Episode III - Savior of Film

Today, I may have just saved a film from being lost forever.

But more on that later. You, dear reader, might be wondering why I haven't written a blog in a while, especially after I ended my last one on such an ambiguous note. Was I going to like it here? Would it turn towards hatred? Am I even allowed to speak publicly on my views of a government job? Is this blog legal?

Well, things have just been getting better and better here. I didn't update the blog because I felt like I was doing a lot of the same thing, but it hit me today how much has changed. I have a cubicle now for the first time in my life, replete with my posters for Astro Zombies, Mad Max: Fury Road, my framed original of Stunt Rock, and my new poster for a double feature of The Horror of Party Beach and The Curse of the Living Corpse. I think it's making a good impression on the folks here. I should make sure to put up a picture of my wife and kids at some point soon.

On top of that, I have a steady project that I've been working on, very prestigious and very glorious to behold. Throughout the entire history of moving images, there has been one medium that surpasses all others to become the most beautiful and transcendent form of art known to man: Public Television.

*sniff* It's beautiful. We have a vast, and I mean VAST collection from NET that dates back to the early 1950s. Unfortunately, out of all the years we had them, we've never taken inventory. UNTIL NOW. So, myself and a co-worker go into the vault for three to four hours every day and take inventory. Each row has over 1,000 films, and there are about 12 rows. Some people say it can't be done in one summer. To those people, I say feh!

I did the math today and if we keep up at the rate we're going, we'll be able to finish this project in 24 days, which is wonderful to actually finish something that you spend your whole summer working on. For some reason, this is not tedious work to me. In fact, in its own warped way, I'm kinda loving it. These are all films and film cans that haven't been opened for DECADES, and most of them haven't been touched in half a century. Hardly any of these are readily available (in fact, the whole reason we're doing this is so that we can digitize them for future use), but they have some absolutely amazing titles.

For instance, you'll get stuck on a series about science that has several unidentified cans filled with dozens of reels, but on the other hand, you could find an NET Journal on George Cukor, a 1950s Profile on Orson Welles that likely has not been seen SINCE the 1950s (this will likely go to the top of the preservation queue), and some children's series with the best names like The Adventures of Danny Dee. Not sure how, but this one ended up on Youtube. Enjoy it in all its chalky, Cold War-era glory:

So, I've been working on this for the past few weeks now, which is why I haven't updated my blog much, because this inventory is what I've been doing most every day. But you don't realize change as it's happening. As time has gone on, I've realized how comfortable I am in my little workspace here. I'm getting along well with coworkers, and I've used a lot of my free time to watch some great movies (which I'll go into more detail about in a later blog post, or possibly a later blog I've been meaning to start strictly about movies). Plus, yesterday, I finished the first rough cut of the short film I directed in May: Amateurs. It's not perfect yet, but it'll get there soon enough, hopefully.

The crazy thing that happened to me today, though (and the impetus for writing this in the first place) is that I found something bizarre in the NET collection today: Non-NET films. They had Library of Congress labels, but their catalog numbers had long since fallen off. And so, the mystery was afoot. Somehow, these poor films had lost their way. They were old super-8 reels about 1970s Chevrolet and Pontiac cars, but I knew they had to belong somewhere else.

After doing some thorough searching through the database and discussing it with another coworker, we discovered that they belonged in a small section devoted to these bizarre super-8 films. We found it, tucked away in a corner in a huge vault, and realized they had all been stacked with no regard for the three we found (It went right from number 75 to 79), and that's when it hit me: These have probably been missing for years, at least a decade, if not 40 years since they were originally copyrighted. Had it not been for me, these films may have never been found. Thanks to me, the Chevrolet Productivity Network program on the 1977 Chevy Blazer will be preserved for all mankind.

It's a little ridiculous, but that's what we're about here: Making sure that all kinds of film, be it Classical Hollywood, foreign films, educational shorts, public television, 8mm pornos (yes, there are plenty of those), and even car commericals, are preserved for the future. Every kind of moving image is a part of our history. Even an ad for the 1977 Chevy Blazer.

Episode II - Cold Dirty Work (Sometimes): A Semi-Inspirational Post

After working two full days at my new job, it’s easy to see why some people are so eager to give up on their dreams.

But, once again, I’m getting ahead of myself. I have officially started work at the Packard Campus in Culpeper, VA, within the Library of Congress and, just in my first couple days, I’m filled with awe as well as something a little less awesome, something people these days like to call the Imposter Syndrome.

First off, I cannot get over every film I come across here. I took pictures throughout Washington, sure, but I took more pictures of film reels here in my first day than I did the entire time I was in D.C. I was always the kind of kid who just liked to browse through video stores, so this is pretty much the same, except with history. So, naturally, working at a building where you’ll see an 8mm copy of Ghidorah just sitting at your desk does excite me a little bit.

However, there’s something about the people here. Nothing wrong with them at all; on the contrary, it’s my own problems that are getting in the way. Everybody I’ve met so far is so well-versed in cinema knowledge, and if they don’t know all about, say, the films of Mario Bava, then they know technical stuff that is WELL beyond even my capacity of learning.

Therefore, I’m filled with Imposter Syndrome, wandering through the hallways of this building in a daze, asking myself, “Do I even belong here?” Everybody seems to know so much more than I do, even the brand new hires, so why am I even here? Heady, I know, but I think it’s always normal to question your life choices on your first day on the job.

Which makes sense considering how my entire afternoon was moving old film cans off one shelf and onto another so I could move even older, rustier, and sometimes downright nasty film cans onto their own separate shelf. It took hours. Now wait, you may ask yourself, doesn’t that sound really tedious and dull? Well, yes. Very much so. That’s not to say I wasn’t excited when I came across a 16mm print of To Be or Not to Be or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

But that’s what a lot of archiving is, moving cans from one shelf to another to get things better organized. It led to an evening of pure exhaustion where all I did was get depressed and watch Space Ghost Coast to Coast and eat pizza and queso (not necessarily together).

So, no way a blog post was going up last night. I was in no mood to chat about all my experiences because, not only did I not feel like I belonged there, but I just was not in the proper mood to be excited about my job.

Today comes by, though, and my badge to the building still does not work. I have to sign in as a guest (as if my ego wasn’t already badly damaged). But today, after sitting down and viewing some old, unidentified silent films we will be presenting at workshop next weekend, I was officially put on a project. And, naturally, it’s the stinky stuff.

The project I’ll be assisting with for the next few weeks involves going through the “vinegar vault,” films that have been damaged over time due to a chemical process well beyond my understanding (and that end up smelling like vinegar), and helping to save them in some way. How? I don’t know just yet. Today was the planning day.

Part of the day was actually spent in the vault, kept at a brisk 50 degrees (and closed, of course, likely to keep the smell contained), pulling down various film cans and checking to see how badly they were damaged, as well as determining which ones were readily available within the Library and outside the Library.

This was the best part of my two days working here. I was hanging out in the vault with an awesome guy and we actually got to look at some of the images, even as we did our best not to screw anything up. We looked at The Sand Pebbles, the original True Grit, Wild in the Streets, Destroy All Monsters!, Bonnie and Clyde (where I got to see the old Warner Bros. logo on film), I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, and plenty more (tomorrow, hopefully, we’re going to be looking at innumerable others, including a few of my all-time favorites).

But no job is not without its tedious portions, and for most of my day, I sat in front of a computer looking up these movies in a database and entering information about them into a database. That way, it’s easier to organize them based on how important it is to restore them soon. It’s a boring step, but necessary to archiving. As I was doing it, its importance was not lost on me.

Instead, another feeling came over me. This is what it would be like to be at any 9-5 office job. The only difference is how amazing the office I’m working is, and how the work I’m doing now will affect the future of certain films. But it’s easy to lose track of the big picture when you’re staring at a computer doing the same three steps for hours on end.

That’s when I thought to myself how easy it must be for people to give up on their dreams. It’s not because office life is necessarily alluring, but at the end of these past couple days, I have been exhausted. Yesterday, because I was hauling film cans around all afternoon, and today because I stared at a computer until I felt pretty much numb. As I was leaving the office, I thought about how I barely wanted to do anything tonight.

And I have so many dreams in my head right now that I want to work on. I have a film I directed that still needs to be edited, I have a feature script I’ve been sitting on for months that I have not written yet, I still have not moved into my room here, and I want to keep watching new movies, constantly educating myself. After a long day at work, I don’t want to do any of those things.

But why shouldn’t I? I like working at the Library a lot so far (and I certainly hope I haven’t given off the opposite impression), but what’s the use of free time if I’m just going to squander it with absolutely nothing? I’m not going to give up on my dreams just because I’m tired at the end of a day. I HAVE to keep pushing forward, or I’ll just end up hating myself.

So, once I finish writing this, I’m going to cook up some dinner while working on my edit, write more of my feature, hang up my posters and put away clothes in my room, and maybe even watch a movie that’s new to me tonight. Because if I’m not going to do all of those things, who will?

Episode I - Wet Suit

They say you should always dress for the job you want, not necessarily the job you have. If this is true, then the job I want is a 19th century southern plantation owner.

I was told I had to look nice for my orientation today (after all, this is the friggin’ Library of Congress were talking about here, not your granddaddy’s library), so I had no choice but to break out the seersucker suit. In my opinion, there’s no such thing as being too snazzy. Going into my orientation, I found I was almost the only one there in a suit, let alone one of the seersucker variety. The only other people wearing suits looked like congressional interns, and their suits could hardly be described as well tailored for them. They’ll learn eventually.

All this to say, I am now officially an employee of the Library of Congress. The past few days have been such a whirlwind that I can barely keep my head screwed on. Just a little over 50 hours ago, I was back in Charlotte, in surroundings I had been used to for 16 years. Since that time, I drove up to Virginia, moved into a house with three other employees from the Library of Congress (all of whom are movie geeks, and all of whom I think I’ll get along with quite well), sampled various eateries in downtown Culpeper (despite its size, Culpeper is quite the culinary hotspot; pretty much every restaurant I’ve been to has been delicious), went to the Packard Campus Theater and got a brief glimpse of where I’ll be working the next few months, then packed up everything, went up to Silver Springs and saw a movie at the AFI Silver, which brings us all to today, where I spent the entire day in hot Washington D.C. in a full suit.

Firstly, I cannot recommend the Packard Campus Theater or the AFI Silver highly enough. The AFI Silver has some wonderful things on display as you walk in (including scripts from Pennies from Heaven and The Third Man, in honor of their Steve Martin and Orson Welles retrospectives), and the main theater where I saw House of Wax in 3D was absolutely gorgeous. On top of that, it was my first time seeing House of Wax, and it was an absolute blast, providing equal amounts of laughs and legitimate scares after all these years (and really REALLY good 3D, amazingly enough).

But the Packard Campus Theater was something special. It has a gorgeous red velvet interior, with a wonderful curtain over the screen. The ceiling is painted with a starry nighttime background, and there’s an organ at the front to provide live musical accompaniment for silent film screenings. The best part is every screening here is FREE (and a great deal of them are on actual film). Even if I wasn’t working on the Campus for the next few months, I would still make an effort to return to this theater any time I was in Culpeper.

But oh yeah, the job, that’s why I’m here. I took the Oath of Office this morning, so I am an official Library Aid in the Moving Pictures section of the National Audiovisual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA. It’s a mouthful, and very vague as to what my actual duties will entail, but that’s not what orientation is about. Orientation is about getting you pumped up to work at such a place. I don’t know why you need to get people pumped up about working at the Library of Congress, though. It’s one of the closest things we have to a real palace in America, rivaling some of the great art galleries and museums in the world. On the tour we took today, every room was filled with incredible and intricate architecture that just boggled the mind.

And the tour was easily the best part of the day, as the rest of the day was spent in a conference room hearing various aspects about the Library of Congress that were not applicable to my job. Unfortunately, even in that one conference room, and despite the “Stay-Cool” fabric of my seersucker suit, I was still sweating like a dog, and by the end of the day, my suit was soaked. As wonderful as suits are, there’s nothing quite like taking them off at the end of the day and remembering what cool air feels like.

But hey, I gots a badge! And that’s a good start, right?

Oh, by the way, in case you’re wondering where I got the blog title from: