Yeah, they were projected in a huge seemed to like it. In fact, one teacher becoming very aggressive and annoying.
auditorium, from a regular super-8 liked my films so much he encouraged They become like these little gremlins,
4
projector, and the image was completely me to leave Eisenhower and go to a film taunting and threatening and smack-

issue
dim, like, “Do I see a movie up there, or school. ing people. Plus, they carry an electric
am I imagining this?” Because I wanted a That’s when I transferred to Emerson charge. We get a clue about why this is
Fluxion big picture, so I put the projector back as College, where I finally had a chance to happening at the top of the movie. In a



far as possible, but since it was only 8mm, really learn how to make a film: four- cold open, we see this scientist with a
ART
it only had about a five-foot throw, so it gang synchronizers, how to operate a kids’ TV show, my version of Mr. Wizard.
was like this cloud on the screen that I Movieola, editing techniques. In this The science lesson on the show is that he
recognized but probably nobody else did. one class, we had the use of a camera can generate enough electricity from a
I did this stuff in high school, and as a to make a movie. It was actually a news pound of sauerkraut to light a small light
result I was elected class clown, which camera that had a hundred-foot 16mm bulb. But then, as Wizard turns his back,
really pissed my father off. Then I went loads, black and white. The class made the sauerkraut crawls away off the table
to college. For three years I went to a one movie, and at night and on the and actually ends up murdering his wife.
place in upper New York State called weekends, I took the camera and made It’s kind of like The Tingler. Actually, it’s
Eisenhower College, which is now a chi- another movie. I wanted to make a mon- a lot like The Tingler. We had a mound
ropractic school, or a minimum-security ster movie but I didn’t have any budget. of sauerkraut on a cardboard cutout that
prison, I don’t remember which, but it So I got all my friends together—both we animated by dragging it along the
failed as a college. I had been rejected of them—and we made a movie about floor with a string.
by every other school in the world, cabbages that take over the world. It was At the end of the movie there’s this huge
because I’d had such a problem with my very episodic, because I just shot when rumble, the whole town begins to shake,
attitude-slash-imagination in high school. I could, half an hour at a time. It actually and the mother lode of sauerkraut that’s
My SATs were good, but my grades premiered, in this theater that I rented. been generating outside Boston—prob-
sucked. So I went to Eisenhower, where It had a run of one showing. But we had ably somewhere around Lechmere—has
I continued to make movies. Every time a rock band, and promotion, and it was now reached gigantic proportions, it’s
I had a chance to not write a paper, not fun. I sat in the back of the theater with a grown and grown like an amoeba, we
do a report, I’d make a movie instead. I bottle of tequila. have this huge living mound of slurping
did a film cut to Rhapsody in Blue where burping sauerkraut coming through Bos-
I went around New York City filming What happens in the cabbage movie? ton and knocking over various landmarks,
all these bag ladies and bums. It was The plot is that all over the city, for like I think the Eastern Prudential Tower,
incredibly depressing, but my teachers some unknown reason, cabbages are the Hancock Tower—
164