I want to write about an
experience that happened to me during my first month back here in New Orleans, a very
full-circle experience that vindicated in some ways my second coming in this
city. The experience turned out
well for me, because it opened up a new avenue that I would never have thought
possible just nine years ago in pre-Hollywood-South New Orleans. It in fact only took twenty years, but
a few weeks ago, I was up on the silver screen.
When I was 15, I was
rabid for the idea that I wanted to be a film director. Having been given access to a rented
VHS video camera for a family vacation to Walt Disney World, my parents just went
ahead and purchased the thing because quite frankly I wouldn't let it go after
the week was up. That camera was
the seed of obsession that saw me making videos that I entered into a student
media festival at LSU throughout my four years in high school, and I won the damn
thing all four years in a row.
But at some point this
urge to make movies faded, and I always site the reason being that selfishly,
the collaborative process at the time proved too much. I went to college and made a movie my
freshman year, but then I was just done, off and running into the void that
would eventually end up with my deciding that the written word would be my main
mode of storytelling. In
retrospect, I also believe that I would have given up long before Hollywood
South and their glorious tax incentives would have ever come to town.
And now back to our
story.
It all started during a random
conversation with filmmaker John Beyer and actor Corey Stewart, both of whom participate
in what is known as The 48 Hour Film Project every year, which they thought I
could contribute something to this year in front of the camera. The 48 is an international competition
where filmmakers are given a genre to work with, a line of dialogue that needs to
be spoken, a character name and a prop that needs to be used and then are told
to go out and make that movie in forty-eight hours. The New Orleans-based competition is moderated by an old Bourbon
Street friend of mine, Pedro Lucero, and that fact alone should have told me
that the universe was about to place me somewhere that I needed to be.
And so on the morning of
July 19th, 2014, I was emailed a copy of the script for "Sis-Tours" that
had been written overnight and then I was told where to go. I made coffee and grabbed some semblance of a wardrobe from
my closet and headed out. When I
arrived, the first thing that struck me was the silent efficiency of the set
located in an office building that was given to us for the day, with crew members
that scurried here and there setting up lighting and camera equipment and set
decoration.
I got dressed and was
then asked to go into makeup where among other things, the artist made sure
that my bald head -- which I dubbed at the amusement of the crew as the
"chrome dome" -- was dimmed-down enough as not to be too shiny for
the camera. When this was done and
after some waiting around, it was then time to do my first take, a voice-over
line that I was told just to read.
Being at least good at reading things, and knowing that I had the luxury
of doing it with no memorization necessary, I nailed the inflection and made
director John Beyer giggle.
So far so good.
But next was my first
actual on-camera scene, a talking-head shot in which I had to deliver lines
without reading them. I stumbled
at first and then asked if I could do it again as a stifling hush filled the
room that I didn't care to interpret at the time. And when I did it again and opened-up into character under
the direction of John, the result was another break-up behind the camera and a restoration
to my confidence.
The rest of the day went unbelievably
well, and the collaborative experience of this very-ensemble piece -- which
also featured Corey Stewart, Laura Flannery, Karen Gonzalez, Jamie Choina, Ed
Hubert, Brian Bonhagen and Chris Fontana, and the behind-the-scenes work of
Todd Schmidt, Laura Duval, Matt Bell, Alex Payne and Franz Wise -- was as gratifying
as anything I can remember in recent years. The ease with which I navigated this environment made me
nostalgic for my high school years, where all I wanted to do was make movies,
an instinct that perhaps I should never have let grow dormant. The universe is funny that way.
With my part of the
eight-hour shoot done, the crew was then off and running to the next
location. I went home and officially
began waiting for the opportunity to see the finished product. I also did quite a bit of writing that
day, inspired by the creative atmosphere that I'd just left.
People in love with
storytelling are my kind of people, as are film people, which I learned that
day firsthand.
I'd now like to
fast-forward to the night of Thursday, July 24th, 2014.
The entire team -- dubbed
now "The Sullen Ducks" -- arrived at the National WWII Museum theatre
in the Warehouse District of New Orleans for the second of the festival's four
screenings. We all filed inside,
and a bit of a reunion took place between myself and moderator Pedro Lucero. This recognition would in
fact carry-over into the auditorium where as we all sat and they got ready to begin the
screening, Pedro pointed me out in the second row and announced into a hot microphone,
"And Ted Torres is here!"
That moment meant more to
me than you know, Pedro, and I thank you.
And yes, there I was projected fifty-feet high for a few moments that will stay with me forever, strictly
for the sake of punctuating how fast things can happen when one simply allows
the universe to nudge them back into place.
And ... scene.
