ry jursday • February 12, 1998
mm The Battalion
#% lyll I Li ■ ■
JA Filmmaker is Born
mo f)ggias (iteraffy go behind the scenes to make their feature film dehut
By Travis Hopper
Staff writer
roung filmmakers have cilways had it rough,
ere Quentin Tarantino worked as a clerk in a video
i Ko: store to make money while writing Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs. Spike Lee applied for five credit
1 and charged them to their limits while making
iere, ol haze. Kevin Smith, director of Clerks and
us li mgkmy, registered for a basket-making class at
; nmunity college to get student prices for film.
|80:' iani Montgomery, a senior economics major,
luan Loya, a sophomore computer science ma-
ladiheir own unique approach to raising mon-
SATURr their upcoming film.
I Vhai 1 did was write some alumni and utilize my
2 coj mections,” Montgomery said. “I just asked
I Cc i for some donations and support, and some of
i were really anxious to help.”
I " 3th s! udents met last year through the MSC Film
Jty, and although they have an equal passion for
ma, they came together from very different
A grou nds. Even though Loya said he idolizes doc-
ntar filmmakers such as Roger Moore and Er-
e ' ; lorrls, he said he always has been in filmmaking
re entertainment aspect.
n high school it was a fun thing to do with
ds,’j Loya said. “We didn’t care about getting paid
taking this amazing film that won a bunch of
:ds. II just liked being a goof. If it’s fun, it’s good
e ight for me.”
[ontgomery, on the other hand, said he sees a job
ovi^s as his chance to have a star on the Holly-
d Walk of Fame.
t’s always something that I’ve wanted to do,” he
“I’ve always liked to write, and I’ve always want-
) be a director.”
[ (ontgomery said he decided if he wanted a ca-
in movies, the place to be was Los Angeles. So
f lie past two summers, he has jumped in his car
headed for the bright lights of Tinseltown.
■ The first summer I interned at Paramount, but it
I it much except getting coffee and lunch for peo-
Montgomery said. “The next summer I got a
- ice t<) work on a film called The Marshall of Rev-
on with Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn of
igers, and that was a real learning experience.”
ue big obstacle of being a student filmmaker is
ley, or rather, a lack of it. In an environment
re most students will eat their roommate’s left-
• pizza crust rather than call out for dinner, it goes
without saying that coming up with an extra $10,000
or so is no small feat.
“It’s hard to raise money because you can’t tell
the investors that they are going to get their money
back,” Loya said. “Right now we are working on a
10-minute silent short called The Paper Boy, and
even that is more expensive than it sounds. It’s also
hard to do material that might be a little controver
sial because a lot of donors don’t want any part of
it. The MSC helps us out as much as it can, but it’s
an expensive process.”
While there is little money to pay for film and rent
lights and cameras, there is even less money to pay
the actors and crew. Montgomery has found a sure
fire way to circumvent that obstacle: just tell them
you are making a movie.
“A lot of people are willing to do it for free,” Mont
gomery said. “It seems like this really glamorous
thing, and people are drawn to that. Some of the
crew are professionals that we have to pay, but most
people work for free. I just have them sign a form that
says if we ever do make any money off the film, they
will get paid.”
Probably the most insurmountable problem fac-
ingTexas A&M student filmmakers is that there is no
blueprint for success to follow. While it is true that
the College of Liberal Arts is working on expanding
its fine arts curriculum and the English department
offers some exceptional film history classes, for Ag
gies who want to see their name in lights, it seems as
if the road goes on forever.
“We’ve had a lot of obstacles because we are work
ing from the ground up,” Montgomery said. “No one
from A&M has really laid a foundation as far as film-
making is concerned, and we don’t really have any
one to hand out equipment or show us how to edit.”
The Texas Film Festival, held every Febmary in the
MSC and Rudder Complex, is a good chance for Ag
gies to submit their work and shake hands with
many of Hollywood’s up-and-coming filmmakers.
“We were hoping to have our film ready for the
festival, but it just didn't turn out that way,” Loya said.
“Regardless, it’s good practice. We just want to make
an interesting story rather than try to make money”.
While Aggieland will certainly never be known as
Sin City 2, and “Bryan-College Station” will never be
spelled out in big, white letters on a hill overlooking
campus (Mt. Aggie was the last hope), there are ad
vantages to making a movie in the Brazos Valley.
“Even though College Station reminds me of Hong
Kong in that it’s a small town with a high concentration
RYAN ROGERS/The Battalion
Juan Loya and Adam Montgomery stand outside Rudder Complex. The two students are currently working on a 10-minute short film titled, The Paper Boy.
of people, and even though it’s hard to find a deserted
place to shoot, there are definitely some advantages,”
Montgomery said “Making a movie is a big deal here.
It’s not like L.A. where they see it all the time and peo
ple are like, ‘Get out of my face.’ People here are really
anxious to help and be a part of something like this.”
Just as they had different means of arriving
where they are right now, Loya and Montgomery
also have different goals when it comes to careers
after they graduate.
“I don’t think I would ever want to get paid for mak
ing movies,” Loya said. “If it was a job, it just wouldn’t
be as fun. You know, I wouldn’t turn down an opportu
nity to do a film if one was presented, but my dream is
just to be able to make movies on the weekend with my
friends and family. They wouldn’t even have to be edit
ed and finished. I would just enjoy the whole atmos
phere of doing what I love and having fun doing it.”
For Montgomery, once graduation has come and
gone, he said he plans to pack his bags and head off
for the Sunset Strip.
“Probably what I’ll end up doing at first is work
ing at a studio sorting scripts and trying to get mine
noticed,” he said. “I just thought it would be smart to
get a practical degree first, and then if the film thing
doesn’t work out, at least I will have something to fall
back on. My life goal in movie making is that I want
to set a trend and leave my little stamp on pop cul
ture. You know, I would love to do a cool movie where
the guys do something like wear fedoras. That way,
if it caught on and everyone started doing it, I would
know that it was because of something that I did.”
Dazed and Confused reintroduced “Check ya’ lat
er” into the popular vernacular of America’s youth.
Swingers helped fuel the revival of the Rat Pack,
“beautiful babies,” and martinis. Who knows? Some
day soon you might be wearing a felt fedora, and
now you’ll understand why.
1ES VINEYARD/The Battalion
r yg | J ;
Student poll reveals bad music plagues radio waves
By Stephen Wells
Staff writer
A ll Aggies, regardless of station or affil
iation, share a common bond. It is not
just about Silver Taps, Muster, and
Bonfire. This runs much deeper. Somewhere,
sometime, we have all been exposed to a ter
rible song against our will.
One such experience still scars my mind.
I was on a two-hour car trip with one of my
friends, someone for whom I actually trans
ported a borrowed street sign once, and all
he would listen to was the Meatloaf single
“Anything for Love.” Over and over the song
played despite my desperate pleas for a re
prieve. To this day I can not speak to him face
to face, mainly because he lives in Colorado.
This painful recollection came up one day
during a Hanson video (who else?), so I
thought I would share my misery with the
rest of the Texas A&M student body. The re
sult was this anonymous bad music poll. Be
warned; many of the songs by groups in this
bad song survey will get stuck in your head.
Just imagine suffering through Math 151 and
“Oh, Mickey you’re so fine,” at the same time.
Far and away, the annoying song leaders
are those sickening British proto-divas, the
Spice Girls. Comments about their musical
ability ranged from the simple (“everything
the Spice Girls do will suck”), to the satiric
(“the Spice Girls are Britain’s joke on the rest
of the world”), to the sensuous (“take away
the miracle bras and they’re nothing”), to the
Satanic (“a never-ending Spice Girls concert
is my personal idea of Hell”). It makes you
wonder how both of their records are still on
the Billboard Top Ten. They must be big in
Austin, or something.
Speaking of pop acts, Hanson was on the
leader board as the number-two most de
spised group in Aggieland. One survey re
spondent wrote of the lovable young trio, “I
kind of hope they get caught with drugs or
older women or anything that will cut their
career short. Then we can all be spared.” An
other was a little kinder: “Maybe they’ll real
ize how much pain they are causing and quit
music forever.” We can only hope.
The rest of the Top-10 were represented
with equal hatred. For Marilyn Manson, the
typical Aggie response was a suggestion to go
back to Hades without ever making another
record. One respondent was more eloquent in
a hackle-raising way: “If it came down to lis
tening to fingernails on a chalkboard or a Mar
ilyn Manson record, I would have to pick the
fingernails because they have musical value.”
So far, the offending artists have been se
lected for the few songs they have released in
their (hopefully) short careers. However, all it
takes is one song to ruin an artist. Case in
point: Billy Ray Cyrus and “Achy Breaky Heart.”
It is widely accepted, years after the song has
been removed from the airwaves, that the lyri
cist should have been publicly executed with
out trial. “Billy Ray should be punished for this
song by being forced to watch people two-step
to the club remix,” one dejected pollee wrote.
Please see Music on Page 5.
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