When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I fell in love with the movies. My mother took me to them whenever she could. Some were memorable, some not so much, but it never occurred to me as a six-year-old that movies were actually conscious constructs, planned out in advance, with actors reciting the lines that had already been written for them. Or that behind the camera there was a director and dozens of technicians who made up the team that got a movie made. As I sat in that darkened movie theater, everything up on that screen was real. But even if I’d realized it was “put together” for an audience, I’d have pushed that aside. It wouldn’t have mattered.

One movie, The Jolson Story, had to be real because it showed me a world I knew I wanted to be a part of, and where I might be accepted, and you didn’t need to be rich or fancy to be in it. So these movies were prototypes of worlds to come for anyone who subscribed. And that big screen was the window onto these worlds--for me, happier ones than the one I knew outside. (Besides, on sunny days, I always got a headache when I left the movie theater and went outside.)

One thing I never understood was why Fred Astaire was such a big movie star. He was kinda skinny and his voice was high-pitched. But I made the adjustments. Adjustments were things I was good at. For the record, though, when I grew up I changed my mind about Mr. Astaire.

Then there were the Saturday matinees and their Looney Tunes cartoons. When they started running, they just kept on running, one right after another, and I didn’t want them to stop running, and so I willed it that they’d keep on running. Ten, I counted! I was convinced it was personal, that I’d somehow effected an outcome. You can say the movies became interactive for me long before we had such a word (and I’m not so sure I got it wrong, either).

At this time in my life, television was new. I saw my first TV in a radio store window on the block I lived on, Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn. I didn’t even know what they called it. I later saw what a television camera looked like (the old Image Orthicon black-and-white camera), but I was mesmerized by all cameras, really. But television was like the movies, only live…and it was free.

Anyway. When I looked up at the ceiling in the movie theater and saw that beam of light that was being projected from the booth way up in the back, above the balcony even, I made up my mind to get up there someday. To my way of thinking, that’s where all the magic came from. How it got there I don’t think I ever gave much thought to. Not yet. Whoever was up there, though, was putting on the show and I wanted to put on the show. That beam of light over my head, with all those dust particles swirling around inside it, made its way onto the big white screen and another world. (I really did need to get up there, though).

Meanwhile, I had to figure a way to make my own movies without a camera or projector. If I could figure a way to create this world with whatever stuff I could put together, that would be better than nothing. So my mother bought me a sheet of white oak tag board and 8½ x 11 paper, crayons, scotch tape and scissors - and I was on my way as a moviemaker, theater owner, projectionist, and even the audience, all in one (I almost forgot actor).

The fact that I had no story to tell and couldn’t draw a straight line, was not something I ever gave any thought to. It didn’t matter. I was always good with titles and I knew the last frame of the film because I’d seen it at the movies-- “The End.” All I needed now was the stuff in the middle. The important thing was to make something up and get on with the show. Putting together the show, I forgot all about the present; my imagined “reality” was far better than anything I’d ever known, anyway.

So I had the title.

On the next sheet of 8½ x 11, I drew something with my crayons, which, even if I’d saved the stuff, I wouldn’t be able to decipher it today, and probably couldn’t have done it then either, even if I’d run the show only once. This was not infantile Alzheimer’s. It’s just that everything came and went. Some of it went even before it came.

Some shrink might’ve figured it out, though. Anything’s possible. Chances are excellent he’d have come up with a lot better story than anything I coulda dreamt up. All I was interested in was getting to “The End.” That heralded completion. Success!.

So I scotch-taped the title sheet to the next sheet - the first scene of story - and then the next, and so on and so forth, and I could feel it building. The mechanics of putting this together was exciting and I must’ve been talking to myself about some kind of story (something I still do) and between the two of me, the story took hold. And before I knew it…“The End.”

The white sheet of oak tag was my movie screen. I cut two vertical slits at the top and bottom to pull the scenes through. I was really putting together a slide show, but I didn’t think of it that way because there was movement in my mind as I pulled it, and movement was the essential ingredient of a movie, and surprise, too, because you never knew what was coming next, not even me. And then, “The End.” But I very much doubt that had I put this show on more than once, I’d have ever come up with the same story twice.

As an adult, when I actually did get to make my first picture, I would pitch the storyline to individual investors (without a screenplay), and each time I pitched it, the story changed. I wasn’t actually aware of this until my attorney, one day, made a stunning observation. We were on the bus going to meet some prospective investors. I had thanked Jack for coming to these pitches with me (free of charge) and lending his credibility to my credibility, and he just laughed out loud and said, “Are you kidding? I love coming to these meetings just to hear you tell the story – you never tell the same story twice!” By now, though, I was in my mid-20s. Without even thinking about it, I was up to my old tricks. Whatever you needed to hear, I’d fill it in.

It worked.

***

The reason I’ve been telling you all this is because, while I have since learned that you’d better tell the story first and make the drawings after, it occurred to me during the writing of this book, that what I was doing here is precisely what I did as a kid: making movies without a camera. Only this time with the story written out first. And the pictures second. And you’re the projectionist, pulling it along at your own pace, without the crayons (unless you wanna color them in). And so each screening’s tailor-made.

And if I ever get to make this movie, with a camera, you’ll be able to say you screened it here first!

Enjoy the show…

JOE JACOBY Storyteller and Co-Projectionist.