SUBURBIA
TRANSCRIPT OF 1999 PROJECT
[Footage made by Tim Farmer, mounting the camera atop a remote controlled car, scrolls along showing us the nondescript sidewalks and trees of his grandmother's neighborhood. "Suburbia" by the Pet Shop Boys plays.]
Title card (flashes quickly):
A FAKE PLASTIC PRODUCTION
A film by
TIM FARMER
BRANDON McKENNA [he didn't do anything]
NATHAN PHILLIPS
JULIE THOMPSON [she barely did]
This film does not intend to insult or defame the students of SBHS. It is merely a joke. A JOKE!... Don't file any lawsuits.
[More remote control car footage. The car crashes, the camera falling to one side.]
Title card (even quicker):
SUBURBIA
VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED
-
[Nathan Phillips, with an incredibly ugly -- and fresh -- haircut appears sitting in a room in front of a highbrow bookshelf, listening to classical music, his hand thoughtfully on his chin, staring into space, obviously contemplating the music, or something, when suddenly he notices the camera and JUMPS. Throughout the following segment he is far too close to the camera and obviously reading from a printout mounted next to it.]
NCP: Oh, hello! [turns music off] I'm Peter Graves, and this is National Geographic Explorer. Today we bring you a highly sensitive topic, one that represents all that is vile and evil in today's society. It's called high school. While associated officials claim that it's a center of learning and social expansion, our best research indicates that it's really no more than one huge, disgusting pile of hormones. Rather than churn out some shameless exposé on a major American school, we here at National Geographic chose to bring you the epicenter of the real scum: that frightening, bizarre wonderland known as suburbia [overreaching excuse for naming the film after a Pet Shop Boys song], which in this case is a faroff area in Southeastern North Carolina.
[Cut to blue screen -- an accident -- then to a poorly mounted shot of the school hallway in which I evidently was unaware the camera was still on. From now on Nathan narrates.]
Narr.: As is the case with any such middle class area, the common citizen of Brunswick County doesn't play any huge role other than to watch the wheels roll endlessly by, hurling them closer and closer to the inevitable doom. The problem is, in this town, there are no wheels to watch. [a girl walks into the hall ahead of the camera, as does a teacher, right on cue] It's simply one endless void of rednecks, white trash, trash of all other races, and God only knows what else.
[We cut to the hall by the lunch courtyard, where a gangsta type named Nick is about to walk out. We stop him to ask a few questions.]
NCP: Hey, what do you think of crackers?
Nick: Crackers?
Tim: Yeah.
Nick: [spouting rap-video poses throughout] I hate crackers, dawg. Word up. I kill a cracker, you know what I'm sayin'? But some crackers I'm cool wit'. And the crackers that I'm cool wit', they ain't crackers, you know what I'm sayin'?
NCP: Yeah.
Nick: Check my shorts out, man... [camera pans down to his JNCO jean shorts while he does a little dance]
NCP: Nice shorts, huh Tim?
Tim: Yeah.
NCP: [as Nick walks away] Thanks!
Narr.: [shot: outside of school; throughout the following, the narration is accompanied by appropriate depictions... this is known as "documentary method"] From the outside, SBHS looks like your average nondescript campus. The grounds are well kept, the flag is up, and the cars driving by do not seem plagued by the fear of being shot at. [camera rolls into the building; behind us, the occupant of the just-filmed car tells us that we blow] One might even assume that this represents an all-American place of education. This is not immediately proven incorrect when one walks in the door... but it doesn't really take long. Sure, there are the trophies [shot of trophies behind, I kid you not, bulletproof glass], the students' work on display [shot of Spanish class' fake house plans], and then there are the safety measures such as fire extinguishers and so on, but the cracks in the ceiling, the slowly peeling paint, and the questionable restroom facilities [shot of me stumbling wearily out of bathroom and collapsing on the ground by a classroom door] all seem to be vague signs of a faroff vision that has slowly been dying for years.
NCP: Bathroom's lookin' good.
Narr.: And as if all this wasn't disturbing enough, we now come to the actual occupants of the school: these odd creatures, ranging in age from about 14 to 18, appear to be either primate beasts of considerable brilliance, or remarkably dimwitted humans. [shot of several kids helping a smaller punkass up atop the flimsy roof that partially covers the school courtyard; he jumps down after looking around for a minute] Whatever the case, the animals are quite fascinating to watch in their various actions.
NCP: [addressing punkass] What's it like up there?
Narr.: Just take a look at these two examples. [two guys fight over a shapely chick who looks on cheerfully] Here's a pair of them engaged in a physical enactment of some sort, possibly a fight. And here another one [David Muellerweiss] attacks our camera. Some are more prominent than others, some make themselves more prominent than others. The perfect example of this would be this young man we are about to see. His name is Justin Hyer. [Justin whispers to me from across the room in the middle of class; I turn the camera to see him holding up a wire and muttering something about "hacking" until the teacher tells me to put away the camera] Our filming crew spent some time with him, and we made a number of fascinating discoveries. [Justin places his head just above a printer as if to listen for some kind of revelatory action; Amanda Cronick, the girl sitting next to him, takes the opportunity to smash his head against it.] Let's watch.
Justin: [holding up floppies] I got your disks right here. There's a red one, I mean a blue one, I mean a red one and a blue one, see, and you can look inside [opens one of the disks and holds it up to the light], um, the information, I can see, like, the Pentium 5 processor. [turns toward a computer in a deserted area of the classroom] Let's get on this computer now... [starts hitting random keys rapidly; the computer beeps endlessly in response]
Amanda: You are so retarded, you know that?
Justin: Um.. I think the mainframe's down. [moves to the computer on the right] Let's try this one. [stuffs one of the disks into the drive diagonally; the computer does not like this] Doesn't work. Let's go. Follow me. [He begins to walk across the classroom and begs Joe Stoltz, using a PC to study for our exam, to get off his system; Joe inaudibly refuses.] Well, that's not right... I think there's a free computer right here where Brandon's sitting. [Justin motions for our codirector Brandon McKenna to flee.] Yeah, I need to hack in. I need to hack in right here. [Brandon gets up; Justin puts a disk in the drive.] Okay, we need to find file manager.
Ms. Dudley: File manager? Go to My Computer. [Justin does so.]
Justin: Okay, right now we are actually hacking in. This is the mainframe. This is the very first step. This right here will get you probably in anywhere. Here you see the, ah, 3.5" floppy. [points to disk drive] See how the green light came on?
NCP: Yeah.
Justin: That means it's like, looking at it.
NCP: Ohhh.
Justin: Reading the information.
David Muellerweiss: Got any more Skittles, Justin?
Justin: Uh, no, I hacked 'em in... This computer's mainframe and pentium is really slow so I'd recommend not buying something like this. [removes floppy] All right, this disc is bad, so.. [picks up another one] Right here is a disk I would never show anybody, but... since you're interviewing me... This is the E-S-L-8-3-5-T-B-E-S-L-T-3-5-T-T-M-B-P-S-T-C-I-Manual-Inside. This right here will get you in the Pentagon. You put it in and type in Pentagon... [puts the disk in and clicks on Quizbowl, our class application for exam studying] We gotta download this... Okay, we'll go into, let's say, Quizbowl... Okay?
NCP: Mmhmm.
Justin: Now. Notice how the disk's in.
NCP: Oh, yeah. Guess that's important, huh?
Justin: Rrright. Here you go right here. Select a game. Now you notice how there's different types of categories. I made my own hacking game..
NCP: See what kinda games I want here. Oh, I see.
Justin: [in the various prompts to begin the game, Justin selects the "1 player" option, claims that he is female, and uses the ID "hackers"] Type in "hackers". [a question about Alexander Graham Bell is asked, and Justin chooses the incorrect answer] Telegraph. See, it's easy.
NCP: Yeah. I get it. So now you're at the Pentagon.
Justin: Exactly. Enough of this. This computer's bad. It needs a Pentium 5 if it's ever gonna go anywhere. [gets up suddenly and starts running over to the editing room in the back]
Ms. Dudley: Justin, you need to settle down.
Justin: [peeks out door defensively] I'm being interviewed! [camera follows him into the back room where numerous people are scattered about] This is where we, like, do all the information hacking.
NCP: Is this your, ah, headquarters?
Justin: [walks back into the very dark and large studio room] This is mainly where we take kids that are not smart on computers and..
NCP: Torture them.
Justin: Not torture them, but kind of like... beat 'em up. Because sometimes they've figured out our information disks.
NCP: Oh, yeah, we can't have that.
Justin: [sees several people observing the action behind me] 'Scuse me. Time out. What are you DOING in here?
[Later...]
NCP: Tell me about your trials and tribulations.
Justin: I've actually built a computer that has a Pentium 6 processor.
NCP: [getting bored] Right, right.
Justin: Yyyeah.
NCP: I don't care about your computers.
Justin: It's got 226 gigabytes with a Pentium 2 running beside it. So you get the 6 plus 2, I think it's called a Pentium 8? It's... really nice...
NCP: Justin...
Justin: [talking to someone else behind me] Please leave.
NCP: Justin. you're not a hacker. You don't make computers. You're nothing. You don't do anything. There's no -- you don't know what a mainframe is. You don't know what hacking is. You don't know what the Internet is. You --
Justin: Look. I've hacked into the Pentagon. I have actually talked to Bill Clinton, okay??
NCP: What did Bill Clinton say?
Justin: Bill Clinton said... "Good job!" He said "You did a good job." I mean.. you have to have skill to hack into the Pentagon. Don't let it happen again, okay? GET THIS CAMERA OUT OF MY FACE.
Narr.: Of course it would be unfair to say that our friend Mr. Hyer is the only problem in this particular school. To prove this we took a few strolls around the area and asked more students about various items of interest.
NCP: [addressing a random kid in the hallway] What can tell us about the economic state of Poland?
Kid: I... don't know!
[Outside, we see a guy who has his girlfriend in a headlock, or something, and it seems like some pretty serious foreplay while the others at the table watch with voyeuristic glee]
NCP: Are we having pleasant lunch today?
Girl: Oh, yeah!
NCP: Right. I can tell.
Girl: This is like the entertainment of the lunch.
NCP: Ohh yeah.
Sex Maniac: This is mild. we're usually just gettin' naked and stuff...
NCP: So this is the PG-13 rated version.
Sex Maniac: Yeah, usually it's like [long pause] X-rated.
NCP: You cleaned it up for the cameras, I appreciate that.
Sex Maniac: Yeah, but.. [feigns pulling pants down] now we gotta...
[A random girl in the hallway squeals and runs when the camera turns toward her]
Girl: DON'T FILM ME! [runs behind the kid we asked about Poland]
Tim: You can't hide behind... whoever that is.
[Nick comes around again, this time with a cracker friend of his.]
NCP: What would you do for a Klondike bar?
Nick: What would I do for a Klondike bar?
Cracker: Ah, man.. goddamn [this slipped past because he mumbles it], I don't like Klondike bars. What's this for?
NCP: Nothing.
Nick: Is it the news, man?
NCP: No, not the news, it's just..
Nick: You know what I'd do for a Klondike bar?... Maaann... [dead air]... I wouldn't even tell you.
NCP: All right. [they walk off] I read you loud and clear!
[Tommy Robberson walks past, heading out to the courtyard]
NCP: Look here, Tommy Robberson, There are cracks in the ceiling. Is there anything you would do to repair them?
Tommy: [looks up] No. [walks out]
NCP: [standing outside restroom door] We got a couple of wild ones over there in the bathroom today. We're gonna ask them a few questions, and then we'll be on our merry way... I'll explain first that I'm from the National Board of Health Regulations and I need to ask anyone who uses that bathroom right there... need to ask them a few questions... It's gonna be an interesting day.
[An intimidating hick walks out; Tim and I motion him over]
NCP: Excuse me... first of all, where's your pass?
Hick: Whut??
NCP: Um, is the bathroom clean?
Hick: Yeah...
NCP: On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate its cleanliness?
Hick: [pause] 0.
NCP: 0? Okay. Thank you.
[Someone else walks out]
NCP: Excuse me, how many times do you do that in a day?
Guy: Huh?
NCP: How many times do you go to the bathroom in a day? [he just shakes his head and continues on his way]
[...]
NCP: The toilets in there, are they moving clockwise or counterclockwise?
Some guy: Man, I don't keep up with that shit! ["shit" removed in the interest of sheltering youth]
[... now back in the hallway...]
NCP: Have you ever committed arson?
Girl: No...
NCP: Good to know.
[...]
NCP: Do you know Justin Hyer?
Guy: Yeah.
NCP: What do you think of him?
Guy: He's a dork.
Daniel Long: Kid's a loser, man! Watch this! [he opens the door, just ahead of where Justin is standing, and runs up and hits him in the stomach; Justin loses his balance a bit; people laugh]
Justin: [comes up and slams door] Yeah, kinda funny how you barely hit me.
NCP: All right, what do YOU think of Justin?
Todd Farrell: [seemingly impatient with my shenanigans] I think he's gay too!
Narr.: We rest our case. However, our examination would not be complete without a brief discussion with a few of those in charge. We were able to speak with one of the school's head honchos, a pleasant fellow with whom we shared a nice intelligent conversation.
[In the hallway near the courtyard I confront our vice principal, Mr. Hargrove]
NCP: Do you consider Doritos to be chips or do you consider them to be in a separate category?
Hargrove: Doritos... to be chips or what?
NCP: Uh, if they --
Hargrove: I think they're chips the way they're cut. I think that's the reason why things are called chips.
NCP: Okay, thank you!
Narr.: In addition, National Geographic visited a few of South Brunswick's finest, and killed two birds with one stone by embarrassing them AND interrupting their lunch.
NCP: Do you have anything to say about the food?
Teacher: You notice how many people are eating cafeteria food?
Mr. Lemon, evil art teacher with shaved head: I got two words for you: Honey Bun. [holds up such an item] Honey Bun. You can zoom in on that. [Tim follows that instruction]
NCP: Right. A man of taste.
Narr.: They were less than flattered with our intrusion.
[A few minutes after the Honey Bun incident, Mr. Lemon approaches me pointedly in the hallway and starts yelling.]
Lemon: What do you want now?
NCP: [timidly] I don't want anything!
Lemon: Is there a purpose for this?
NCP: Uh... yes, there is.
Lemon: [points an intimidating finger into the lens] What's the PURPOSE?
NCP: Uh, it's a... character study.
Lemon: Oh, so you have an edit.
NCP: Uh... I'm going to edit.
Lemon: I see... On whose character?
NCP: Everyone's.
Lemon: Everyone's character. Hmm.
Narr.: Nonetheless, we boldly carried on with our dangerous mission.
NCP: [as disgruntled history teacher Mr. Roehner walks by and tries to pretend he's invisible] Do you think this ceiling needs some work?
Roehner: [leaves the building then pops back in for a split second] Yeah, it does!
[Outside, confronting my history teacher Ms. Butler as she eats.]
NCP: My question concerns Doritos. Here's the scenario: you're setting up a concession stand in a park of some sort, an aera of public gathering, and you serve all sorts of chips, all these variations of generic chips, brand chips, whatever... and one of the chips you serve is Doritos. Now when you're making your menu for your concession stand... would you put the Doritos under a separate listing or do you include them under "chips"... especially if they are the same price?
Butler: [long, thoughtful pause] I would put them under a separate listing.
NCP: Really. So you would consider Doritos to be.. completely different from chips.
Butler: Well, no. You say they're chips, but if you said 'hand me a bag of chips' and you were handed Doritos, then.. it might not be... what you wanted.
NCP: Very interesting. [after a minute, I turn toward Tim's lingering camera] You can turn it off now.
Narr.: As we close this edition of National Geographic Explorer, I feel that since any number of people associated with the high school in question may see this, it is my obligation to assure the audience that what you have just seen was merely a joke. The people of South Brunswick High are ones of unparalleled warmth...
[I walk by some guy in the courtyard who turns to me accusingly]
Kid: Hey, man, I'll flip it off! I don't give a FUCK! [last sentence removed out of concerns for stunting growth of youngsters]
Narr.: ...intelligence...
[In the hallway, Tim is filming me badgering our apparently very spaced-out friend Eugene]
Eugene: ... Did you know there's a camera right there?... [long pause] Did you -- do you see the camera right there?
NCP: [annoyed] Yeah! There's a camera! Right there!
Eugene: Is it real?
NCP: Yyyeah...
Eugene: Does it work!?
NCP: Uh.. yeah! Yeah, it works!
Eugene: [stares suspiciously into the lens surveying the situation] No, it doesn't! You're lying!
NCP: [looking genuinely befuddled] ...what the...?
Narr.: ...and more than anything, they have integrity.
NCP: Where did you go on your vacation?
Jarod, heavily-pierced goth: [wagging his tongue around at the camera] I went to Disneyworld, man! I smoked a lotta gonzo! [mimics a hit off a joint]
Narr.: Before I dig my grave even deeper by leaving with some sly remark, let's just watch a dog chasing a little car. [Tim's footage, also from his grandmother's house, of her dog's adventures with his remote control racecar, rolls.] From all of us at National Geographic Explorer, goodnight, and have a nice life, and remember... watch out for snakes. [the footage of the dog plays out for several minutes; if anyone makes it to the end they will see that he finally catches the car eventually, and tries to eat it]
NOTE: In case you're wondering, a few of my friends and I were wandering around a park on a field trip a year before I made Suburbia and we found a sign by a concession stand that, in addition to the delightful phrase "a gum," featured a listing for "chips" and "Doritos," both fifty cents. We stole the sign and spent the rest of the field trip barraging our classmates with questions about whether or not Doritos were "chips"; when this got boring, we buried the sign in the sandbox by the playground. The end.
THE MAKING OF SUBURBIA
(the boring part in which the author lets go of four-year-old grudges)
In the spring semester of my freshman year (1998-99) I took a Fundamentals of Technology class in which we dabbled in all sorts of things, from circuits and transistors to DOS and videogames. We had a great teacher who I later found out paid for much of the equipment herself thanks to a lack of funding from the school system. Our big end-of-the-year project was to do a short film.
Well, kind of. We didn't have film at our disposal, just six camcorders, so more "video" than anything else, and what was really important wasn't so much the substance of the film but the way it was edited, and man, did we have the right stuff for that: a massive MMX system that was both useful and way too much fun to play with. In a single class I learned most the tricks you see on local ads and newsmagazines. And "Talk Soup."
So we grouped off to do our projects. It was April 27th, I remember, because that morning we had a moment of silence in honor of the victims in the Columbine massacre a week earlier. My group consisted of a fair-weathered friend of sorts named Tim Farmer, who refused to have anything to do with me after we were finished, plus a girl named Julie who I think resented my control over the project and a guy named Brandon who couldn't bother giving a shit.
I filmed whatever I saw and it was only near the end that I figured out how to refine tons of raw footage of random things and events around the school into a coherent statement. I had a lengthy interview with a kid, Justin Hyer, who used to make fun of me because he inexplicably thought I was a "hacker." This gave me the idea to just basically satirize everything and everyone in the school, but despite some pretty condescending things in the narration it wasn't mean-spirited, just absurd. I wasn't running up to teachers and asking them why they'd chosen a profession that clearly wasn't ideal for them; I was asking if they felt Doritos counted as "chips."
And even the narration is explained away, but like a lot of things I consider worthy of being made fun of, why I felt the point was universal is lost in the mists of time. I'd seen a National Geographic (I think) special about lemurs. It was from the '80s on a tape of my sister's. I watched this thing over and over again, partially because I dig nature documentaries, but mostly because I couldn't believe the narration. I can't remember any exact quotes but it seemed to regard its subjects as ridiculously low forms of life. "Just look at their pathetic tomfoolery!" Things like that, and the Dudley Moore-type "Milo and Otis" narration made the whole thing even goofier.
So it would have been a more effective parody if I'd been awake enough to imitate the accent, but more on that in a bit. After I wrote a script I spent two more weeks getting footage. In all there was a month of filming with varying degrees of cooperation from Tim. I can't express what a relief it was, having finally found my way into a real interest in film, to hold a camera. I'll never forget how powerful it felt to be able to record things and to have this bizarre hold over people hypnotized by the unblinking eye of the lens.
Because people always hated it when I got hold of videocameras, and coincidentally my dad had bought one less than two weeks before I started this project and remembered why. I would walk up to glasses of soda and zoom in as far as possible, I'd swoop the camera around capturing snapshots of a room like a crashing plane. A bunch of pointless shit... but now I had to have a camera, and that felt damn good.
That's not the only reason it was a thrill. I don't want to go into enough details to render this even more boring than it already threatens to be, but looking around this site as I add to it you'll eventually notice there's almost nothing from 1999. I don't consider my work good or bad because I don't think it's my place to judge it in any capacity except a relative sense, but I'm ordinarily pretty prolific. I have to write or draw or do something, and for most of that school year for a variety of personal reasons, some of which you might call self-imposed even though another person was involved, I was trying to Become a Better Person. This did not have the ideal result and I wouldn't recommend it as a good idea, to anyone.
The point is, I wanted to be serious and making "Suburbia" was the first time in ages I felt that I had free reign to go nuts and do what I wanted to do. With the above-implied exception, I was something of a loner at the time and I didn't have many close friends, if any at all, in the technology class, which may have helped or hurt the work, I dunno. I do thrive on collaboration, I think, because at the rare points when I actually have enjoyed real collaboration I've been more satisfied with my work than at any other time. Tim Farmer had good ideas and encouraged mine but I think if I'd made the thing later with some other friends the insanity could have been even more infectious.
I was criticized for spending too much time filming because we were supposed to have two weeks for editing and in the end I was gathering footage days ahead of the due date for the final project. The teachers and students who were making these accusations missed the big picture, which was that I couldn't get into the editing room because Matt Evans and Dave Muellerweiss had a monopoly on it.
They were both on-and-off friends of mine and they were the only others in the class doing anything with a shade of creativity. It was about a guy (Matt) who tried to bomb the school but was thwarted by the cops. This was a revision of a plot Matt and I had filmed three years earlier as "Brussels Sprouts," a work of cinematic genius, the only copy of which sits in Virginia at the home of Matt's relatives. Anyway, Matt actually got the school police officer to fake an arrest, and then after the project was over and the A was handed out, the idiots TAPED OVER IT. Basically, everybody else was doing watered-down yearbook/senior video type shit that took three minutes to edit. One pack of geeks turned in a dumbass retrospective of the marketing campaign surrounding the just-released THE PHANTOM MENACE. All they had to do was stitch together a 60 Minutes interview with George Lucas, a trailer, and a music video with a bit of machine doctoring. They got an A, too.
The problem with Matt's film was that, like mine, it exceeded the suggested time limit of six minutes. His was about ten, mine ended up being sixteen. In any case, Matt was a nice guy and he was a more persuasive and socially sharp person than I could ever be. It was actually shocking when someone said something and he couldn't think of an immediate reaction. (Once in class someone said "Shut up, Matt, nobody cares about your opinion" and the room was filled with uncomfortable dead air until finally Matt responded with the sharp wit of "Gavin!... Whatever, dude!") So he got use of the editing room much more easily than I did. But we needed it just as much because of the size of our project. I had time to put the title sequence together, and not even correctly, before being shut out to let others in, but he spent numerous class periods locked back there.
Deadlines don't stop approaching, nor do outside problems stop existing. The odd youthful relationship I was in at the time, which mostly involved me being smitten, clueless and whipped, took up far too much of my time at home, not that I really could do much at home anyway. I had no editing equipment, after all, and the film was about the school, for God's sake.
School let out on a Tuesday. Our films were due the day before. On Friday, we still were unable to use the MMX machine due to some last-minute pace changes on Matt's part. It was hopeless. All three of my teammates were suddenly a bit concerned with the effect of this massive project on their grade, and they demanded to know why our work wasn't finished when everyone else's was. I reassured them all and told them I'd take care of it, not to worry, and went home for a long weekend of worrying.
There was no fucking way I could finish this at home. I hadn't even recorded the narration. I thought about calling the teacher and asking to come in on Saturday, but there was no way that would go down well. Mostly I thought about lobbying for an exemption, or maybe finishing on Monday and presenting on Tuesday, or some such bullshit tactic. Or maybe I could just hang myself. I was not prepared.
Worrying is shit anyway, but when you've got other people who are depending on you, it's the worst feeling in the world, and the life of an American teenager is a turbulent one anyway. (HA!) Okay, it seems turbulent when it's happening, at least give me that. I was in driver's ed and I was taping "ER" every night even though I didn't like it and everything was just utterly bizarre. I don't remember what I did on Saturday but I remember that in the long run, nothing got done.
In desperation, I finally figured I'd just throw some stuff together and turn it in, which turned out to be what most of the others had done, and I was smart enough to know that would probably be what would happen.
The thing is, I felt like I would be letting myself down more than anything. I was the type to always privately wish I was in an environment where I could do something really left-field and crazy for its own sake and have it encouraged. Now I'd had the chance handed to me on a plate and no way was I going to let someone else's hogging of the editing room get in the way of my little film.
I still didn't have all the footage I wanted. I lost some of what I did have, but in the end there weren't enough interviews and I hadn't gotten around to filming several things I'd wanted to include, most explicitly an interview with a fictional redneck named Cedrick Von Vokum. (This, I later realized, was a terrible idea and I'm glad I didn't get to use it.) I also had no way to record narration; I'd done mike dubs before but I'd never found a way to make it work with my current hookup.
I had the camcorder for some reason and I got curious about the microphone jack. I plugged it in and played with it for a few hours and struck gold when I discovered that the camera supplied output as actions were being recorded; in other words, I could hook the camera's audio to the VCR and it would record my narration directly over the edited-together final product. A godsend. Unfortunately, it was after 10:00pm when I made this breakthrough and I was exhausted, having gotten little sleep the night before. Determination -- to impress others, to impress me, whatever -- struck again, but it took a while. First I toyed with the novelty, rooting around on old videotapes and making comments over them. I did that for about an hour before I realized I couldn't put things off any longer.
Spent most of the night editing the footage. The edits are rudimentary, terrible, distracting, but considering that I only had two VCRs and no outside equipment to use, I'd say they're pretty damned good. It collapsed into snow at one point and the "pause" button missed a couple of quick gags, but on the whole, it was the best I could do with what I had and I ended up using the first attempt. It was ten minutes over the time alotted by the teacher, but I didn't particularly care at this point.
It was something like 3:30am when I finally put my narration over it, so I sound a little out of it. When I went to bed a few minutes later I felt better than I had in a pretty long time. It really is a sense of accomplishment to get some mammoth project like that done, especially for a chronic procastinator like myself. [Case in point: It took me a month and a half to transcribe this sixteen-minute video, write this essay, and upload the file.]
I don't want to dwell too much on what happened the next day because I do not have any grudges about what happened and I'm only bringing it up because, all told, it's a pretty funny story. My teammates were thrilled with the result and all were grateful and generous in their attitude toward me for the entire class period. The sad part was that we hadn't been told this was the day the principal of the school was coming in to check out our awesome awesome projects.
We had a test in the morning too, the class final exam, but with "Suburbia" weighing so heavily on my mind it wasn't even a big issue for me and I actually found myself not caring about my grade, which I think was a B or something. Right after we finished was when we were all told about Ms. Sellers, who would be popping in for a look. I didn't think much of it because I still felt that what I'd done was pretty innocuous.
A bigger concern was the fact that I was listed last and there was only about half an hour left before the bell would ring and everyone would leave for lunch. As it turned out, I got "Suburbia" rolling six minutes ahead of the end, sitting by the TV so I could adjust the volume in the absence of any consistent equalizing, the principal still standing at the back of the room with her arms crossed. I did flinch when the "white trash" remark rolled around, and mistakes like that are probably what drove Sellers mad, no matter what the intention, but my classmates laughed in the right places and about half of them stayed when the bell rang to see the rest of the feature. I considered this a major victory in a room full of apathetic potheads.
The teacher praised me briefly before I walked out to go take my history test. The principal said nothing. I was elated, on top of the goddamned world; probably would've been even if the thing hadn't been well-received or shown at all. I went to lunch and opened the door to the courtyard for everyone who walked by, amid many puzzled stares from each of them; this is what Matt Herman and I did at lunch every day while I ate my Gold-N-Cheez. I went to take my history test and the kid next to me, this moron named Richard who had the "mean people suck, nice people swallow" shirt in at least four different colors, paid me $8 for a pack of six Oreos. He was hungry. He shoveled them into his mouth discreetly throughout the test. [2004 Note: Since writing this I've discovered that shortly after our class graduated, this kid shot himself in a Domino's Pizza bathroom. Just wanted to add a morbid detail to your day because that's something everyone needs.]
The next day I found out we got an A for "Suburbia." Icing on the cake, but Ms. Dudley commented that "Sellers wasn't too happy with it." I figured she was kidding around.
It became apparent in the years to follow that something, I'm not sure what, had been placed on my permanent record indicating that I'd done a disrespectful deed that at any non-exam time would have been grounds for suspension. In fact, when they were passing out envelopes for nominations into, um, a certain national conglomerate that shall remain namesless consisting of well-behaved pussy children who go to dumb meetings and preen, I didn't get one and an inquiry into the reason brought up all these strange, vague allegations about me bringing a damaging kind of subversion into the technology classroom. Which is just silly... anybody who talked to me for five minutes would have no trouble discovering that I'm no anarchist and in reality had nothing against my school until this happened. It was all pretty good-natured, I thought.
But I'll be honest... I was proud of being so controversial, even if it was meaningless. I wouldn't have joined the stupid organization, er, society anyway. But it was nice to know that they already had a file on me so I could keep carrying out my ruthless agenda against them knowing it wasn't all for nothing.
One additional note... okay, two additional notes. When I went to tell my closest confidante and the person who is mentioned vaguely several times above all about this, she didn't even pretend to care. I told another friend, one Stephanie Coin, and she listened and encouraged and understood. Another story, that. But two years later, I took another class with the same teacher in the same room. We were making the school news until a German exchange student stole all of our equipment and took it home. One day, I was out in the courtyard filming and there was Justin Hyer, sipping on a cup of ice. Unable to resist reviving a joke he probably didn't even remember, I walked up to him and asked him a question about "information hacking." He didn't answer but he did say "Tell Ms. Dudley this is what I think of her class." He took the cup and dumped the ice onto the concrete, then awkwardly stepped on it. As an onlooker noted, "The, uh, ice is still intact." Justin walked away in disgust.
Watch out for snakes.