Shrinking Violet: Future Shock
Well, this may be my first and last post as a Young Manhattanite, since four nights living between the boss's sheets reminded me that a) the working class Lower East Side of my youth is no longer, b) the East Village has become stroller central (see: Hopscotch, nee Alt.Coffee) and c) I refuse to live uptown from Union Square for reasons that even I can't really explain. Plus, while no one else around here seems to mind, I'll be 31 by the time I leave, and I stopped feeling young ten years ago.
While I briefly considered a windowless cubbyhole in Chinatown, where the pegged jeans and white canvas loafer quotient was nearly nil, I ended up in Brooklyn where I don't have to put up with the drama induced by everyone playing out their The Factory fantasy where cocaine and bad haircuts are still considered cool. Maybe if I lure the boss out to my borough and ply him with beer he'll agree to let me continue posting from the comfort of my Carroll Gardens garden.
I'll still be making the milk delivery run on the F train to join actual Young Manhattanites in class at NYU three days a week. Yes, I'm "that guy," the thirty year old, fifth-year senior. A fucking film major, no less. And since I've gotten my homework done for physics class (good math prep for the GRE) and my reading done for Journalism 101 (I had to see how Jay Rosen was molding the curriculum), I've got some time to muse before getting back to real work.
Read more...First, for all you kids who have visions of becoming auteurs, give it up -- and if you don't believe me, believe the faculty, who told my class as much when I arrived thirteen years ago. The chances you'll be the next Martin Scorcese or Spike Lee came and went with Martin Scorcese and Spike Lee -- and the fact that introductory course Sight and Sound Film is still taught on 16mm black and white reversal film ("The same as when Marty took it!") makes it an annoyingly expensive throwback that will leave you wholly unprepared for an industry moving to digital much faster than the written word.
On the other hand, the chances that you'll become the next Brett Ratner, or at least one of his hacky minions, are still pretty good -- just set your sights on a job answering phones in a production office and a never-ending life of reminding industry types that you paid your $200,000 to join the old boy's network, and you may just make it in LA after all. But take it from me, the 'A' in 'BFA' is the closest you'll get to being an artist. Personally, I have a much more self-deprecatingly vulgar translation of that particular acronym.
Sitting in my first film class of the term, a single credit lecture series dedicated to giving graduating seniors tips on how to land a job in "the biz," I was struck at how frighteningly like my own senior class of ten years ago everyone looked -- only the slogans on the ironic tees and the cut of the designer jeans had changed. I have a feeling Grindhouse was as highly anticipated amongst the department this year as Pulp Fiction was in my day. The only hint of modernity was when the professor remarked, "I bet this class is already up on YouTube."
But you see, Tarantino and Rodriguez got their start by, you know, writing scripts and making movies, not working for free as interns on non-union shoots and sucking up to the producer of Chud II. It seems the best that the department has to offer is job security for the faculty -- while I figured that the sixties-era cameras would still be there, I didn't figure that I'd recognize the names and faces of almost every single professor on the staff from my tenure.
And it's not just the film department. I worry generally about what academia is teaching the youngsters when I use the fancy new "Blackboard" system on NYU's intranet to follow links to blog entries which I am required to print out and bring to class. The industrial-grade office laser printer at the Tisch Hall computer lab was working non-stop spitting out dead trees, surrounded by an anxious ring of half a dozen students awaiting hand-written notes scanned into PDFs, PowerPoint slides and assignments just as easily emailed as delivered by hand.
When this aging throwback to the days of using command line operating systems to access BBS systems with a Commodore 64 and an acoustic coupler modem is whining about the lack of technological sophistication at an American university, is it any wonder that the film and publishing industries are struggling to cope? I never thought I'd say this, but maybe those delusional optimists who think Silicon Valley will become a new media capital actually have a point. At least they never ask me to fire up a goddamn printer.
I digress -- this turned into a technology rant, when my goal is to introduce you into secret world of fresh-faced kids from the hinterlands with parent-backed credit cards and drug problems, like I was once upon a time. Though since I've opted out of the overpriced, overstuffed hell known as the NYU Housing system, the chances that I'll meet the modern equivalent to the ecstasy dealing club kids of the Peter Gatien-Michael Alig era I lived with back when are slim. Maybe I'll give Larry Clark a call and get some tips on how to infiltrate and sexualize the latest underage subculture for fun and profit.
While I briefly considered a windowless cubbyhole in Chinatown, where the pegged jeans and white canvas loafer quotient was nearly nil, I ended up in Brooklyn where I don't have to put up with the drama induced by everyone playing out their The Factory fantasy where cocaine and bad haircuts are still considered cool. Maybe if I lure the boss out to my borough and ply him with beer he'll agree to let me continue posting from the comfort of my Carroll Gardens garden.
I'll still be making the milk delivery run on the F train to join actual Young Manhattanites in class at NYU three days a week. Yes, I'm "that guy," the thirty year old, fifth-year senior. A fucking film major, no less. And since I've gotten my homework done for physics class (good math prep for the GRE) and my reading done for Journalism 101 (I had to see how Jay Rosen was molding the curriculum), I've got some time to muse before getting back to real work.
Read more...First, for all you kids who have visions of becoming auteurs, give it up -- and if you don't believe me, believe the faculty, who told my class as much when I arrived thirteen years ago. The chances you'll be the next Martin Scorcese or Spike Lee came and went with Martin Scorcese and Spike Lee -- and the fact that introductory course Sight and Sound Film is still taught on 16mm black and white reversal film ("The same as when Marty took it!") makes it an annoyingly expensive throwback that will leave you wholly unprepared for an industry moving to digital much faster than the written word.
On the other hand, the chances that you'll become the next Brett Ratner, or at least one of his hacky minions, are still pretty good -- just set your sights on a job answering phones in a production office and a never-ending life of reminding industry types that you paid your $200,000 to join the old boy's network, and you may just make it in LA after all. But take it from me, the 'A' in 'BFA' is the closest you'll get to being an artist. Personally, I have a much more self-deprecatingly vulgar translation of that particular acronym.
Sitting in my first film class of the term, a single credit lecture series dedicated to giving graduating seniors tips on how to land a job in "the biz," I was struck at how frighteningly like my own senior class of ten years ago everyone looked -- only the slogans on the ironic tees and the cut of the designer jeans had changed. I have a feeling Grindhouse was as highly anticipated amongst the department this year as Pulp Fiction was in my day. The only hint of modernity was when the professor remarked, "I bet this class is already up on YouTube."
But you see, Tarantino and Rodriguez got their start by, you know, writing scripts and making movies, not working for free as interns on non-union shoots and sucking up to the producer of Chud II. It seems the best that the department has to offer is job security for the faculty -- while I figured that the sixties-era cameras would still be there, I didn't figure that I'd recognize the names and faces of almost every single professor on the staff from my tenure.
And it's not just the film department. I worry generally about what academia is teaching the youngsters when I use the fancy new "Blackboard" system on NYU's intranet to follow links to blog entries which I am required to print out and bring to class. The industrial-grade office laser printer at the Tisch Hall computer lab was working non-stop spitting out dead trees, surrounded by an anxious ring of half a dozen students awaiting hand-written notes scanned into PDFs, PowerPoint slides and assignments just as easily emailed as delivered by hand.
When this aging throwback to the days of using command line operating systems to access BBS systems with a Commodore 64 and an acoustic coupler modem is whining about the lack of technological sophistication at an American university, is it any wonder that the film and publishing industries are struggling to cope? I never thought I'd say this, but maybe those delusional optimists who think Silicon Valley will become a new media capital actually have a point. At least they never ask me to fire up a goddamn printer.
I digress -- this turned into a technology rant, when my goal is to introduce you into secret world of fresh-faced kids from the hinterlands with parent-backed credit cards and drug problems, like I was once upon a time. Though since I've opted out of the overpriced, overstuffed hell known as the NYU Housing system, the chances that I'll meet the modern equivalent to the ecstasy dealing club kids of the Peter Gatien-Michael Alig era I lived with back when are slim. Maybe I'll give Larry Clark a call and get some tips on how to infiltrate and sexualize the latest underage subculture for fun and profit.
