Inktober Day 29: Broken Mirror

*sees Meshes of the Afternoon once*

I always wanted to go to film school. Unfortunately, at college time, I had all the wisdomosity of a smothered teenager and didn’t see film school as a financially viable option. However, I technically attended Dodge College of Film and Media Arts for one day. In the writing class, a jaded, chain- smoking former SNL writer coughed in our faces and said something like, “You kids will never learn how to write a movie in this classroom!! The only way to write a movie is to live your damn lives!!” I dropped out and proceeded to live like the waking dead for the next three years. You know what I should have done? Stayed in film school.

At the time I heard things like, “What good is film school? All you do is sit around and watch movies.”

Yes. EXACTLY.

I could have spent four years sitting around and watching movies!

It actually takes quite a bit of effort for me to watch a movie. I have to hear I should see it from at least three different people within the span of a week. If I know someone who worked on the movie, I will guarantee watch it. But this criteria mainly applies to new releases. There’s a whole backlog of films I’ve never seen. Once I decided to watch a movie, my ADD (yesomgigetitallmillennialshaveadhd) makes it pretty hard to watch a complete movie in one sitting. I actually would have paid good money to have a film professor sit me down in a plastic seat, blast a movie on a classroom projector, and force us all to talk about it. That sounds like heaven to me. HEAVEN.

I did take a handful of film classes. These are the movies they sat me down and forced me to watch:

A Trip To The Moon
Air
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypto
Bringing Up Baby
Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
Citizen Kane
Intolerable Cruelty (why, Dr. Coleman? WHY???)
Raising Arizona
Reservoir Dogs
Snatch
Un Chien Andalou

It’s actually freaking crazy that my Film Appreciation class had TWO Coen brothers movies on the syllabus and no French New Wave. Looking back, I think those were mostly just movies Dr. Coleman liked watching.

Also, I saw Apocalypse Now and Apocalypto because I had a lazy World History teacher. To which I say, you know what? If you stink at teaching, PLEASE show a movie.

Luckily, now I know lots of people who DID attend film school, and they tell me what to watch. I do my best to watch their recommendations without zoning out or vacuuming my floor. However, I do still wish I had a community to whiny young adults with which to converse about movies. Guess I’ll just have to settle for my brilliant friends.

Here is my current personal syllabus of films I’ve been studying:

8 1/2
All That Jazz
Cléo de 5 à 7
Eraserhead
Every David Lynch movie I still haven’t seen
Fitzcarraldo
Memento
Meshes of the Afternoon
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
The Cell
The Fall

One of the most essential recommendations I’ve gotten is Meshes of the Afternoon, filmed in Los Angeles in 1943 by Maya Deren and her husband Alexandr Hackenschmied. A fourteen minute surrealist fever dream with no sound, this film basically blew my mind. I don’t know what it’s about, but I know how it made me feel: like I’d like to make a movie.

I know this ink drawing has no perspective whatsoever, but it’s inspired by this frame. Let’s just think of it as concept art.