John's Thoughts

This was a the film Bryan and I met on: an elaborate thesis film made by a directing class peer of mine, Howard Slavitt. Bryan was a production assistant helping with sound. I helped Howard by volunteering to work the boom mike one day. Bryan made some dry joke about Ed Asner and I laughed and we started talking. As it turned out, the film ended up being a disaster in the editing room, and no one could follow the storyline. Howard asked me to re-edit the film. I told a modified story utilizing a lot of footage of a little girl and voice-over. Fortunately it was a period drama, so I was able to have an old woman's voice re-count this experience as a little girl. Bryan sort of watched the film in all its incarnations and saw firsthand what I did to it. It ended up winning the student Academy Award. Howard was a good judge of editing, but despite the success of Summer Rain, he went back to law school!

Update! (May 5, 2000): Howard is now pursuing large format photography.