Sam Paul - Why I Committed Suicide

I woke up late sometime today, sunburned and tweaky from the acid residuals despite the roofies, and then goofed around with Jenifer all day. My ears are still ringing from the barrage of sights and sounds I experienced yesterday. The blue skies, the trampled ground, the cornucopia of eclectic people flitting about around us, good music, all that magnetism and us. I went to Lollapalooza #4 and I had a fucking blast.

Today was the day that the absolute final movie projects for my film class had to be presented. True to the nature of the procrastination monkey on my back Dan, Jenifer and myself filmed the entire thing over the weekend on a shoestring (no-string, not even velcro K-Mart shoes) budget. I titled it “The Date, I’m Late” and I’ll be the first to admit it’s not my finest work but I tried to add a little flair with the time I had left. It’s basically a regurgitated plot where something disastrous happens on a first date situation. Blah blah blah, since I had to focus on laying down a music bed for one of the parameters of the project, I couldn’t find a way to get the dialogue-driven script I wrote to match what I wanted to do. We’re required to capture certain angles and use the camera in innovative ways which I suppose I could have done during the discourse of the innuendo-laden script I threw together, but like I said, I procrastinated and eventually ended up with a silent film that is backed with this cool jazz piece I found. Plus it was easier to write and film on the fly what I knew would work rather than come up with a more abstract and drug-addled plot line. I’m justifying the suckiness of my own movie, aren’t I? I must be ready for Hollywood.

My grade may suffer for it, but being under the gun I was forced to use the same set as my previous sordid look into the garage sale underworld, my house. I made it flavorful, showing more of the inside of the house and using contrasting color and hot earth tones with an open filter to help center around the chaos in Dan’s mind as he wakes up late for his date. The opening shot of cigarettes and beer bottles strewn about indicate why Dan’s late for his damn date and I made his aggravation comical as the camera follows him around as things keep frustrating his efforts to hurry out the door. I even threw in cameo stunt work of myself getting tossed by Dan out of the bathroom while shaving. I used our house, our hallway, our bathroom, bedrooms, our porch, my VW and the neighbor’s house over the period of a day to get the actual film work done. It was a big pain in the ass running electrical cords and trying to use multiple desk lamps to light the dark nether regions of our crib with consistency and it was very cool of Dan and Jenifer to take the time to help out and be my actors while I set everything up in a mad frenzy of a day. I did some hand-made, grungy credits on a greasy napkin next to a cup of coffee and some cigarettes ooh look, I’m fucking European postmodern. I edited for two days whenever I could get an open machine. I forgot to book time and there was this cock-sucking beginning editing class in there all the fucking time! I finally got it all chopped together, slapped my music over the top and turned it in on time by the skin of my teeth.

I know I could have done a better job but pressure will always be a factor in this field so my challenge for next time is to organize my ideas sooner and go for a better quality project. It isn’t how good you could do; it’s how good you ARE doing. Fucking bollocks.

Gabe’s film was good, better than mine, and I could see the difference it made using his own money to get it on 8mm film. His movie had Dan going psycho over my ex-girlfriend Melanie. It was very arty and a definite crossbreed of the directors I had predicted he might emulate, but it was still interesting. No bitterness here. Cheerleader girl’s film wasn’t all that great either; I wonder if she’s taking this class to get into news casting? Probably radio. Hee-hee! I crack myself up.

The other night before my film studies class (that’s the class where I get to sit on my ass and watch movies), I got extremely high (that’s the thing I always do). It’s easily the best class I’ve ever taken, I don’t always like the movies and I don’t always agree with my professors take on the ones I do like but it’s still an interesting class. What could be better than being able to get high and go sit and watch movies for college credit?

Well, snacks would be nice.

The other night I was sitting through the middle of Citizen Kane, which is already on my list of top ten movies, and I got a severe case of the munchies. So I snuck out the back of the classroom/theater and went to the little lounge where the vending machines live. I reach in my pocket and I don’t even have a nickel in there to spend on food, but I’m sooooo hungry. Since classes are all in session and there’s nobody else around (it’s an evening class) I get the bright idea that maybe I can tilt the snack machine over and dump some of the goodies from their slots. Free food, simple plan, easy money, right? Well the damn machine was a lot heavier than I expected, but eventually by applying my honors class knowledge, I managed to leverage a chair between the machine and the wall to tilt it over a bit. The only problem is that in the process, the machine went over a bit too far and fell face-first right onto the ground with a huge BANG, SHATTER, CLUNK!

I was still pretty high, so the first thing I did was run outside and lit up a cigarette. In case somebody came poking around to investigate why the Unites States was under attack I didn’t want to be the only motherfucker standing around like a slack jawed yokel. After a while I poked my head through the window and realized that miraculously nobody heard or bothered to check out the loud noise in the building. I was home free.

All I needed to do was lift the machine back up and reap my bounty. Yep, just a simple lift and grab. I tried and tried and fucking tried with every ounce of save-the-baby-trapped-under-the-burning-car-adrenaline strength I had in my wee bones. I strained my hardest to lift the damn snack-rack back up just a little. I tried just turning it up onto the side for a while and then I tried wedging the same chair I used earlier under the machine to help lift it back up. Nothing worked, the goddamn thing wouldn’t lift even one inch, the best I could do was slide it around the room on the slick floor for a while and make grunting noises. I finally just gave up, wiped all my fingerprints off the machine and went back to class even hungrier than I was before. Let that be a lesson to me, I’ll have to either bring some change or a fucking glasscutter to class next time.

Part of your beauty is that you never gave a damn about anything. Strength was a part of you because courage can stem from being unconcerned. Then along came some things that you cared about and for the first time something really mattered in your life. It dispersed your foundations, making things more stable for a while but also so much more vulnerable. Your beauty diversified, expanding and flourishing as you incorporated this new aspect of your personality. Your open-mindedness and love increased exponentially. Nobody told you about this. Nobody told you how it was so much more satisfying while making you so much more fragile. Measures of trust were irrevocably destroyed because of the pain love brought you, creating the inevitable hurt but also a renewed lack of belief in yourself. That’s what’s so hard. Looking at yourself in blame for admitting a need to feel loved and seeing something you really depended on reveal itself as merely mortal. It’s far better to be have loved and lost…but is it really? Wouldn’t it be far more sterile and comforting to create the ultimate thesis and take the psychological shell to its disastrous conclusion?