The Next Step

Ever since I was eight years old I had wanted to be a filmmaker. I was in second grade and had just seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and was telling my mother how I wanted to be an archaeologist and have adventures like Indiana Jones. That was when my mother told me what a director was.

She said, "That's great, but archaeologists don't have adventures like Indiana Jones. They do a lot of research and read a lot of books, but don't battle Nazis with a bullwhip. But I bet the people who made the movie had a lot of fun pretending to have those adventures."

Huh?

She explained who Steven Spielberg was and that he was a director and he made the movie, and then she got out the encyclopedia and showed me a listing on filmmaking. I was bitten by the bug. I spent everyday reading books on Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin, and even though I had never seen any of their movies at the time I knew them shot by shot from the descriptions.

Around this time "The Fall Guy" was on TV and I had also become obsessed with stuntwork. As luck would have it, one night at Indian Guides camp (a precursor to the Cub Scouts) they showed us a documentary film of "The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark". The other kids were disappointed that it was not the actual movie, but I was in heaven. I saw the behind-the-scenes work. Between this documentary and the behind-the-scenes aspect of "The Fall Guy" I was no longer able to watch a movie the same way again. I always wondered about "how" it was constructed. My friends would complain about how cheesy certain movies were, but if it had cool camera-work I would argue endlessly on its behalf.

Throughout school I would plan out little movies and scripts. In junior high my friends and I started making short little videos. I, naturally, crowned myself "director" of anything we did. When I got to high school I said to myself, "I want people to know I am going to be a great director some day. I am going to make movies all the time. When they think of the name Dave Orsborn, they will think of movies." I accomplished this. Everyone who signed my yearbook senior year made some mention of "seeing your name in lights' someday, or "and the Oscar goes to...".

I was on my way.

But something happened after high school. I fell in love.

I no longer was as passionate about movies. I had a new passion: girls. See, I was a geek all through school. I never dated or really interacted with girls, unless I cast them in a movie I was making. I was completely unsure of myself. I'd been told I was "ugly" many times and I just didn't have any confidence in myself. Most people don't have confidence in themselves at that age, but I had even less. So I hid behind a camera.

Once I entered that world of human interaction I was lost. But I didn't want to find my way back necessarily. It was too much fun being able to talk to girls and, oh my God, have sex with them!

I floated around for several years and eventually followed a girlfriend to New Orleans. She dumped me right quick and so I had only one recourse: enroll in some film classes and get my mojo back.

I had become pretty competent at making a decent short film, so I was quickly able to impress the older students and latch on to them for guidance. But I never really challenged myself and kept rehashing old ideas and making films I knew would work.

There was a short film I made called "Potter's Field", and it was fun to make and totally inane and reminded me of the good times I had in high school making videos with my friends. Everyone at school loved the film. I was riding a high and felt smug.

But whenever I would show the film to one of my high school friends, none of them seemed as impressed. They nodded their heads like they were humoring me and said, "Yeah, that's nice."

I was confused. After dropping out of school and moving back to Philadelphia I showed the film to my childhood friend Andy and he too was unimpressed. I asked him why and he gave me the most honest critique.

"Dave," he said. "It's not a bad film. But it's just like everything you did in high school. You were the one from the group that went to film school. We expected to see something better than the crap we made growing up. The next step, man. You didn't move forward."

He was right. I didn't challenge myself. I didn't grow. I was complacent. And I had been for a long time. I didn't get my mojo back. I just plagiarized myself and pretended I still knew what I was doing. but by then, I wasn't sure I even cared anymore.

A roommate of mine in college, who was also in the film program, came home from a film department party one night. I had left the party early and gone to the French Quarter to get wasted and try to get laid. He told me a bunch of my fellow classmates had started talking about who was "going to make it" out of the group. One of them said, "What about Dave? He's got a lot of talent." They all said they thought I would be successful, but my roommate disagreed. He said, "Dave's got a lot of talent, yes. But he's lost his passion. I don't know if he even wants to be successful."

I wanted to punch him in the face, but...he was right.

It's been 14 years since I graduated high school. Since I "lost my way". I'm am not as passionate about film as I once was. I'm not as passionate about anything, really. But damnit, I still have some movies I want to make.

And that's my New Years resolution. To be more passionate. To find my mojo. To be less content. To take the next step.