Project Green Light

He appeared early one Saturday morning wearing a ludicrous beard and a multi-colored polyester cardigan, wild-eyed and spit-drenched with enthusiasm, on my parent's television set. His name might have been "Roger" or "Ken", I really can't remember. The reason for his appearance, apparently, was to demonstrate for the benefit of teenage boys and bored housewifes the mechanics of making a short animated film. He was the Bob Ross of cinema. "Anyone can do it." he claimed. "All you need is a Super-8mm camera with single frame advance, a lump of clay, some pipe-cleaners and a roll of tin-foil." And once the neophyte had assembled this short list of equipment and created a human figure from his lump of clay, then the shooting could begin in earnest: move your clay figure's left leg forward, click off a frame; move your figure's right leg forward, click off a frame - and hey presto! - three years later you have completed a five second film of a grotesquely deformed clay man hobbling across your bedroom floor. Great!
"Dad has his old home movie kit in the attic" my mother informed me, and added - rather pushily in my opinion - "Why don't you make a film?"
I suppose I could have done. But I decided not to. After all, I asked my mother, how many films of clay men rolling themselves up into little balls does the world need?
If only Hollywood would show the same restraint as I did in my teenage years.