The Hanging

Chapter 16

My classroom was frigid. Twenty-five students and their computers would eventually heat up the room, but in the meantime I hoped that my futzing with the thermostat would do enough to take the edge off the chill.

I booted the classroom computer, dropped the big screen from the ceiling, and started warming up the ceiling-mounted projector. Students began filing in, shedding wet jackets and hanging them on the lighting rack I had set up in a corner for that purpose.

At eight o’clock sharp, we began the workshop.

Films are made to be seen, but getting them in front of an audience is tough. The filmmaker also has to be a salesman. So, before we put up each student project, I had its creator pitch it as he or she would have to do for the rest of their careers.

We had heard the first pitch, a student named Chelsea, and offered comments, and had seen her film-in-progress. The lively discussion that followed, the critique, was interrupted when one of the most talented among my little flock, an eighteen-year-old named Preston Nguyen arrived; late for the first time that semester.

Slammed in would better describe his entrance than merely arrived. Muttering under his breath a stream of words that generally began with F, he flung his backpack to the floor, and with a toss of his long hair, dropped into a chair.

“Good morning, Mr. Nguyen,” I said as the room’s vibrations settled. “Nice of you to join us.”

“I am so pissed,” he said, slouching low, arms dangling to the sides as if they were dead weights. “I worked my ass off for those assholes. Fuckers wouldn’t even give me an interview.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “The assholes are attached to the TV station where you’re interning?”

“I mean, what do they want?” He raised open palms toward the ceiling, or toward heaven, which perhaps had also let him down. “They saw what I can do. I’m better on the digital editor than anyone they have working there. Jeez, I bleed competence for six months and they say…” He let out a puff of air, dejected. “Nothing. They say nothing. I ask you, what do I have to do to get hired on?”

“You’ve only bled for six months?” I said. “How badly do you want a TV gig?”

Preston was a true television geek. In response, he balled a fist and tapped his heart, but he was smiling, if sadly.

“Yeah, well, it was easy for you,” he said. “You went to some fancy film school, not,” he looked around the room with disdain, “here.”

“I didn’t go to film school at all,” I said.

Zeke, from his usual front row seat, looked up, challenge in his expression. “Then your dad must have been a-”

“Dad taught physics,” I said. “I got into television the old-fashioned way.”

“Knee pads?” some wit in the back offered.

“I stayed open to possibilities,” I said. “I started at the bottom and made the best of an act of God.”

“I believe it takes an act of God,” Preston said.

“What I said was, I made the best of an act of God. I advise you to keep your eyes and your options open. Be ready to grab your moment when it comes.”

Gesturing toward the student whose session was interrupted, I said, “Now, as a courtesy to Chelsea, let’s get back to your comments about her work.”

Chelsea shook her head. “No, that’s okay, Miss M. I’ve got the gist of what everyone had to say and I know what I need to do next. You tell us all the time how to pitch our films, but you’ve never told us how you got started. We all assumed you fell out of film school into a great job. How’d you do it?”

There was a chorus of similar questions. I remembered how nice it had been on rainy days when I was a kid in school to have the teacher read us a story or tell us one. I looked at my collection of sopping charges, and started telling my tale.

“The summer after I graduated from college-”

“What was your major?”

“Philosophy,” I said. “I had no clue what I wanted to do with myself. My parents expected me to go to graduate school, but I wasn’t ready to commit to that. So I took a road trip. I got as far as central Kansas before my money ran out and my car died. The only job I could find was in a local dive, tending bar and waiting on tables; I’d worked as a waitress in college.

“It didn’t take long to get to know all the town regulars. One of them, a guy named Steve, asked me one day if I could write a simple declarative sentence.”

“Kinky.”

“Fortuitous,” I said. “Turns out he managed the local TV station and he had just fired his writer, another regular at the bar-very regular-for showing up drunk three days in a row. Steve offered me a job writing commercials and news copy if I could start in the morning. The pay stunk-I had to keep my restaurant job to cover my rent-but it was interesting. Now and then I operated the cameras, and from time to time I combed my hair, stood in front of the camera and read the weather report. And that was how I began.”

“Where does the act of God come in?”

“Kansas is in the middle of Tornado Alley. Think Dorothy-and-Toto land. One morning when I was at the station, the tornado sirens went off. Steve ran in and told me we had to get to a shelter. On the way out, I grabbed a Steadicam and a recorder.”

“You filmed the tornado?”

“I‘ll show you.”

I stepped into my office and retrieved one of the disks I had tucked into my bag that morning. Not confident that the new network gig would last beyond one contracted film, I was preparing to revise my video résumé because it was time to get out there and pitch myself again. One of those disks had my television debut on it.

“Here you go,” I said, downloading the disk and putting it up on the big screen. “My first moment of fame.”

On that very wet Kansas morning, I ran out of the station behind Steve, filming as I ran. Most of what I caught was other people running in the same direction, headed for the basement of the courthouse. The wind was hellacious, pushing us from behind, sending the rain horizontally into our backs. The images I shot were jerky, obviously the work of someone who didn’t know much more about the camera or how to use it beyond turning it on.

At one point, I heard what sounded like a freight train bearing down on us, turned and saw the tornado’s funnel racing along the ground a few miles away, blowing up farm buildings and trees as it cha-cha’d toward us. I stopped running and the image became steady. My voice can be heard.

“Holy shit, Steve, look at this.”

He ran back to me, took the camera from my hands, put me between him and the tornado and ordered, “Describe what you see.”

I did just that as Steve filmed the tornado, catching me in profile. Wet hair whipping my face, wet clothes clinging to my body, I just kept talking as long as he kept shooting. By that time, I had been in town long enough, working at the bar, to know just about everybody who ever felt the need for a cold one on a hot afternoon. So I could say, “Dear God, there goes Larry Kuhn’s barn. I hope he and Mary got into the cellar.” And, “That’s Tom Harco’s pickup truck parked under the Interstate overpass.” And so on.

I fast-forwarded to a montage of clips taken from that evening’s national network news broadcasts. All three of the old majors carried our tornado footage. The network Steve’s station was affiliated with sent a reporter down from Kansas City early the next morning to interview me. My hair was done, my face was made up, and I wore a borrowed blouse, so I was somewhat more presentable than the wet creature whose image ran on television screens across the country under the banner REPORTER’S WHIRLWIND FIRST DAY.

Still wearing the borrowed blouse, that night I became Steve’s evening news reporter, writing my own stories, reading them on air, and then working a late shift at the bar because the pay did not get much better. Before Christmas I was picked up by the Kansas City affiliate and a career was born.

“You looked different, Miss M,” Preston offered.

“That was over twenty years ago,” I said. “I wasn’t much older than you are now.”

“Still,” he persisted.

“And that was before my nose job,” I said. “My nose was okay for Kansas, but not for Dallas. I caved and had it done because Dallas offered good money. I also started using my new married name because Dallas thought MacGowen sounded perkier, less ethnic than Duchamps. If I had to do it over again, I would keep both of the originals.”

“And you might still be working in Kansas City,” Chelsea offered.

“There is that,” I said. “But I can think of worse fates. Here’s the lesson I hope you’re getting: pick up the camera and head out into the storm, if that’s what it takes. And don’t be too full of yourself to start at the bottom.”

“You can say that because you shot right to the top,” Bretawny, wearing her usual camera-ready makeup, chimed in from the back.

“Hardly,” I said. “I paid my dues. Don’t forget, I’ve been at this for over twenty years, and my show still got cancelled. So here I am, trying to get a bunch of youths who are not only wet behind the ears but soaked from head to toe to work their butts off. So, can we get back on task now? Who’s up next?”

As the class filed out at noon, I asked Preston Nguyen to wait a moment.

“What did I do?” he asked, guilt for yet-unnamed offenses written in his posture.

“What you did was some very nice camera work on your project,” I said, watching his shoulders relax. “You have a natural eye.”

He said, “Cool, thanks.”

I told him that I would be producing a commercial film, and told him where.

“My film partner usually brings in a couple of interns from his graduate classes at UCLA,” I told him. “But if you can work it in without interfering with your classes, I’ll hire you for one of those slots.”

“Hire? Like for pay?”

“Union rules,” I said. “The pay isn’t good, but you’ll get a film credit.”

His smile started somewhere around his solar plexus and spread to encompass his entire being.

“What will I be doing?”

“I don’t know yet,” I told him. “Probably running errands and making coffee.”

His face fell a little. “But I still get a film credit?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.” He started to bounce, walking backward now so he could watch me. “I mean, yes! Whatever, absolutely. When do I start?”

“I’ll tell you when I know.”

“Wow! I mean, thanks, Miss M. What should I be doing now?”

“Probably studying, Preston. I’m going to go find lunch. I’ll let you know what’s up as soon as I know myself.”

As he bounced off, dashing who-knows-where, I doubt he felt the rain that pounded on his head.