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