"Your job is to cheat the audience."
That was my boss, producer extraordinaire Mike Elliott, critiquing my very first job in Hollywood-adjacent: the initial rough editor assembly of the indie horror film Razortooth. It was late 2005, probably just after Thanksgiving. He and I and his producing partner Joe were sitting in the small office that was doubling as my edit bay, and we were about halfway through the two-and-a-half hour pile of sludge that I had worked on for a couple of months. And it wasn't going well.
He wasn't mad. I mean, not in any overt screaming-and-throwing-things way. But he was definitely thrown by how much a novice I was. He was expecting to see a relatively tight and breezy ninety minute action/horror romp (minus the special effects). Instead he was watching a turgid train wreck, the Heaven's Gate of low-budget monster movies.
Mike's comment above probably comes across as jarring, since most of us consider pleasing the customer in an authentic way a top priority. But, oddly enough, when it comes to editing a movie or TV show, being deceptive isn't a bad thing, it's a necessity. The editor's main focus is making the viewer see what the director wants them to see. By skillfully manipulating images, sounds, and music, a good editor can make two inept stuntmen appear to beat the living tar out of each other, or turn a handful of extras into Times Square on New Years Eve. There is no skill set quite like editing... if an editor's done his job correctly, you'll never notice it. That's what Mike was trying to teach me.
By the end of our review, I was woozy. I had filled a legal pad with Mike's and Joe's notes. Almost every scene had something I needed to tweak. In some cases, entire sequences needed to be redone from the ground up. I had weeks of work ahead of me.
Internally, I groaned. I was so disappointed in myself. I went into this job knowing how green I was, but I thought I'd done better than this! I did my best to remain composed and unaffected, but inside, I was a seething cauldron of about a zillion different emotions and thoughts, none of them good.
I was rattled. Just a couple of months into this new career I'd pursued, and I felt like I was in over my head. I needed a pick-me-up, badly. Something to boost my spirits. My empty belly made the decision for me: sushi!
But my newly-discovered sushi bar was a good forty-five minute drive away. In the state I was in, there was no way I could make that trip without some good music enveloping me. So I popped my new favorite CD into the player, and spent a good hour decompressing with the immaculate pop sounds of...
THE DELAYS.
My life got turned upside down very early in 2004. After almost a decade and a half as a code monkey, programming software for various companies on both coasts, a situation arose that gave me the out I'd probably been needing for a long while. And in a very short amount of time, I found myself free to choose a new path.
But that left me with a big question: what the hell do I do with myself?
A chance meeting with the boyfriend of Suzie's old Los Angeles buddy gave me an answer. (I should probably add in here that Suzie lived in L.A. and worked as a publicist for many years, before moving up to the Bay Area, where we met.)
He worked in the movie industry, producing DVD special features for big blockbuster movies and directors. After getting to know my likes and dislikes, he made an unexpected suggestion: that I try my hand at editing. At first I thought, "What? No way! How could I possibly do that?" But the more I thought about, the more it appealed to me. I loved movies. I drew cartoons. I liked to tell stories. All those creative skills could be put to good use as an editor. I have to admit, it sounded glamorous. Working on movie stuff? Sign me up!
To that end, I went down to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks and took an intensive beginners course in both editing and Avid, which was (at the time) the big editing system in the industry. I returned to the Bay Area with my newfound knowledge, ready to conquer the entertainment world. I put together a meager portfolio. I made some room on a shelf for the first of my many Oscars to come. I went out to make my fortune.
And nothing happened.
Nothing. I tried everywhere. Of course, I went to Pixar first. They're based in a small city just south of Berkeley. I sent them a copy of my portfolio... all I got in return was a form letter. What I thought was going to be a video editing internship with a marketing company just north of San Francisco, wound up being three months of rebuilding PCs. I even tried getting in the side door of the industry by doing some storyboard work, but apart from a couple of very small jobs, that angle didn't pan out either. I spent a good year trying to get this new career going, but it didn't take.
One night, Suzie and I were discussing what my options were. I kept coming back to the sad realization that the Bay Area wasn't really a hotbed of entertainment and media companies. To have any chance at breaking in at all, a person would have to physically be in Los Angeles.
She thought about that for a moment. And with a nod, she said, "Okay. Let's do it."
And that's how, at the beginning of September, I wound up moving down to Los Angeles, with a head full of dreams and no viable skills to make them come true.
Once I got settled, I hit the ground running. I sent out an endless stream of resumes. Using an old computer and a borrowed printer, I went through the listings in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter and a couple of directories I'd found, and I hit up every production company within fifty miles.
And guess what? Nothing happened.
After an entire month, and dozens upon dozens of letters sent out, I didn't get even one nibble. So once again, I was doubting my chances. I was this close to making the drive back to Berkeley and telling Suzie I made a big mistake...
...when Fate stepped in.
Through a friend of Suzie's, I'd gotten a chance to sit down with an honest-to-goodness producer who was the co-founder of a boutique production company. She took me to lunch, and spent a couple of hours discussing her start in the industry, and how difficult it can be to find a way in. I appreciate how honest she was with me, as she told me that I had a lot of obstacles in front of me. You don't just walk in the door and suddenly you're working on a film. It's very much a "who you know" industry.
So we're wrapping up back in her office, and I'm digesting all this, and I'm thinking: I am never going to get a job down here...
...when her phone rang. She apologized... she had to take it. She spent several minutes talking to this work friend. She was about to end the call, when she looked over at me, and said, "Hey, I've got a friend here who's looking to be an editor. Do you have anything he could work on?"
It turns out... he did! She was on the phone with the aforementioned Mike, who had just started filming a low-budget horror movie called Razortooth. He offered me a deal: I'd work for free up front, like everyone else on the film, but get paid once it was finished and purchased for distribution or release or whatever. Deal!
And so, on October 1st 2005, I officially started my first gig in the entertainment industry. (Oh yeah, in The Biz, we call "jobs" "gigs".) I got to visit the shooting location, and watch the magic happen. (They were using the HD cameras that had been used on Revenge Of The Sith!) Then Chris, the genius who was in charge of the visual effects, took me back to the office, and we started digitizing footage. That entire weekend was awesome. I was watching dailies! I was cutting together clips! I was a Hollywood editor!
Once I had some downtime, it was time to celebrate my new success. Did I get plastered? Nope! Did I hit up a club? Please! No, I did what any nerd worth his salt would do.
I went to Amoeba.
The old Los Angeles location. Unfortunately, they had to move.
For those of you who don't have an Amoeba Music near you: I feel for you. The three Amoeba locations in California are truly meccas for all things music. Yeah, they sell movies and T-shirts and memorabilia and other stuff, but they're primarily music stores. Music wonderlands! Thousands of square feet of CDs and LPs and singles and cassettes. More music than a person could listen to in a dozen lifetimes.
And I have happily spent an obscene amount of time wandering the aisles of all three stores. There's something about being "on the hunt" that makes time fluid, so fluid that you tell yourself you'll just look around, but two hours later you're walking out a fistful of CDs. Bliss!
If you're a casual music fan, you may wander into a place like Amoeba and just make a cursory pass up and down the aisles before giving up and going home. But if you're a music nut like me, you go into Amoeba like Seal Team Six entering Bin Laden's compound. You've got a plan. You know what you're hunting for. You've got a target.
And thanks to CMJ, I had a lot of targets.
Ah, CMJ. The venerable "College Music Journal". I'm fairly old in pop culture years, so I've seen a lot of music magazines come and go. At one point Spin took the crown of coolness from Rolling Stone, but then it became just as corporate and bland. So if you wanted to get the inside skinny on up and coming bands, you had to look elsewhere. There was an incredible publication called "hUH" that I discovered in the mid-90s, a thick magazine of interviews and reviews that came with a CD. Unfortunately it only lasted about a year and a half, but in that short amount of time it introduced me to a ton of great bands and albums.
When hUH went away, there was a periodical-shaped hole in my soul. How could I ever fill it? That's when CMJ came into my life.
CMJ was devoted to showcasing and breaking new bands. Their monthly CDs were insanely eclectic: in any given month, you could find indie rock, reggae, nu-metal, folk pop, and techno side-by-side on their generous samplers. You probably wouldn't like every single band they presented to you, but you were almost guaranteed to find one or two things that tripped your trigger.
My favorite part of the magazine was the review section. CMJ's contributors were incredibly descriptive writers, who were able to distill a lot of information into a nice tight paragraph. In each issue, you could find dozens of tight, precise recaps of albums from almost every conceivable genre. And each review ended with "RIYL", a "Recommended If You Like" blurb... a list of three or four sound-alikes, to give you a better idea of what you'd be hearing.
Thanks to the reviewers of CMJ, I had about a years' worth of RIYL albums jotted down on a list I carried around in my wallet. And when I headed to a music store, I'd pull it out and go hunting.
This Amoeba excursion was no exception. Over the last year or so, I had put together a list of a good thirty or so albums, ranked by how much I might like them based on their reviews in CMJ. My plastic prey included Drag by Giant Sand, Bebel Gilberto's self-titled debut, and Camera Obscura's Underachievers Please Try Harder.
But at the top of my list was an album that set my heart aflutter based on its RIYL pedigree: the Hollies, the Byrds, the La's, and (swoon) Cocteau Twins! If there was only one disc I was going to treat myself with, Faded Seaside Glamour by the Delays was it. I found one solitary copy buried in the random "D" section, and it went to the top of my pile.
Let me tell you: I wasn't about to wait to get home to listen to my new musical booty. I tore open Faded Seaside Glamour, popped it into the player...
...and lost my tiny little mind.
The first few notes of the opening track, "Wanderlust", sounded like Elisabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie had never stopped recording together. The lead singer, Greg Gilbert, alternated between an ethereal lilt and a just-getting-over-a-cold rasp that, somehow, worked together in perfect harmony. Every subsequent track was just as glorious. "Hey Girl", "On", "You Wear The Sun", "One Night Away"... each one was a jangly Oasis-by-way-of-Field-Mice pop delight. Based on the CMJ lip service, I was expecting to like Faded Seaside Glamour, but I wasn't expecting to frigging fall in love with it!
It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that this disc went between my car and my boom box for a couple of weeks. I was completely obsessed. And as I listened to it more and more, one tune stood out from the others, a song that really worked its way into my brain: "Long Time Coming". It's bouncy, it's poppy, it's propulsive... but there's a hint of melancholy to it. (The video I've linked below is much more goofy and playful than the song deserves, if you ask me.)
And I think that tinge of sadness resonated with me because I was kind of living it. The gist of the song is about things coming to a conclusion. The situation might have been instigated by the singer, it might have been out of his hands. However it happened... something important came to an end. And at the same time, something new was beginning.
Me, I'd just ended a huge chapter of my life. I'd spent ten long, productive, lonely, joyous, loving, chaotic years in the San Francisco Bay Area. But when I moved to Los Angeles, even though I still had my house in Berkeley and Suzie was still in design school up there... I knew I wasn't going back. If this new career, if this new life, became a thing... well, there would be no "returning home".
My first and only appearance on the big screen. It did not go well.
I was right. As of this week, it's been a good fifteen years since those first heady days of working on Razortooth with Mike and crew. Berkeley became a memory, and Los Angeles became my home. Lots and lots of stuff happened as a result of that change. Some of it was awful. Some of it was fantastic. But all of it was just life. A great big chapter in a story that's still being written.
And now that chapter has ended. At the beginning of 2019 I moved out of Los Angeles, and at the same time committed to devoting my creative energies full-time to making a go of being a writer of some sort. I'm my own boss, for all intents and purposes.
It's a double-edged sword, though, this new direction. On the one hand, I get to be in charge of my own success, my own destiny. I get to create unique characters and play in their imaginary worlds. As Alec Baldwin said in Malice: "I am God!"
But that freedom comes with a heavy price: it's not easy. The creative process can be a harsh mistress. There are days when I stare at a blank page and not a single word trickles out of my fingers. There are weeks when I wrestle with one plot point to the point of exhaustion. Every rejection letter I get still stings, and every contest I lose hurts just as much as the first time.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just not try so hard. Hell, J.J. Abrams has made millions of dollars by foisting sloppily assembled stories on the public. If he can make it work by barely trying, why am I putting so much effort into my work? I should just half-ass it, too.
But... I can't. That would be cheating the audience... and I don't feel like that's my job anymore.
As a special treat for you, my dear readers... please enjoy the official trailer for Razortooth...
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and struggling amateur screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.