"FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON" — 2001

This was my first successful movie production. Successful in that I set out to shoot a particular movie, shot it, edited it, and showed it. I'd had a few attempts prior with other movie projects, but "Flowers For Algernon" was the first I got "in the can."

I didn't plan on it being my "first" movie. And it's subject matter is certainly out of my wheelhouse. My eight grade teacher, Mrs. Morgan, a great teacher and person, assigned our class a project for the book we were reading at the time called "Flowers For Algernon." Don't tell anyone, I didn't read the book. But for whatever reason, I understood the story. It's about an unintelligent young man who is given a procedure to increase his intellgience.

Actually, now that I write the synposis, the story is very much in my wheelhouse. Even though I didn't read the book, I really felt for the story's protagonist. So, I cast myself as that character, my friend Christian Condrick as the young man's doctor who initiates the procedure, and Bruce Barger as a fellow coworker of the young man.

We shot the movie in one day and the experience taught me a great deal about filmmaking. Least of which was my faith in working with other people. I'd had a few bad prior experiences of trying to film a movie, people not showing up. And I feared as much this time around in the fall of 2001. Only the stakes were higher. I'd be graded on this attempt. Happily, everyone showed. I'll never forget Christian Condrick showing up outside of school wearing a doctor's coat (he played a doctor) and a stethoscope. I knew he meant serious business. As an aside, this also began my long collaboration with Christian in moviemaking. He would always be there to help and star in my movies. If I got any gifts from filmmaking, it was my deepend friendship with Christian Condrick.

As I said, the movie was shot in a single day. Really, after school on a Friday. I used a mini DV camera—my first official camera. I can't remember the exact model name. But I was amazed at how it captured the lush green trees and grass. We were lucky the weather was so sunny, coming equipped with an elegiac sunset that backgrounded the final scene of the film.

I had great difficulty editing the movie. Not so much the editing itself, but exporting the movie from the comptuer back to the camera (in those days, you had to export back to tape over a firewire cable). This was the beginning of my mistrust and paranoia of tech. The process didn't work. The rendering didn't work. The tape didn't work. Nothing. I ended up staying home from school the day the project was due (really, hiding) because I was spending so much time trying to get the film out of the computer onto tape. My heart was breaking and I felt a lot of fear. I found a great deal of inspiration in the movie "October Sky." If you're familiar of the movie, you know it's about a young man trying and trying to accomplish his dreams.

Happily, after trying and trying (the problem was with the cable itself), I was able to get the movie on VHS tape and up to the middle school. It was a Friday—opening day. And I remember being in gym class, second or so period, when I overheard one of the girls, a friend of mine, telling her friends that she'd just come from Mrs. Morgan's English class, that they were presenting projects, and that they watched "Tom's movie." I heard her say, "it was just like a real movie."

I had arrived. This was the first time anyone outside of my family ever received me seriously as a fillmamker. As a bonus, our English teacher was playing the movie in each class, showing all her students.

I was proud—and on cloud nine.

As far as the movie goes—looking back, it's pretty good. For a beginner. Technically, there are things I wish I'd done differently. I wish I'd known what a "shotgun mic" was and that I'd had the temerity to just ask my parents to buy me one—and that the camera would have accepted such a thing—but that would come later. The aspect that impresses me most about the movie is that it's very focused and serious for a 14 year old. Especially me at 14 years old—addled with ADHD and naiavete. This was probably the beginning of my searching for deeper meanings to movies. Themes. Ideas. Of course, I had the help of Daniel Keyes (the author of the book). And probably the 1968 adaptation "Charly." And PROBABLY "Forrest Gump." OK—and "Cast Away." But it was the first time I was starting to process something deeper than just what was on screen. The movie deals not just with matters of intelligence, but self-worth, empathy, identity, and ultimately, death.

I'm still proud of the movie and happy it was my first. I learned so much from it.