Just Like Suicide pt. 8

Sorry, looks like no contributors are set

Sixteen
Barbara didn’t want to stay another year at Sarah Lawrence if her lover, Maggie, was in LA. And Maggie had decided to delay grad school to work with Odessa for a year to learn the gallery trade.
The question for Barbara was how could she quit school and not anger her uncle? He controlled her money until her 21st birthday and was prepared to punish any sign that she might metamorphose into the type of trust fund baby who flitted from one thing to the next. He apparently saw something of her mother in her because he reminded her in every phone call that she needed to have a purpose. Her mother when she was alive complained once or twice a year that he constantly hectored her to be more active in the family foundation, to select a charity to champion. Her mother, though, didn’t argue. She simply stopped answering his calls, forcing him to send emails which she could delete unread. Barbara, though, was not stunningly beautiful like her mother and she was all too aware of it. She couldn’t get away with the same inclination to let others act for her, even if she wanted to. And she couldn’t ignore her uncle as her mother had. She didn’t have that option if she wanted access to her money. She had to stay in school. So she picked a natural inclination, namely her desire to dominate and control, added it to her passion for finding out dirt on others and her new skills with video and concluded she should study filmmaking and specialize in documentaries. The one she had done on the young artists received more applause than she thought it deserved. The little mentions about it gave credence to her goal. So she figured she could simply quit Sarah Lawrence and transfer. Going to USC could even be seen as a wise decision. And it worked. Her uncle was surprised and pleased with her reasoning.
“This level of ambition is a sound sign of a good future. Please don’t turn out to be a spendthrift like your father,” he told her over lunch as they sat in the gold glow of the hinoki wood bar at Masa, his favorite Japanese restaurant. From the volume he was eating, she was sure her estate was paying for the meal. As he ate aji sashimi perched on shiso blossoms, he pronounced himself proud of her goals and offered to help her gain admission into the program. When she stated that she had already been accepted, he positively beamed. Of course, he didn’t know the reason she wanted to be back in LA. Barbara was no fool. Her uncle was a classic conservative. And besides, she was almost nineteen and her private life was really none of his business.
Before her first class at USC, she had decided her first film project would be a refinement of the one she did at Sarah Lawrence and focus on Hondo’s life and death. She already had some footage, already knew his inner circle. Her uncle knew Hondo’s grandmother. It seemed a good proposal.
The problem was that the more she learned about Hondo, the less remarkable she found his life to be. She liked his work ok – some of his photos were sizzling although most were not – but drug addiction ultimately is not very interesting. And she heard that PBS was planning on doing something about him, funded by his grandmother through some foundations associated with her. No sense in re-inventing the wheel.
To gain the attention she wanted, she had to produce a certain sort of documentary, one with both jolt and pathos. Something fresh. She thought about the celebrities she had met at her mother’s parties. Only one combined the right dynamics – the name recognition, the wild history, the notoriety of affairs, the vanity, eloquence and tragedy, and a total absence of critical attention. Larry Cotter. She thought he was a pompous hack and that attitude would add a tension to any analysis of his life and work.
Her teacher, reclining with his skinny legs propped on a pile of faded screenplays, texting as she outlined the project, informed her that such a film on a writer would be ”a little too large” to handle at this point in her development. She pointedly did not use Cotter’s name because she didn’t want her idea stolen. Maggie had warned her that major professors in all disciplines consider it their right to steal ideas from students under the guise of Mentoring. He seemed irritated that she wouldn’t share the specifics and he countered her idea with a suggestion that she start with a film about the Watts Towers. Little steps, he told her. She considered his suggestions as objectively as she could and concluded that to do Cotter justice, she probably did need more skill sets than she currently possessed. She was quite certain, however, that if she followed her professor’s suggestion and did the Watts Tower film, the best she could expect was a tepid response. She and everyone else on the western seaboard were all too aware that the seventeen interconnecting structures encrusted with broken dishes called the Watts Towers were awe inspiring. Their history and Simon Rodia’s heartwarming story as an immigrant with a vision were very well mined territory. How could she possibly make that fresh? She also knew herself well enough to know that hers wasn’t a gifted eye – her cinematography would never be elegant, and she abjured the gimmickry of new technique. The film he suggested would reveal only her weaknesses and classify her as a timid, minor talent. That was not going to happen.
“I think you are right about the writer project,” she informed him in her politest tone at the next meeting, “but I do have another idea for a first film.” His pissy little smirk ticked her off. He didn’t ask about her idea. It was like he thought he had her pegged and immediately repeated his idea about the Watts Towers, only this time telling her directly that her grade depended upon her willingness to follow his instructions. “You need to be a team player in this business.”
“Is that a threat? Should I be taping these sessions to protect myself? Look, I am delighted to have your input on technical matters. You know more than I do, vastly more. Content is a different matter. I need to find out if my ideas have merit. That’s the point of learning, isn’t it? To learn from what succeeds and what doesn’t?” She didn’t want to end up a corporate hack. That’s why she chose documentary films – if she couldn’t raise enough money with one of those crowd share funding sites, she could afford to produce them herself, if she had to, without compromising.
After glaring at her briefly, he continued texting and didn’t bother to glance up again as she spoke. Since he didn’t behave similarly with other students, even the demanding ones, she decided that he deliberately suggested a dead-end project because he didn’t think her capable of more. Whether the dismissive attitude derived from her trust fund, her gender, her short stature or her sexual orientation, she couldn’t discern yet. But she did know this: anyone who patronized her always lived to regret it. She had given him fair warning.

Related Stories