Part 1- Chaperoning the choir

Sunday, 3:36 PM. Dynasty Typewriter.

Just came out of an afternoon standup show. Part of a special event, and I got to meet somebody I’ve wanted to for a while, and see some old pals, so those things feel pretty good. As I’m leaving the space, I remember that this place is really proud of its popcorn, and I get some from up front, to munch on my journey up the 101. Nothing better than front seat popcorn. John at the snack bar is a friend of mine, he gives me a bag for free. As I’m heading out, I see somebody who was involved who I don’t know that well. I thank him for being involved, he thanks me back, and once we get that out of the way and I start to head out to my car, he quickly reaches into the bag and snatches a handful of my popcorn.

What?

This feels like a total violation. I didn’t ask if he wanted any. And he just grabbed my finger food with his bare fingers.  It’s tough when you’re forced to share. Especially with people you don’t know.

With that, it’s April, 1995. My boss (I call her my boss, in writing this and in conversation back then, but she’s really my supervisor- the junior high school equivalent of a department head/vice-principal?) tells me the choir teacher wants to speak to me. It doesn’t thrill me when teachers want to see me- this goes all the way back to childhood, it’s never because things are going great.  But sure, okay. 

 I go down to the choir room. The choir teacher (let’s call her Ms. Gregor) is  a short, rotund, highly energized, charismatic woman- exactly the kind of person you would expect the choir teacher to be.  Or maybe, exactly the kind of person you would expect to be a choir teacher. You could look at her, and picture her with her back to the audience, waving her arms in time to the music and mouthing along with the kids, having an absolute fucking blast. She always wore beautiful kente cloth clothing with matching caps, and those plastic and wire frame glasses that remind me of FBI agents in the 60’s, like Willem Defoe in Missippi Burning ( he was 33 in that movie, the same age as Jesus was when he was crucified, which Defoe enacted in The Last Temptation of Christ, which came out the same year, when Defoe was 33. Doesn’t Defoe seem like he was 60 from the first time you saw him? In Platoon he was 31, in To Live and Die in LA he was 30- I’m at the age now where I am fascinated by how old people were when they did certain things, and when I became aware of them. By the way, of course you’ve seen Platoon, but you most likely haven’t seen TO Live and Die in LA, and you really should- I swear it has the greatest car chase ever caught on film , along with a score by Wang Chung! ).  

Ms. Gregor has an advantage with the kids, in that everybody in the choir is there because they want to be there, and if she even starts to think about not letting them be in the choir anymore, they immediately behave perfectly for months at a time (I imagine, at least. I’m jealous, because if I threaten a kid with not being allowed to come to science class anymore, that’s... not a threat).

She wants to know if I will chaperone a choir trip.  The choir is going to participate in a competition at the Kings Dominion Amusement Park in Virginia.  110 students are going to get on three buses (not school buses, the nice ones with velour seats that are supposed to tilt back buyt mostly don’t anymore and bathrooms that you aren’t supposed to actually use because if you do you’ll activate the chemicals that will make the entire bus stink like a busy robot bordello so wait til we get to the rest stop) for eight or nine hours, sleep at a hotel, get up and perform, spend the day in the amusement park,  go back to the hotel for another night (by which time if any of them stayed up all night the first night those darn kids will probably be so exhausted they won’t even be able to keep their eyes open hahaha ), then board the buses again the next day for the eight or nine hour ride back UP the interstate to their homes in New York City.

There are a couple of reasons she wants me to come on this trip:

The school is divided into what they called mini-schools (pretty catchy), like smaller groupings within the school that divided the kids and the teachers.  There are seven of them: The Art School (for kids who were into Art stuff- they could take dance classes, and drawing classes, and drama classes, along with all the regular 3 R’s stuff), the Science School (for kids who were more into the practical aspects of the world, not pie in the sky dreamers), the Discovery Program (for kids with special needs- some of them had physical and/or mental disabilities, and others were classified as special needs because of behavioral problems, which without getting into a whole thing about it always seemed dicey to me- like, one person’s behavioral problem could be somebody else’s difficult but charming wiseass-  where do you draw the line? It was definitely stigmatizing, and one way of dealing with kids that people just didn’t care for), the Columbus Academy (which was for kids who thought they were smarter than everybody else), the Computer School (which was for kids who actually were smarter than everybody else- the ones who could do more with computers in 1995 than program 10 PRINT HELLO 20 GO TO 10), the Bilingual Program (for native Spanish speakers- and by the way, as for me, I’m tri- lingual- I’ll try any...), and MY program, which was called the Environmental Studies Program.  

The Environmental Studies Program was for kids with a high degree of climate change awareness, a distaste for corporate pollutants, a willingness to work closely with whistleblowers no matter what the personal cost, and the financial backing to purchase their own pH balance testing kits, with which they would monitor... just kidding. They named it The Environmental Studies Program after they got funding for it but before they knew what it was. Thta was right before I was hired. No attempt was ever made to get the programmiing for the students to match the name of the mini-school. It was just four classes, about 120 students at any given time: a lot of kids who were asked to leave other programs for disciplinary reasons but hadn’t been classified as special needs (yet), or kids who didn’t get into other programs, or kids who transferred into the school mid-year, or kids who didn’t have particularly engaged parents to advocate for them, or kids who just accidentally ended up there (nobody WANTED to get into that program, nobody applied for it).  A lot of the kids were difficult, weren’t always on their best behavior. And everybody knew they were the kids who didn’t get to go anywhere else. Everybody else in the school referred to the kids in the E.S.P. program as the Especially Stupid People, even some of the teachers. They were the Island of Misfit Toys. And they knew it. BU tthey were mostly just sweet 11 and 12 and 13 year olds trying to figure out how to get by. I loved them.  Well, most of them. 

Ms. Gregor tells me she’s gonna take some of my kids on the trip, but she’s  nervous about it. She knows they can be difficult, and she can’t kick anybody out of the choir when they’re eight hours away from the school, and she wants somebody who knew them along. Most of this is unsaid, but I get the subtext.

She’s also bringing a hundred and ten kids total, like I said, and has three Moms and herself to be in charge, but no male chaperones. I would cover that.

There are also a couple of other kids coming, kids I don’t know but who are particularly difficult to deal with in the programs they are in. And by difficult, to be clear, they have major behavioral problems. That’s how you say it as a teacher. Or you say they are fucking huge pain in the ass who never shuts the fuck up or sits the fuck down or does what the fuck they’re supposed to. Either or. 

I would be assigned to pay close attention to those kids too, just in case, and one of them would have to share a room with me- that was the only way they would let him come on the trip. That was one of the things I always really liked about Ms. Gregor, in particular, but also lots of teachers. Sure, some of them are dedicated clock-punchers, civil servants who come in every day talking about how much longer they have til their pensions kick in, but their were also teachers who believed that every kid deserved a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, ad infinitum, and if you just kept giving them chances they might eventually get it. Compassion, mercy, forgiveness, optimism, hope... nobody has more of these qualities than good junior high school teachers. 

I’m in.  Let the chips fall where they may. And they will fall. Abso fucking lutely.

TO BE CONTINUED

Next: I’ve been to a rodeo before. This... ain’t my first?

No insight here, I’m not saying I’m smart about anything. But  during a commercial break in the Syracuse-Georgetown game this morning (Hoya Saxa!), I caught a little of Saving Private Ryan, and it reminded me of something. 

In college we had four movies on VHS that we watched over and over. Every one, hundreds of times. Ghostbusters, This is Spinal Tap, To Live and Die in LA, and Jaws. I loved each of them so much. For different reasons. 

Ghostbusters, for Murray (I had never been allowed to watch SNL), and everybody, and absolute exquisite sillies.

Spinal Tap, for being like every doc ever, but nothing I had ever seen, and every line a diamond. Again, silliness (“Don’t look for it, it’s not there.”)

To Live and Die in LA, for attention to detail, and the greatest car chase I’d ever seen (after a lifetime of CHiPs, which I WAS allowed to watch),  and criming,  and double-crossing, and bad luck and confusion, and Turturro’s dialogue:  “Like every other swinging dick in this place makes it. Day by motherfucking day.” 

I had no idea at that time what a big deal William Friedkin was, or that years later the movie would be recognized as a “near masterpiece.”  I loved it so much, but I also felt like it was kind of cheesy- maybe it was the Wang Chung soundtrack? Very not the best of the 80’s.

The one that was clearly a masterpiece to me was Jaws. My parents had taken my grandmother to see it when it came out, and I think maybe she refused to go in the ocean after that?  Whatever, it was definitely impactful to her personally. I loved it for Quint, and his fingernails, overwhelmed Chief Brodie, the obtuse, greedy mayor, and the reluctant, developing friendship between these incredibly different men. 

Quint’s Indianapolis monologue blew my mind- I still go back and watch it at least once or twice a year, and it’s hypnotizing, and terrifying. And it wasn’t til much later that I found out that Quint’s story was basically true, and so much more horrifying than what he described. Check out this episode of Hardcore History from the amazing Dan Carlin. He puts the word “nightmares” in the title of the episode, and explains why.

Yikes.

But what I really loved about Jaws was that after I got the story down, I noticed something new every time I watched it. Some tiny visual detail of which I wasn’t previously aware, but which was now a glaringly conscious choice by the director. I’m thinking of stuff like Quint’s shack, with the jaws of sharks he’s killed hanging on the walls, and even the windows, and how as they head out to sea in the Orca, the shot is framed as them sailing right down into the gullet of the shark that would be attached to the jaws hanging in Quint’s window. Maybe everybody else noticed that right away, but noticing new details like that made each viewing such a treat. Rich. Showing instead of telling?

There’s too many good movies, and too much access to all of them, and too much life stuff happening, to watch anything over and over like that anymore. Now, if I’m flipping through and I happen upon Full Metal Jacket at any point in the film, I’ll stop and watch til the end.  But that’s about it. 

So I come in on Saving Private Ryan during this commercial break. Two hours into the movie, give or take. The fellas have just taken a German machine gun position, and Wade the medic (Ribisi) has been killed. They’ve captured a prisoner, and everybody assumes they’re gonna execute him. But Captain Miller (Hanks) lets him go (I mean, come on- it’s Tom Hanks). A decision which will have consequences later...

This causes great dissent in the ranks. They really want to fucking kill this guy.  One guy in particular, Private Rieben (Burns, who all movie has been wearing his uniform jacket, on which he’s written “Brooklyn, NY- USA”) is furious, and basically tells Miller to go fuck himself, he’s no longer interested in Saving Private Ryan. Sergeant Horvath (Sizemore) throws Rieben to the ground, tells him to get his shit together, and when Rieben refuses, Horvath threatens to shoot him in his big mouth. 

Things are escalating, but Miller is a great leader, and realizes now is the perfect time to tell everybody he is a high school teacher (English composition) from Atley, Pennsylvania, and coaches the baseball team in the spring. Everybody is like, what the fuck? (Or really the much more charming 1944 equivalent, which is Horvath saying “Well I’ll be doggoned,”  though they do say fuck in the movie.)

This disarms everyone (especially Horvath, since he’s about to shoot Rieben in the goddam mouth). Taken aback, they listen to his speech. He talks about who he is, and why he feels their mission is valuable:

He doesn’t care about SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, doesn’t know him,  doesn’t give a doggone about him.  He just wants to get back to his wife. And then he walks up the hill to start burying bodies. His men fall in with him and they all start to work together. We see them in silhouette, digging, moving bodies, barbed wiire behind them.  

(The shot would be echoed very effectively in Band of Brothers on HBO a couple of years later, which Spielberg and Hanks were EP’s on, and Hanks also wrote and directed on).

But the shot that stood out to me this time was the shot at the end of Miller’s speech about getting back to his wife. 

 During his speech there are a bunch of reaction shots of all the guys listening in astonishment. Typical stuff.  Jeremy Davies is astonished. An English teacher?

Barry Pepper is astonished. A baseball coach? Tom Sizemore and Ed Burns are astonished. He’s from Pennsylvania? The Keystone State? Virtue, Liberty and Independence? Adam Goldberg is astonished.  I’m gonna be in The Hebrew Hammer? Giovanni Ribisi astonished off screen- I’m dead? Vin Diesel is already making Fast and Furious 6.

But at the very end of his speech Spielberg does the thing I noticed this time. Like I said, show, don’t tell. (I know, you probably saw it the first time you watched the movie, but I was caught up in the story details). 

Hanks speaks to everybody.  He’s breaking up a very tense moment, and reinvigorating his men’s sense of mission for SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.  But towards the end he addresses  Rieben directly. He takes a couple steps towards him, telling him he can leave if he wants to. He confronts him face to face. 

At this point the shot is Hanks walking into a medium close-up over the shoulder (?- not sure terminology, didn’t go to film school!) of Burns. He lands (in the cinema we say “lands” instead of “stops”- that I know) uphill from Burns, facing him (and us).  Hanks is facing Rieben/the camera/us for the most significant moment of the speech: “I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.” 

Pretty standard  -  a medium shot of Hanks. Static.

But then three things happen. 1) Hanks starts walking straight uphill, to start dealing with men he has killed;  2) simultaneously the camera tracks left.  3) A moment later Burns starts crossing left along with the camera.  Then, eventually, everybody stops, and the shot has been reframed (?).

So from a medium close-up of Hanks over the shoulder of Burns, the shot becomes a long shot of Hanks over the shoulder of Burns, and we can see more of Burns’ back. We can see the whole thing: “Brooklyn, NY. USA” Hanks has just said every man he kills the further away from home he feels, then walked over to the men he has killed, while literally moving further away from home (What’s more home for an American soldier than Brooklyn, right, Mac? Woulda been weird if Rieben’s jacket said Pennsylvania).

It reminds me of the Orca sailing into the shark gullet.

What I’m saying, and feel free to disagree, is that it is my opinion that Spielberg is a fairly adept visual storyteller. He does NOT suck.

Go here for an essay about the scene.