Bitten by the bug 25 years ago…
It just hit me as I began to think back on my life. I started chasing back my history in association with film, trying to figure out what path lead me to where I am today–considering a life in filmmaking. It all started, in full, during the summer of 1982 when my family passed through Atlanta, GA on summer vacation. My aunt and uncle live in Atlanta and we stayed with them a few days, before continuing our annual trek to my Grandmother’s house in southern Alabama. In 1982, I was 12 years old, and near my peak as a dreamer, perfectly prepared to be bitten by the bug.
In order for you to understand just what the gravity of that summer involved, you need to know a little about my history, because there is probably much about it that few people can connect with today. I grew up in a strict Christian household. For most of my childhood my parents were members of a Fundamental Baptist church. Unless you have some connection with this particular breed of Christendom, you would have no reason to understand just how strict my household was, and by strict, I mean religious. My particular church was pretty extreme when it came to religious rules. Women did not wear pants, men wore suits and ties to church and nearly all worldly pleasures were anathema.
It seems that the Fundamental Baptists were really concerned with worldly living, and had hosts of rules for members that were sanctionable, meaning, if you were too worldly, you could lose your membership and be excommunicated. Granted, I never new anyone who was excommunicated for worldly living, but the fact that fire and brimstone was awaiting such a person, it wasn’t really an issue–at least not that people would make public. Part of this hyper-legalistic religion’s job was to make up rules about what was off limits, and I my parents took great effort to ensure our compliance. Among the prohibitions was nearly anything that the average person took pleasure in. Not only were we prohibited from the normal vices like smoking, drinking and gambling, but we could not listen to rock music, dance… or go to movies.
So, until the summer of 1982, I had never been to a movie theater… that was until our visit to my aunt and uncle’s in Atlanta. For those of you who where not around in 1982, there was a great deal of buzz about Steven Speilberg’s latest movie. My aunt and uncle were former Christian missionaries for a more liberal wing of the Baptist Church… Southern Baptist. It seems that the Southern Baptist had no problem with going to the movies and this somehow allowed them to prevail on my parents to allow us to go to see E. T. the Extra Terrestrial.
Sitting that summer in front of the big screen, eating popcorn and watching kids fly on bikes–I was mesmerized. The magic of the movies fit so well with my youthful imagination and I felt like I had been missing something all my life. It was at that theater in 1982 that I was bitten by the movie bug, something that has taken many forms throughout my life. Upon our return home my mom suffered some criticisim when my youngest brother leaked our movie going experience to others in the church, something we were warned not to do by my parents.
By the end of 1982, my parents began visiting other churches and by 1983 lifted the embargo on movies on their children once they turned 13– convenient, because I just happened to turn 13 that May… just in time for the release of Return of the Jedi which my dad took me to for my birthday. Actually, the bug bit me earlier in my life when I watched a TV show in the making of the Empire Strikes Back. I remember that, because I made my own stop-action animated movie at home sometime around 1980.
Since that time, I have seen many hundreds of movies in the theater and it has even been during several depressed periods of my life that I sought mental and emotional refuge in the theater. Many summer Saturdays spent hopping from screen to screen during all day movie fests. I’ve even been through dry periods, most notable in the early 2000’s when the magic of movies eluded me and studios produced some of the worst schlock since the 1970’s. For nearly 4 years I didn’t enter a theater and had no real desire to.
My history with film has been a rocky path filled with many twists and turns, but in 1998 I worked on my first film shoot in Atlanta and after learning the jobs of a dolly grip and jib arm operator, my love for filmmaking took on a whole new persona. Today I wrestle with how to pursue my passion and where to draw my boundaries. I want to tell stories for a living, but I have no idea how to go about that the right way.
As I laid sleeplessly in my bed early this morning, I chased the dream back in time. This is a dream that has haunted me for over 25 years. When I juxtapose the life of a filmmaker on that of a Christian, I still wrestle with some of the residue of my youth. Can such a worldly profession be something pleasing to God? I have spent years fighting it, wondering where God wants me in life. I worry that somehow I will choose a path in life that is not according to God’s good pleasure.
As these thoughts spun in my head, a verse from the Bible bubbled up from the midst of my confusion. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.” Such a verse is both comforting and confusing to me. At the moment, I can only trust that the verse was God’s speaking to me in the midst of my current wrestling. It reminds me that He has the ability to direct my path. If I trust in Him, I also trust in his leading. If God allows my path to head down a road that leads to a film career, I shouldn’t question and doubt it, I should just trust in Him.
If I trust in God and in His leading, I have no other choice than to believe that 25 years ago, while sitting in that theater under the glow of the big screen, that somehow God was directing my path. Whether that path leads to or away from a career in film, I do not know; what I do know, is that I trust not in my own understanding, but trust in the greatest Director of all, the One who is capable of directing my path.