It was somewhere around 1988. I was trying to establish myself as a cameraman in the Boston market. I’d already been working in the business for ten years, paying dues and working hard, but the work had always been in “steps-up-the-ladder” supporting roles, first doing PA work, then as a Grip, then as a Gaffer, then as an Assistant Cameraman. The good thing was I getting to work around a lot of different Directors of Photography, some of whom were excellent, some of whom who were qualified, some of whom who were not, and some of whom who were absolutely awful.
Turns out you can learn something from each of those categories. That was great. I learned a lot.
But by 1988, although I’d been making progress, I still hadn’t been able to establish myself as a shooter, a genuine “Cameraman”, the status category which had always been my goal. It had so far always eluded me, and I was eager to make my leap. Then one day I got a call from a producer over at a company we are going to refer to here as: Nameless Productions.
It was a break. A twist of fate. A spilled glass of good fortune. A random splash of luck. And courtesy of Nameless Productions, I’d gotten some on me.
It seems a work acquaintance of a work acquaintance had recommended me to the folks at Nameless Productions. Quite incredibly, the thrice removed recommender had recommended me as a shooter. To this day I still don’t know why, or how. There may have been substance abuse or mistaken identity involved. In truth the recommending party had never seen me aim, frame, or shoot anything. But the next thing I knew, Nameless Productions was calling me to see if I was interested in working on an upcoming video news magazine piece they were putting together for an out of town client. “We’re still getting the details...” is what they told me. But the important thing, and all I heard, was that I’d be working as the second camera operator on a two camera field interview for a broadcast client. A national broadcast client.
Yes.
Bingo.
Jackpot.
The chance to work on something that would be seen nationally represented a huge step forward for me. This wasn’t town league softball. This was the semi-pro Major League Baseball. So I was, to say the least, pretty happy. After all it was one thing to be plunked down on to a production as a robot, a droid, a drone, a high school AV Club geek dweeb running studio camera on any one of a million variations of the in-house corporate talking head training video that made so much of my local market.
This was different.
This was sexy.
This was a total stranger calling me, based on my professional reputation, no less, ...to shoot in the field! With actual producers, and actual reporters…actual journalists…on a nationally broadcast production!
For fucking money!
National, man….NATIONAL!
Even better, Nameless was an established shop, owned by a couple of well known guys. Well known locally, anyway, which was good enough. These were guys who had a lot of industry clients and a lot of network connections. They were high profile. They were known. They worked with three letter networks. They worked with celebrities. I’d seen their names in credits. Fuck, man.... I wanted to be them.
So this was a big step forward. A foot in the door of a big time boudoir where all kinds of prestigious delights lay waiting.
But then, of course, because this is the planet Earth, reality set in.
At the appointed time, on the appointed day, when I showed up for the appointed production, I learned exactly what we were going to be doing.
I got the “details”.
Those god damn, mother fucking details.
Turns out it wasn’t exactly the prestigious high end production I had hoped for. It wasn’t the journalistic crown jewel I’d envisioned. Turns out it wasn’t CBS Reports. Dan Rather wasn’t going to be there. Turns out there were a couple of “details” that were more like, wrinkles.
First, the interview to be conducted was for what was at the time, indisputably, the penultimate tacky tabloid television miscarriage shitbox of broadcast journalism then polluting the American airwaves. It was nationally broadcast, because it was nationally syndicated.
There’s no need to name the program. If you were alive, American, and owned a television in the late 80‘s, you at some point watched it and felt shame.
Second, the interview was going to be between a “reporter” and, not one, not two, ...but eight teenagers who were going to talk about a spontaneous graveside shrine they’d assembled to honor a good friend of theirs; an unfortunate kid who had been struck and killed by a car while trying to run across a busy local highway. The memorial had become their hangout, a place to gather as a group and feel close to their lost friend.
Grieving teenagers socializing in a graveyard. That was the hook. That was the story. A perfect opportunity to exploit a tragedy.
And as the kicker, the interview was to take place literally on the kid’s grave. Right there, on his barely cold grave. Cameras, tripods, microphones, ...on a dead kid’s grave.
Classy.
But before I go acting all judgmental, let me start by taking a quick detour up the high road.
In a learning sense, as a teachable moment, the experience was a window into the declining world of American broadcast journalism.
...Okay, that’s all I’ve got for the high road. Because beyond that it was nothing more than an exercise in total exploitation that served no legitimate journalistic purpose. It was a cheap and easy way to tug at stranger’s heartstrings for no other purpose than to hook and hold viewers for a half-hour between the nightly news and the prime time sitcoms. The story didn’t educate. It didn’t inform. It didn’t matter. It sold potato chips, it sold Chia Pets, and it sold denture cream. That’s the highest road I can offer, folks. That’s what it was about.
And it was a process that was disturbingly uncomfortable to be a part of. I remember feeling as we drove into the cemetery, as we set up our gear, as we recorded the images, and as I drove home that night.... ashamed and guilty and completely creeped out. This is not where I’d meant to go with my career. This was not the course I’d thought I’d set. I felt corrupted and compromised, and I felt stupid and I felt trapped. I’d made a moral misstep. I’d made a tactical error that I was not going to easily overcome. Because by taking that job, I had labelled myself as someone who would.
And so on a regular basis over the next couple of years, I did. The work was distasteful, and dubious, but it was plentiful and steady, which dovetailed perfectly with my debt structure at the time, ...equally plentiful and steady. So for a while, I became a regular player in the tabloid TV market. My photographic marching orders were “If you see tears, stay tight and keep rolling.” And tears were liquid gold to the Tabloids. Segment producers joked about “frequent crier miles”.
If you haven’t guessed, I look back on those days with regret.
Not just because I had set a professional precedent. Not just because I’d branded myself with a label. Not just because I’d stained myself with a market niche reputation. (“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of him. Rast. He shoots a lot of that tabloid stuff.”)
My big mistake was the karma. I played around with a big box of karma matches, and I got burned.
Because to this day, in terms ripped right out of the pitch meeting for My Name Is Earl, I swear that whenever something now goes wrong in my life---or at least, goes wrong in my professional life---it is at least in part a payback for the bad karma I earned and spent from taking that one... stinking... shoot.
And though intellectually I know better; ...that my career has gone the way it’s gone not solely because of some mysterious ethereal spiritual force, but instead because of other more mundane and tangible earthbound failings...(like a deficiency of talent, and little, if anything, resembling drive).....still I can’t help thinking that it was that ethical karmic misstep that tripped some sort of cosmic career circuit breaker that stubbornly refuses to be reset.
We’ll see. I have a lot of work to do, karmic and otherwise, and if I mind my business and keep my bearings, I think I’ve still got a little time left and a chance. I don’t feel I’m being punished. It’s more like I knocked myself out of balance, and ever since, it’s been incremental matters of recovery. I’ve had my successes and I seem to be making some headway. Best of all I’m getting to that late point in life where a ticking life clock reminds me everyday that only I can measure the things that are my successes.
But I just wanted to pass this tale along to you newbies out there, a cautionary tale I suppose, for you to hear, and keep, and file away as a reminder, should you ever wander down a shortcut path that looks temptingly righteous, but disturbingly resemblant, to the one I’ve described above. Beware the Karmic depressions, and the pitfalls and pratfalls they bring.
Note where you wanted to be going.
Note the places you’ve been.
Note where you are at this moment.
Now note the things that you’ve seen.
Now look down the path.
Is it clear in intent, free of debris, or is it cluttered with excuses and cheats?
Is it principle that propels you, is it truth that compels you, or is it merely the gravity of conceit?
Is what you see, what you’ve sought? Something more, something less? Or simply the thing that’s in reach.
Then be warned the depressions, the Karmanic Depressions, and the lessons of life that they teach.
© 2016 James Mark Rast
But before I go acting all judgmental, let me start by taking a quick detour up the high road.
In a learning sense, as a teachable moment, the experience was a window into the declining world of American broadcast journalism.
...Okay, that’s all I’ve got for the high road. Because beyond that it was nothing more than an exercise in total exploitation that served no legitimate journalistic purpose. It was a cheap and easy way to tug at stranger’s heartstrings for no other purpose than to hook and hold viewers for a half-hour between the nightly news and the prime time sitcoms. The story didn’t educate. It didn’t inform. It didn’t matter. It sold potato chips, it sold Chia Pets, and it sold denture cream. That’s the highest road I can offer, folks. That’s what it was about.
And it was a process that was disturbingly uncomfortable to be a part of. I remember feeling as we drove into the cemetery, as we set up our gear, as we recorded the images, and as I drove home that night.... ashamed and guilty and completely creeped out. This is not where I’d meant to go with my career. This was not the course I’d thought I’d set. I felt corrupted and compromised, and I felt stupid and I felt trapped. I’d made a moral misstep. I’d made a tactical error that I was not going to easily overcome. Because by taking that job, I had labelled myself as someone who would.
And so on a regular basis over the next couple of years, I did. The work was distasteful, and dubious, but it was plentiful and steady, which dovetailed perfectly with my debt structure at the time, ...equally plentiful and steady. So for a while, I became a regular player in the tabloid TV market. My photographic marching orders were “If you see tears, stay tight and keep rolling.” And tears were liquid gold to the Tabloids. Segment producers joked about “frequent crier miles”.
If you haven’t guessed, I look back on those days with regret.
Not just because I had set a professional precedent. Not just because I’d branded myself with a label. Not just because I’d stained myself with a market niche reputation. (“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of him. Rast. He shoots a lot of that tabloid stuff.”)
My big mistake was the karma. I played around with a big box of karma matches, and I got burned.
Because to this day, in terms ripped right out of the pitch meeting for My Name Is Earl, I swear that whenever something now goes wrong in my life---or at least, goes wrong in my professional life---it is at least in part a payback for the bad karma I earned and spent from taking that one... stinking... shoot.
And though intellectually I know better; ...that my career has gone the way it’s gone not solely because of some mysterious ethereal spiritual force, but instead because of other more mundane and tangible earthbound failings...(like a deficiency of talent, and little, if anything, resembling drive).....still I can’t help thinking that it was that ethical karmic misstep that tripped some sort of cosmic career circuit breaker that stubbornly refuses to be reset.
We’ll see. I have a lot of work to do, karmic and otherwise, and if I mind my business and keep my bearings, I think I’ve still got a little time left and a chance. I don’t feel I’m being punished. It’s more like I knocked myself out of balance, and ever since, it’s been incremental matters of recovery. I’ve had my successes and I seem to be making some headway. Best of all I’m getting to that late point in life where a ticking life clock reminds me everyday that only I can measure the things that are my successes.
But I just wanted to pass this tale along to you newbies out there, a cautionary tale I suppose, for you to hear, and keep, and file away as a reminder, should you ever wander down a shortcut path that looks temptingly righteous, but disturbingly resemblant, to the one I’ve described above. Beware the Karmic depressions, and the pitfalls and pratfalls they bring.
Note where you wanted to be going.
Note the places you’ve been.
Note where you are at this moment.
Now note the things that you’ve seen.
Now look down the path.
Is it clear in intent, free of debris, or is it cluttered with excuses and cheats?
Is it principle that propels you, is it truth that compels you, or is it merely the gravity of conceit?
Is what you see, what you’ve sought? Something more, something less? Or simply the thing that’s in reach.
Then be warned the depressions, the Karmanic Depressions, and the lessons of life that they teach.
© 2016 James Mark Rast
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