A "What the F*ck!" moment in my life.

About two years ago, around this time of the year I was working a day shift and got a call from my assignment editor. "I need you to head over to "Times Square." When ever I get sent to TS all I can think of is the parking nightmare that awaits me. "What's going on?" I asked. "The Oscar statues are on display". he informs me. "The Oscar Statues?" I ask. "Yeah the ones they hand to all the winners, the actual statues." he tells me. "Awesome!" I shout. "Yeah I knew you would like that" he replies.

So I rush on over, park in a commercial zone and hoof it to the location. I walk in and across the room, near the window are the statutes. I was in awe. My awe was interrupted by a PR team. The same questions, where was I from, what was my name. I never understood why they try and get my information. I don't decide what airs or what future events we cover, why would you want to contact me? If you see me at your events the choice to cover it has already be made. After the inquisition is over I tell them I just want a few shots of the statues.

I walk over to the case and gazed in at a little army of golden boys. Oscars are much bigger in person. Which is kinda funny because movie stars are often smaller in person, a bit of a paradox. I pulled out all the stops and completely overshot the crap out of the little golden calves.

I left shortly before God made up his mind about whether or not to smite me. As I returned to my car I had one of those moments where you look at your life and wonder why it has deviated so far from your original plans.

Its not that things are so bad for me. I do ok. I live pretty well and most of the time I like my job, but it's no the dream. I had just walked out of a room holding 40 something dreams. Lifelong, hard fought, dreams were in that buildings and for 1/4th of the people in attendance that dream was going to come true.

Where was I? Taking pictures of other peoples dreams. That is a hard reality to face.

The Strike Hits Me Where it Hurts.

My station like all or rather almost all T.V. stations is owned by a large network. This network has programs that have gone off the air due to the strike. No programs, less revenue. Less revenue= cuts. Those cuts have cut me. My hours are down, my overtime is gone baby gone. The hurt is certainly on.

I have to tell you though, I'm not mad. Well I am not mad at the writers. I am just as behind the WGA as I was when this started. I know that stakes and I respect the decision to strike. If my financial situation has to suffer as a result, then I'll make due.

It gives me more time to write anyway.

My Strike Solution

One big word..... Google. If Google really wants to live up to its reputation as a radical outside of the box thinking tour de force they need to jump on the massive opportunity that is the writer's strike. Think about it, if Google took about 5-10 billion dollars(money they have, money they could lose and not even think about it) for that sum of money they could turn to the WGA and say, "Sure, we'll play ball." They could create all new shows, webisodes, and movies, content! Content is king and if Google bought the writers, all of them, they would send the entertainment industry into a frenzy . If Google even expressed interest in such an arrangement the strike would end tomorrow.

I know it's a radical idea, but if the whole this industry is eventually going to the internet any way why shouldn't Google lead the way. We(writers) would get in on the ground floor and reap the benefits. What if we established a 10 percent on the gross rule for writers, on every film? What would that do to the status and perception of the writer in the industry? Hey the first step into getting something is wanting it, badly.

So if anyone from Google is either one of my two readers please pass this up the ladder. Oh, and if this works out and Google does buy all of the writers I want a small finders fee. Let's say 1 percent of the grosses of all movies for the rest of time, or a billion dollars. I'm easy

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".

You Wake Up, Thrown on Some Shoes, and Walk Out the Door

I've covered a lot of stories. They run the gambit from mega boring(like standing outside of a courthouse waiting for whoever) to really interesting (Did you know that if everyone in America replaced five of the light bulbs in their house to CPF bulbs it would have the pollution removing effect of taking 9,000,000 cars off the road.), to memorable in a way that haunts you. Here is one such tale.

About two years ago a reporter and I were sent to East New York. Most of you probably haven't been there, but it's a lovely place to visit if you ever want to get an up close view of a drug war. Our story for that day involved a robbery gone wrong.

We arrive on the scene, a corner bodega. The incident in question happened in the early early morning so the police are long gone. The only ones around a the local residents and the media. A weird thing that people outside of my business don't know is that in NYC the media share information. You wouldn't think so, that we would hide things from each other and lie to one another, but we don't. I guess the print guys do, but not the TV and radio people. This is most true across mediums, radio people are more willing to help TV people, rather then other radio reporters and vice versa.

We spoke with the guy from 880 and he gives us the run down. A guy walks into a store pulls out a gun, demands money. He is given the money but for some reason he shoots the clerk in the shoulder. He runs outside and is gunned down. The last part is the twist. No one know who the other shooter was. Another criminal? A vigilante? A resident who had enough?

We go inside the store and speak with the day clerk. He tells us the night guy was his brother. He recounts the story from what he knows. His brother was shot and ran into the back room. Another worker mops up what's left of the blood trail that goes from the counter to the back of the store. We interview the clerk and he illustrates for us what happened. He tells us his brother is ok, and should survive.

Outside the residents are not interested in talking. "No Snitching" as the song goes. Don't talk to the media and never talk to the police. Good idea, keep that up, I'm sure your neighborhood will turn around in no time. After numerous attempts we finally get an older woman to talk about the situation. It isn't safe, drugs, too much violence, etc.

After we finish at the scene we go to the dead man's house. The police released his information, name, age, last known address, etc. It turns out the guys was 23, only a few years younger then myself at the time. It always strange when the person in your story is close to you in some way. We throw his address in the GPS and realize that its only two blocks away, in fact you can see the apartment complex from the bodega.

We go into his building and up to his floor, I think we got his apt number from the mailboxes in the lobby. We knock and no one answers, which is not that uncommon. We try a few neighbors, one of them said he seemed like a good boy. Everyone says that when you die. If you die your great, if you commit a crime you always seemed strange. In this case it was both so I guess the woman decided to throw the seemed into cover her bases.

As we left the apartment building and walked back to our truck I could see the bodega down the block. Walking the guys path made me feel strange. When you think about the moments leading up to this death, he threw on his coat, grabbed his keys and walkout the door. Down the stairs and onto the street, he walked to a place he's been to hundreds of times. Three minutes after he left his home he would be dead.

For some reason that story always haunts me. I think it has to do with the randomness of life and things not turning out the way we plan. One second your saying good by to your family, the next you are lying face up on a freezing Brooklyn sidewalk watching a street light fade to black.

Strange.

The Present Dave

So Dave, What do you do for a living? The answer is tricky. Its not that I don't have a job, I do. The explanation is difficult. According to my company I am an ENG Photographer. This title was changed from cameraman, which was doomed because it had the world man in it making it sexist and evil. Yeah, but in my case it still applies. I am a man and I use a camera. Most of the time I still say news cameraman. The next question is usually, "Oh, for the Post?" I tell them I work in television; to which they ask "Oh, inside the studio?" Nope, outside. Most of the time I say that I am a television news cameraman and I work in the field, which is still easier then saying Electronic News Gathering (ENG) Photographer, which makes me sound like a robot.

At some point in my lifetime there was a meeting that I was NOT invited to and everyone decided "Hey let's change the names of all the jobs in the world". So stewardesses became flight attendants and garbage men became sanitation workers. Even waitresses have gotten in on it, they now they want to be called "servers". You went from waiting to serving, passive to active. Who cares? If you hate your job so much, instead of changing titles, why not change jobs?

Anyway, so I am a field cameraman and that field happens to be New York City. Gotham, the Big Apple, the New Rome as John Lennon once described it, NYC is the biggest city in America, the center of the business and finance world, a leader in fashion, and one hell of a sports town. Every day(the days I am working) I load up my truck and drive under, around, and through the biggest media market in America.

Which by the way the NYC media loves loves loves to tell that to outsiders. The second you get called up from Philly or Miami, or wherever to work here, you will get bombarded with the fact that you are now working in the biggest and most important news market in the world. It's a badged of honor here, its a silver star that you actually take out of the velvet lined case and wear, it's the Oscar that you walk around with months after the ceremony has ended. This city knows what it is and it demands respect.

So I work in New York. Everyday I meet between 5-50 strangers and talk to them about whatever part of their life is interesting enough to go on television. Did they kill some one in a DWI? Did their son? What is going to happen with the housing market? (by the way, we're fucked) Are gas prices coming down? (No.) What caused the fire? Are they going to raise the awful starting salary for police officers? Everyday we drive out and try to find the people who can answer these questions. That is what I do, for now.