Johnny Tits and Capt. Yonkers

When I first came to college I arrived as a Psychology major. I enjoyed Psychology, in its own way it made sense to me and my grades were strong. However, deep down I knew that I did not want to be a psychologist. My major motivation for picking this career path was my parents. My father was a nuclear engineer, to him my choice seemed like a sound occupation with a good salary. If I would have told him I want to be a film maker(which I did later) he would have looked at me like I had said Mime or a ventriloquists(which he did). So for the first half of my freshman year I was a Psychology major.

That all changed and one of the major influences in this shift in direction came from two guys who lived on my floor. Dean and John, who would later be referred to as Capt. Yonkers and Johnny Tits. Johns nickname came from the fact that he worked out a lot, had huge pecks, and always walked around without a shirt on. Dean's came from the fact that he is from Yonkers, always mentions that he's from Yonkers, and a single event of Beer Pong where he declared that he was "Captain of this table!" and I yelled back "Captain Yonkers". It wasn't well thought out, it didn't make sense, but it stuck, at least for me it did.

So even though I was a psych major I still wrote. John lived across the hall and he wrote too. We quickly became friends and would talk about films and writing often. Dean had never written, but he wanted to and we kinda pulled him into the fray. We weren't the closest of friends ,but we stayed in touch and senior year we all marched towards graduation determined to be filmmakers. I still have a great photo of the three of us with our cap and gowns on.

Well a short two years out John makes a sale, a b horror film. This is pretty awesome, but he follows it up with another sale to Columbia for about 300k. Home run! Johnny tits made it. Dean and I can't be far behind. John will pass on our stuff, everyone wins.

Survey says? XXX! John disappeared like a thief in the night or rather a screenwriter into Hollywood. Now John and I weren't super close, but Dean and I were and Dean and John were. Calls were made, favors were asked and neither were returned. We were really pissed man.

I remember a few months after John disappeared I was covering a massive winter storm. In NY snow is giant ratings so every station explodes into a news orgy, wall to wall coverage. I worked 34 hors in two days, standing next to my camera in a blizzard trying desperately to keep it and my hands from freezing. The whole time I remember thinking, "If fucking Tithead had been a stand up guy and helped me a long I might not be here standing in a blizzard!"

It has been a few years since graduation and I have to be honest it still bothers me. I feel bad for Dean, he and John were suite mates, good friends. The day before his script was taken to the higher ups at Columbia John called Dean and told him. He was the only person he confided in. That was the last time they ever spoke.

When Dean first sent me that link to John's article in Variety I felt energized. I used to picture the bunch of us on the cover of EW- "The Next New York Wave" or own movement a return back to the streets, back to the 70's gritty and real. It was exciting.

Dean and I still talk. We still write and we still read each other's work. As for John he hasn't made it yet, that sale never got made. He still writes b-horror, enough to live well. I'm not knocking it. I made that variety article my home page. I won't forget what John did, but more importantly I won't forget Dean

"The Insider"

The other day I was watching the Michael Mann film "The Insider". I first saw it in the theater and really liked it, but seeing it again really made me realize the genius of this film. Two things have caused me to view "The Insider" in a wider context. First I started working in the media and second I became aware of the massive corporate monolith that is crushing our culture.

The film deals with a former tobacco executive who turns whistle blower and grants an interview to 60 minutes detailing the evil that is big tobacco. I think that was the films big problem. Big Tobacco is such an easy villain. If you focus too much on the specific industry you lose sight of the big picture. The real villain is the American corporation. Back in 1999 I couldn't see that, all I saw was a man being destroyed by a single company.

R.J. Reynold's has and will behave like any modern American corporation. They are faceless, interchangeable, money making machines. Money, money, money. That's all they care about, that is all they are interested in. Jeffery Wigand made a choice and that choice hurt the bottom line of a very powerful company. Their response was to quickly and ruthlessly destroy him.

The greatest thing about this film is that it captures the demise of journalistic integrity in this country. Every major media outlet in America is now owned by a large corporation. These corporations want revenue generating assets, they don't want costly lawsuits from other corporations. Sixty Minutes caves in, betrays its legacy, destroys its integrity, because its corporate parent told it to. That was the beginning of the end of journalism in this America.

Without a objective media, a watchdog for the American people, anything is possible. In 1998 they started injecting cows with hormones, those hormones are now in your milk. In most cases the increase is 300 percent! Did you know that? Have you ever seen it on television or in the paper? Did you know that 70 percent of the corn in this country is genetically modified? Do you want to eat it? Guess what, you are. Did you know that only 94,000 dollars of your salary is taxed for social security? That means that if I make 94k, you make 180k, and Bill Gates makes 33,000,000 dollars or 33,000k we are all paying the same in social security taxes. If the politicians really want to save social security like they seem to like to tell us so much, why not raise the tax on million and billionaires? The corporate owners of this country down want that. They're not interested in saving social security. They don't need it. What they need is for us to keep doing as we're told and they will crush anyone who says otherwise.

Jeffery Wigand was the last one to take a real stand, risk it all for what's right. That's why I love "The Insider."

Viewing: For those of you that want to know more about what I was referencing in my post, you might want to check out the following films: "The Corporation" "The Future of Food".