Welles, Gilliam . . . and Singer

GREAT BARRINGTON -- A former NYU film student has revisited one of his most memorable film school shoots -- a filmmaking disaster on a level just below the more legendary ones of directors like Orson Welles and Terry Gilliam -- in a documentary that investigates what it actually takes to make a movie, even a small one

Keir Moreano has one successful documentary under his belt -- "As the Call, So the Echo," about an American volunteer surgeon in Vietnam -- but for his film "Unspooled," he went back to the source of his passion, his days on the crew of the senior thesis film of a school friend. Moreano brought along a video camera to document the production -- as he says in the film, Maurice Singer's senior effort was a big deal, the final school production of a young hot shot with everythig going for him. Moreano just wanted to use the video to learn a few lessons about big student productions -- but what started as a promising triumph by a rising NYU star turns into a humbling disaster.

For the man who has everything

"When I came to film school, I was in awe of Maurice," said Moreano. "Mau-rice had everything going for him. He had all this money from his father, he had

these sexy stars, he was in the best film school in the country, he had this location to shoot at, he had a great crew, what could go wrong? From my perspective, Maurice was going to be the next Scorsese, he was going to be the next big thing."

Singer penned "Bemoana" as a psychological thriller, a variation on Little Red Riding Hood in which the wolf is the victim, but he wasn't prepared for his own version of the same that would unfold behind the camera. Taking a good-sized crew up to Vermont in the winter to shoot, Singer's production was beset with problems due to the weather that created all sorts of delays -- the delays, in turn, demanded more of the crew, which created a situation of high stress and sleep deprivation, resulting in sickness, personal conflicts, technical problems and the horrible realization that the boy wonder was perhaps not up to the task of planning such a production.

"When I began the process of documenting the set, I was looking for a way to learn so that when my turn came to make my senior thesis, then I would be able to learn from the mistakes of others," said Moreano, "but what ended up happening was that the story I was telling behind the camera ended up being even bigger than the one we were telling in front of it. I just became slowly aware that the process of putting this thing together was a lot more interesting than the film."

It was a revelatory experience for Moreano, who came to film school wanting to make movies about UFOs and dinosaurs, but was destined to leave with the desire to document something far more grounded -- and far more weird than any science fiction.

"I realized that narrative directing wasn't something that I really wanted to pursue," said Moreano. "Ultimately I found that the non-fiction of our lives is so much more stupendously bizarre than our fiction. I kept thinking as I was going through the experience, 'I could never write this, no one could ever write this, this takes 23 people all interacting in a real life move -- like life!"

Picking up the pieces

Moreano ended up working with the camera crew from "Bemoana" on his documentary and after the trip to Vietnam together, he began retracing his steps with them, contacting and interviewing others who had lived the production nightmare in Vermont with them and revisiting the five hours of original footage he had shot.

"Maurice was the real trick," said Moreano. "He did not want to talk to me for a long time, it took me years and years to track him down after an initial interview -- which he gave almost immediately after the fact. I think he was still in shock."

These days, Moreano and Singer do speak about the experience -- Moreano describes himself as Singer's "film shrink" -- and Singer has moved on with his life and career. Currently, he is an associate producer for Partisan Pictures. At the time Moreano interviewed him for the film, though, he was still attempting to get on with his life.

"I think this was an epic event in his life," said Moreano. "I think this is a defining moment for him, and so I would say that he struggled quite a bit. He struggled so much with this that he actually went back and did some re-shoots on the actual film."

Behind the personal tale of Singer is the much larger issue of the nature of filmmaker -- specifically, its place as a collaborative art. The way movies are marketed and studied, much is given to the auteur theory -- that is, the notion that a film director is the central creative body of a movie. Moreano's documentary begs otherwise and portrays a film as a delicate balance of multiple individuals coming together to add their own piece to a large pie and watching it meld with the parts contributed by other participants.

"It isn't something that people think about when they start to make a film," said Moreano. "I think that a lot of people come in thinking that they can do it on their own because that's the way they've always done it. I'm of the generation that grew up with digital cameras and Final Cut Pro, all high schools had video programs, and so I think that a lot of people came into it feeling like, "Oh, yeah, I can do this on my own and I'll just get some people to help out, to act and get everyone pizza," and, of course, the reality of it is that it's highly, highly collaborative. I think my film testifies a little bit that, in the end, it's not even one person's film, it's a collective experience and a collective ownership over that experience. I think it's hard to be an auteur."

In the film, cameraman Gordon Arkenberg, reflecting on his experience shooting Singer's film, says that all of a person's impressions of what it takes to make a film comes from watching movies, and that in no way prepares you for a real world understanding of what it takes. You enter film school a dreamer, but if you're smart, you leave it a pragmatist.

"It's sort of like if you are really in love with eating chocolate, deciding you want to be a chef," said Moreano, "and then not realizing that you have to go to chef school and deal with all this other stuff, learn how to make chocolate. There's a really big difference between the piece of art and learning to make the piece of art."

Filmmaking as craft

Moreano points to those who learn the craft of filmmaking as the ones who seem to do best in the real world -- in Moreano's experience, people who specialized in camera and editing and lighting found their way in the industry better than those who wanted to write and direct.

Moreano thinks that this is because these are testable, qualifiable technical skills -- and because there is the glitter of being in a creative field and the reality of paying the bills. It's not about ego -- it's about survival.

"The financial task of becoming a filmmaker is much like somebody who goes to a liberal arts school as an English major and then ends up doing marketing for a company," said Moreano. "In a lot of ways, the journey in film school is also similar, you go to school to learn this craft and then a vast majority of us end up having to make money with the craft, which is totally different. There are many, many people I know -- many people -- who were hoping that their film would break out of the student film festival and ended up having to go shoot wedding videos in New York or whatever."

In this manner, even though Moreano's film seems like a specialty subject, he has found that it speaks to people who do not go to film school or pursue a movie career. He says that he's been very shocked to discover that the story has more universal appeal than he initially expected and he thinks part of it has to do with the fact that our society is permeated with knowledge about and attitude towards movies.

"I think that the story just goes back to people pursuing their dreams and sometimes people pursue impossible dreams," said Moreano. "Movies dominate our culture, we're all movie makers and we're all movie critics, and there are a lot of wannabe filmmakers out there. There are a lot of people who thought about making a film or have a script or thought about writing a script or, just like the rest of us, were in love in with movies and leave theaters all the time saying 'I could have done better' or say 'This would make a great movie.'"

Despite the possible trauma of the "Bemoana" shoot, Moreano managed to learn the right lesson from the experience and reflect on it in regard to his creative and professional needs. His move into documentaries and away from narrative has allowed him to get real work done -- he's in touch with many old film school buddies who pursued the narrative path and continue to struggle to get projects done. Moreano sees it as one of the differences between the forms -- mounting a narrative production is often more challenging monetarily and organizationally than documentaries, which certainly have their own set of challenges -- but Moreano sees that he has films under his belt where so many other former film students have screenplays waiting for a home.

"I decided that I wanted to get hands on as soon as I could," said Moreano. "And also I just didn't want to write as much as some of my friends did. But I don't think there's a good or a bad way, obviously I'm praying everyday that their screenplays will get picked up and I'll get to document their set."

Moreano points out that the lesson future filmmakers can take from "Unspooled" is really the disaster itself -- expect one and use it as a trial by fire, and one that could be far worse outside of the school setting.

"You're in film school to make mistakes," said Moreano. "If you go to film school and you start making your first film and you don't make a mistake, I would be really worried. You're there in film school to make the valuable mistakes that in a professional environment would end your career. Like you would never work again if something of the magnitude of 'Bemoana' happened on a professional set. I would just say to go easy on yourself and realize you're out there to make mistakes -- and if you can learn from them, then you'll be successful."

"Unspooled" will screen at the Berkshire International Film Festival on Friday, May 16, at noon and 7:15 p.m. Moreano's film can be found online at www.unspooled.com.