the list of 9 for september 11, 2007:
NINE THINGS I WANTED TO BE WHEN I GREW UP
A few days ago, I quit my job as a producer at an interactive agency in order to return to thesort of day jobs I prefer: art director and designer. (It's a nice way to pay the bills as I waitto get my next film funded.) This has made me look back at all the careers I wanted to have when Iwas a little boy. It may or may not surprise you that I never had any aspiration to be anastronaut, fireman or baseball player. I did, however, want to be...
- An actor. I never pursued this seriously - I wasn't even ahigh school drama geek. But I did have the leading role in a tiny production of "Dr.Doolittle" when I was but 4 or 5 years old, and even then I made sure I learned all my lines, andwas annoyed when one of my costars was a no-show because she opted to go to a birthday partyinstead. (The teacher filled in for her.) My exasperation with the flakiness of actors has thusbeen a lifelong affliction. But if a filmmaker friend suddenly asked me to perform in his or hermovie, even today I wouldn't say no. (I did star in a friend's 50-minute-long thesisfilm at CalArts in my early 20's. I wasn't bad.)
- A movie poster designer. I didn't even know that this wasa job by the time I was 5 or 6, but I spent many a day drawing movie posters at home. I wasdreaming up sequels and remakes, mostly (you'd think I would have wound up a studio executive!), agreat many of them inspired by the Pink Panther movies that were so popular in themid-70's. Frankenstein and the Wolfman were also frequent stars in many of my fictional filmposters, which included credit blocks and all.
- A cartoonist. I was 5 when my mother remarried, and Iloved looking at two of my new stepfather's books: one was a collection of Norman Rockwellpaintings. The other was a tome of Disney animation art. A couple years later, my stepfather -himself a wannabe cartoonist - bought How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, and by then I wascertain that I wanted to grow up to be a cartoonist. I never realized those goals - the closest Igot, professionally speaking, was when I was 27: I got to draw a bunch of cartoony characters fora website for the IRS. Yes, the IRS. The site was called "TAXi" and it was aimed at teenagers.Alas, it's no longer online.
- A "naturalist." Meaning, more or less, park ranger, onlywithout the policing aspect. This was one of those things where your mom says, "Wouldn't you liketo be a so-and-so?" and you shrug, "Sure, that sounds like fun," even though you have no seriousinterest. But I enjoyed hiking in the woods, and observing wildlife, and making little trails andbridges - still do, in fact - so for a few months when I was 9 or 10 it seemed like a fun job. Butby the time I dropped out of Boy Scouts when I was 11 (those merit badges were too difficult toget!), "naturalist" fell off my radar. Blame the invention of the Apple II computer.
- A long-distance runner. Jogging was big in the late 70's,and I was an eager participant in my elementary school's recess-and-lunchtime running program. Ieven got trophies for racking up the most miles (something like 139 in one school year). Theforgettable Michael Douglas film Running came out around that time, and I found that a biginspiration. But I lost interest quickly after briefly joining my junior high's long distancerunning team. Blame that on the Apple II as well.
- A video game designer. It was 1981, and what adolescentboy who squandered away his allowance on arcade games and Atari 2600 cartridges didn't want to dothis? Sad thing is, today this could very well be a lucrative career for me. But after a briefforay designing a few failed CD-ROM titles between 1992 and 1995, I didn't continue in the field.
- A fine artist. In school, it's typical for a kid who knowshow to draw a little to start dreaming about becoming a serious artist. My high school art teacherMr. Rushton introduced me to Prismacolor pencils, which became my medium of choice. I did quitewell and cranked out a lot of surrealist drawings, only to discover - by the time I graduatedcollege and made a very half-hearted attempt at getting my work into a couple of galleries - thatthe art world considered colored pencils to be an "illustrator's medium." So I gave up out offrustration (and also because I soon got my first post-college job, where I spent all day usingthis new software called "Photoshop," which exhausted my desire to create pretty pictures by thetime I got home from work).
- An animator. You can see where this is going, can't you?Anyway, when I was 16, my classmate - and future college (and post-college) roommate - ChrisMitchell talked me into attending a summer animation course at the local junior college. Chrishimself got bored with the class after a few quarters, but I stuck with it. (Not to say that Chrisgave up on animation: since then he's worked on seemingly every show out there, from Ren &Stimpy to The Powerpuff Girls to Samurai Jack.) When I finally got into CalArts- a mecca for every teenage animator - I was actually bored with animation, which was fine,because by then I wanted to be...
- A film director. I was 17 when I wrote and directed myfirst "movie," a spoof of the old Guten Tag! films in my high school German class. Myclassmates were the stars, I edited in camera, and sadly we didn't have time to finish it. But Ican at least pinpoint the birth of my so-called career as a filmmaker to that one project. Andreally, I have to say, I'm very lucky that I did eventually get to try my hand at most of thethings I always wanted to do. I hope you can say the same one day!
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