James Obarr's The Crow

Bright Lights, Big Screen

By David Ullman

Imagine that you've spent nearly five years creating an ultra-low-budget, non-profit screen-adaptation of a book that has already been brought to life by craftsmen far more skilled and prominent than you. Imagine that, despite copyright restrictions and legal red tape, fans of this book have sought out and proliferated the few copies of your unauthorized work in existence, praising it as “innovative, raw, and poetic.” Imagine that, inspired by its acceptance, you spent another three years crafting a documentary that chronicled your experience making said movie. Finally, imagine that this documentary has been accepted to a respected film festival in New York City and that you have spent hundreds of dollars that you couldn't really afford to see your efforts projected on the big screen… And it has no sound!

 

New York. February 2002. Myself, my friend and partner Matt Jackson, and our guests are sitting in the second auditorium of the Sutton Theater on the corner of East 57^th Street and 3^rd Avenue in Manhattan where a handful of people have gathered as part of the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival to watch our autobiographical documentary “Inertia: Re-making The Crow,” created at the renowned WCTV studio in Wadsworth Ohio. A fair amount of the scant few audience members who had sat through the previous documentary short, “Upside Right – The Life of Chris Brick,” remain as the opening title screens illuminate the darkened auditorium.

 

Matt and I slouch down, blushing with embarrassment as we prepare to watch our own skinny, adolescent frames flicker across the silver screen for the first time. Suddenly it dawns on me: Something is wrong. There should be music here! Seconds later the first scenes begin to unfold, and though the subjects' mouths are moving, the only sound in the room is the hushed whispers of a baffled audience. The projectionists have screwed up the sound!

 

I was sure that I checked the tape at least two-dozen times before I left to make sure that it worked! I knew this had been too good to be true! The equipment had failed, and the showing would have to be canceled! Besides, even if the sound came back on, the damage had been done. No one knows what's going on in the story! Now, the few audience members that did not leave immediately following the preceding film are exiting one by one. Matt looks at me. I look to the floor. 

 

Suddenly, the sound returned and the embarrassment began.  Some A Boy And His Bird regulars may be familiar with our 1998 re-adaptation of the original graphic novel The Crow by James O'Barr, upon which the 1994 Miramax film starring Brandon Lee was based; however, the few audience members left had never heard of it. Plus, they had missed the first few minutes of set-up segments, and after the opening title montage, they found themselves watching the screwball antics of two teenage boys attempting to adapt a comic book with some pretty serious themes. Sure, over the course of the movie, these two boys would grow, both into young men and into filmmakers, but these people were not about to hang on for the ride. Most left before the picture had time to get anywhere. But, empty house or no, we sat back, smiled, and watched the fruits of seven years of work dance across a movie screen in The Big Apple.

 

Did I secure wealth, fame, or a three-picture deal with Dreamworks? No, but I didn't really expect any of those things either. Whatever I may or may not have expected from this trip, my expectations for this piece had long since been exceeded, for there I sat with my best friend watching the culmination of many years of work, hundreds of miles in distance and maturity from where we began.

 

After the screening was over, we took a deep breath and filed out into the streets of New York to commence a wonderful weekend of sightseeing and memory making. We ate hotdogs at crammed street corners, pizza in Greenwich Village, pasta in Little Italy, and bagels in Central Park. We rode the subway, went to record shops, Times Square, and China Town. I even bought a goofy USA stocking cap from a street vendor. I had a great time and a fabulous opportunity to see one of the most famous cities in the world while taking part in a respected film festival. And all of this was because of a little picture that I started as a fourteen-year-old kid in a small Ohio town. Projection malfunctions and indifferent audience members aside, It was a trip well worth taking and an experience that no book, class, or seminar could replicate.