Making Movies
Jess Hilliard and his self-initiated feature length film.
I know some people who have made Hollywood type feature films. I’m not knocking them, but that takes a lot of work, and a lot of people have to sign off on all kinds of things before during and after. Basically, it’s a lot of hassles, but you know, for those people it’s probably worth it, I guess.
What I want to talk about here though is a different kind of movie, in particular a movie my friend Jess made when he was about twenty-two years old in 1992. He borrowed a video camera from a cable access station in Arcata, California to shoot it with. The title of the movie is A Skate Film, and the plot is about Jess, being a trick skater, but in fact Jess is not a trick skater, and the film did not present him as one. It was more like a character study of a man who thought he was a trick skater but who could really barely stay on his very cheap skateboard as he attempted various low skill moves, ending with the skateboard catching on fire.
The movie also depicted the man at home in a small trailer, which is where Jess actually lived at the time. Various activities occurred in the trailer, eating some beans, having a conversation, chewing some chewing tobacco, wrestling with a friend, etc.
That was back in the days before digital video cameras, computer editing, and internet platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. Once edited (an arduous process on a linear editing machine), Jess presented the movie on the cable access channel, so that it would appear on people’s TVs, in a very localized region around Arcata, periodically at odd hours of the day and night for a few random viewers.
The most important part of the film, from my perspective, was that it was feature length-- about an hour and a half long. I watched the whole film on VHS at some point after Jess had produced and aired it. I liked it and found it very endearing, but mostly I was impressed with the audacity Jess had in making it. Even the other amateur video makers using the cable access facility didn’t make feature length videos. It was like jumping from making a zine to publishing a whole book but not bothering with a publisher. Of course that is now very possible with on-demand publishing, but at the time, amongst the people I knew, there were just dreams of making full length movies and books in the future.
Jess produced his movie without any permission or budget or worries, and by doing that he suddenly made almost anything seem possible to me. I went on to open my own (generally in collaboration with various other folks) self-initiated libraries, publishing companies, galleries, and even museums (one of which is in a public grade school--KSMoCA). I didn’t wait for gate keepers to give me permission or a budget to produce a book or create a public art project, I would just make one if I felt like it. Jess and his movie tore the façade off the idea that you had to follow the rules, jump through the hoops, and adhere to oppressive and restrictive conditions in order to be a legitimate creative person in the world.
Even now, all these decades later, with the ability to make and distribute movies from our phones, to publish books using our laptops that can be purchased all over the world, and to do all sort of other previously unimaginable things like that, most people don’t bother. They stick to the limitations of the social media they have been given and never break out beyond them. But we can look to Jess, and his bold project, and at least know that there is more freedom and satisfaction to be had, if we are only brave enough to realize it.