A FILM

I’m not the first one to realize it: my life is a film. A movie. It runs all day each day on my own screen. I don’t remember how it started but I’ve been told that it was the middle of a November night in a hospital room in Manhattan, New York City. You have a movie also. Perhaps it started many decades ago, perhaps only a few. Your movie is so full of scenes that you can only replay a minuscule amount compared to all that has been filmed so far. The script? Still being written my friend. It gets written as the film plays. Sure, you can make edits here and there, change the setting, change the plot, the action and certainly change the secondary characters. If you want, you can change details about the main character, but not your true self. In fact, secondary characters in your film can, will, and do change details and scenes where you appear because it’s THEIR film, and so YOU are not their main character. Confused yet? For me, the parts of my film that are most amazing, are where my movie overlaps with yours. In fact, it is overlapping right now, because as you read this, you have an image of me in your mind. Maybe you can hear my voice, see my expression and conjure up some part of your movie that has a scene with me in it.

Some of you have a ton of scenes featuring me. I’m either pumped or sorry for you to realize this. (I do hope it’s the first one….) If you are reading this and we have never met, I’m still appearing in your movie: think of me as someone in the background of a restaurant scene, or a nameless face on a crowded street as you go about your day. Who is this person? What is their movie about? Did we meet on an elevator once and not even speak? I was in line behind you at the checkout or in the chair next to you at SuperCuts…. Boom, I’m in your movie and you don’t even remember it. You were my waiter once. You were the flight attendant. You looked at me while we were both in our cars at a red light. I held a door open for you once. All movie scenes.

In the early to mid 1990’s, I worked thousands of hours at Canobie Lake Park, an amusement park in the setting of my film at that time in my script. My wife, who is 8 years younger than I am, likely came to Canobie on a day when I was working. Did our movies cross without us even knowing? Quite possible…. She may have come with her friends to a game I was operating, asked me the rules or how much it cost. She may have tried said game and won a stuffed animal. We all interact with hundreds of thousands of people during our film. It’s not possible to remember all of them. In my movie, the scenes that stand out contain characters who made me feel something: joy, pain, happiness, and the whole spectrum of emotions if they were able to get into my script, they stayed there when I rewatch a scene.

Another thing that I find fantastic is that right now on planet Earth, more than 7 billion films are running simultaneously and no two are identical. Read that part of your script again: no two are identical. Right now millions of people are having a cookie (or sex), while millions are crying….millions more are in school, while scores of us are filming our movie at work. As you read this, tons of people’s movies just ended, while others just started. Where are you? Have I been in that room with you? I’m in your movie. If you think about a scene involving both of us when you are done reading, then your film still has me in it while mine doesn’t. If I think about you and I run an old part of my movie from last year, yesterday, or 1982, you are in my film. Thousands of you sat in my classroom. I’ve seen plenty of you as adults. Don’t be offended if I don’t remember our part of the overlap, but don’t be surprised that I likely WILL tell you where you sat, what instrument you played, or if you were an outgoing or quiet kid. THOSE parts of my movie rarely fade. Many of you have had memorable scenes in my movie (yes Nick, that’s you at Tasty Burger haha) and (yes Matt, we will have lunch soon, I promise) and (yes Tom Samp I know you didn’t practice) and (yes Mike Teoli you knew more about The Beatles than I did when you were in 8th grade), and (yes Brandy I will never forget AHS drum line), and (yes Nina you make the best grilled cheese) and (yes Belinda O: count or DIE…Allie Ross is the supreme champion) and (yes, Rinj the movie can be beautiful and painful at the same time) and (yes Ross, Matt, Eddie, Joel, and Ryan you were the best, most motivated lesson students at the same point in my movie) and (yes Nikki I know you loved every percussion section because you didn’t have to teach them) and yes I am thankful that you are all in my movie and that I am in yours as well.

Finally, most of us do not know how the movie ends, and when it does, we usually (gracefully?) don’t see it coming. Sure, you can be told by a doctor that you have XX time to live and then I suppose you can plan (!) for the end of your film, but when it hits you and the credits roll, you aren’t there to be featured anymore. When the film goes dark and the projector stops, you are only allowed to be in other people’s films forever. Sometimes as a thought in a scene, and sometimes in a worded script such as this one right now, or even better, someone shows a still photograph or a movie clip of your movie that they are in with you (cue the HANG DVD from college). Perhaps when looking through your script notes, files, old charts and the like, someone will find purposeful edits and cuts that you made to your script and your film. Deleted scenes shall we say. You didn’t intend for any of those to be part of your public film, but they get released after your movie ends. Not only does this change the plot, but it may warp other people’s movies as well, depending on the deleted scenes that you left behind to be found. It’s all quite strange when you look upon it from that lens, through that camera, with that lighting and the costumes and all the makeup. Life imitating art or is it the other way around?

I hope that I am in your movie somewhere until the film ends. How big of a part I get is up to you.

Stay safe, stay awesome, stay filming and stay tuned.