Show & Tell-How I Try to Look Smart and Why You Believe Me

My roommate was getting coffee with our former professor, Leonard Oakland, this past weekend. Leonard has been teaching Literature for 43 years. That’s quite the history of experience. They were talking about being 24 years old and he told Kelly, “24-Scary! But a great time!” Oh Leonard, Ain’t it the truth.

I’ve been living on my own now for about five months and I think yeah, scary is a good word to use. I work for minimum wage, in a city I barely know, and I spend all of my time on developing skills that may never pay off in the end. If I’m not reading a book, I’m writing a screenplay which may never get produced. And if I’m not doing that, I’m selling tickets in a box office. At the end of each day, what do I have to show for it?

The home library is where I do most of my intellectual cheating. My roommate and I combine our books into one massive library, intimidating all who enter our hallowed grounds of literature, philosophy, and film. But I know that I haven’t read half the books on those shelves and I probably never will. But you don’t know that, and when you see all of my Charles Dickens books you can’t help but think, “kid knows his stuff.”  

I tell many people I meet that I’m a filmmaker, which is true. Yes, technically I’ve made three short films (and a few shorts for classes). But I’ve only made a whopping 75 bucks off of my movies, and that doesn’t really pay the bills. But I know how impressive the term FILMMAKER sounds (especially to single women) and I can’t resist the look of an intimidated peasant averting their eyes from the celebrity that is me. I could say ASPIRING filmmaker, but come on. Where’s the fun in that?

The act of working on a screenplay is incredibly frustrating, because a finished screenplay, as in greenlit and ready to produce, is still just a screenplay. Until it’s filmed, produced, edited, and released, that screenplay is just a bundle of paper with words. I envy the short story writer. If they want to write a story they can do it in a day and be done, and the whole world can consume it immediately. Once I finish the short script I’m working on, I still have to film the damn thing. I don’t know how professional screenwriters sleep at night, waiting for their next written work to be skewered by some hotshot director. I’m getting away from the point a bit so let me be perfectly clear when I say—working on a screenplay leaves little to show off with.

It’s scary to be in your early twenties because you work damn hard at your craft and you just don’t have much to show for it. But that’s because you’re in your early twenties. What do you expect? A 60,000 dollar salary plus benefits? Living on my own and working minimum wage is forcing me to get creative and get good at what I want to do. It’s annoying that I can’t prove that I’m stretching my intellect and talent every day, but at least I can say that I read James Joyce’s Ulysses.