

I’ve been lucky to do both for most of my life. 

I was one of those people who didn’t know what I wanted to do after high school but drinking and partying seemed good at the time. That time didn’t last long. 

About six months after graduation I ran into one of the only high school teachers I respected. I wasn’t in a good place. We both remember me asking, “What should I do?” 

In high school he supervised me video taping a lot of sports and other activities. He felt I had a natural ability and I enjoyed it. “Why not pursue filmmaking?” Later on I chuckled thinking how can a kid from Portland, Oregon be a filmmaker? I had no role models.

His words hit home obviously, which started me on this 40 plus year odyssey. 

If I was going to go  to college to study film I had to do something about my grades, which were subpar at best. Mostly because I didn’t give a shit about grades when I was in high school.

I enrolled at the University of Oregon with the goal of getting my grades up so I could get into a better school that specialized in film. 

U of O’s film program was just starting out, and it wasn’t much. There was one 16mm camera, a Bolex I believe, that one of the students dropped my first term there and that was the end of that. To my knowledge they never fixed or replaced it. Luckily for me the kid who dropped it did so after I had shot my first short film.

After two years at U of O and a great USC connection I made there, Thanks Paul, I got into USC's film program. Moving from Eugene Oregon to Los Angeles in the mid-1970’s was a huge culture shock!  

USC’s film program was a major revelation to me. We didn’t just make films, we learned film history and criticism. It was a well-rounded program. 

At first I was intimidated. I didn’t feel I belonged there. Everyone else seemed so talented and knew so much more than I did. I decided during that first week that I would work my ass off to prove I belonged. 

Before USC I had limited exposure to other types of films besides Hollywood movies. Thanks to places like the Fifth Avenue Cinema and the NW Film Center I had seen a few foreign films. U of O had some film history classes where I got additional exposure to classics as well as foreign films. 

Going to USC I was immersed in film. I watched so many different types of films and they taught me how to watch them. We took films apart to see why certain things work and why other things didn’t. 

USC was competitive as hell and you didn’t miss deadlines. I didn’t have much of a personal life during those years, which was fine with me. 
Like everyone else, I made some truly awful student films. But I made a couple of good ones as well. More important, I met a lot of people that shared my passion, many of them I’m still in touch with today. 

Once I got out of school I made the decision to return to Portland. I no longer believed that only Hollywood films were important. I was committed to the idea of independent filmmaking and I haven’t looked back. 

In addition to all of the editing and sound design work I’ve done over the years, I made a bunch of short films to continue to hone my craft. Then I made three features. There were documentaries and commercials and everything in between mixed in as well. 

I spent years on the road promoting and self-distributing my work with my faithful dog Moses. Which was quite an adventure. We experienced amazing things and made friends that I have kept to this day. 

Over the years there have been people or projects I didn’t enjoy working with for different reasons, but I never lost my love for film. I still haven’t. I look forward to getting up every day and working at my art, my craft. It’s still fun for me. 

Along the way I discovered my love of storytelling, which is why I started writing fiction. I have two new collections of short stories coming out soon that I’m really excited about. 

People ask when I’m going to make another feature? Hopefully soon. I have some things I’m working on.

I’ve also plunged back into an old film I started many years ago that I’m going to have finished within the next year, along with a companion book. 
 
I’m still taking editing and sound design work, a guy has got to eat. At 67 years old I have no intention of slowing down. My touring days are probably over, mostly because my most recent dog Hank, gets car sick. Not a good look for a road dog. Then again, “never say never” because I have no idea what’s up around the next corner. 

After all these years of pursuing my dream occupation, I’ve never taken the time to stop and say to myself, “Hey, I did it. I’m living it.” But I am living it and have been for a very long time. 

Thanks to all of the casts, crews, and teachers I’ve had over the years. And a special thank you to a certain former high school teacher (John Flenniken) who stopped and talked to a messed up lost kid and pointed him in the right direction. 

If you want to support this old “kid”, why not poke around my website? If you see something that interests you, buy it. It would mean a lot to me.

And Support Independent Artists.

Thanks for reading. 

Head over to my website www.angryfilmmaker.com

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