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Jul. 24th, 2006 06:04 pmAh, the long-promised post about my job. I'm sure you are all breathless with anticipation. Well, if we're going to be technical, this isn't a job so much as a "research internship" and if we're going to be even more technical, it's "going through a dead guy's film collection and looking the movies up on imdb."
You see, this film scholar who...attended my school? Taught at my school? No, I think he taught at a neighboring school...but anyway, he had a ginormous film collection his family donated to the school upon his death. My job is to look through about 5000 VHS tapes (labeled, thank god) containing movies he'd pirated over the course of his life. He's very much enamored of Alexander Kluge, Peter Greenaway and Stan Brakhage, who has now made the list of "people for whom I would journey back in time so that I might kill them in their infancy." 373 films. He needs to be stopped.
But I spend most of my day staring at screens, doing crosswords, reading a little bit, and laughing at morons on imdb's boards. Basically, we have to 1) read the label on the film; 2) verify that it is labeled correctly; 3) look the film up on imdb; 4) enter info into an excel spreadsheet. It's not terribly exciting, but sometimes we (I work with another student) find something good. Or, you know, just sit there and watch Billy Madison (yes, he had that in his collection) for a half hour.
Highlights of late:
-An unlabeled tape that turned out to be Totally Naked. I know how it begins and ends, but I won't spoil anybody.
-A tape labeled as Our Lips Are Sealed (which my sisters own) that turned out to be Renaldo and Clara without any sort of credits. We were only able to identify it because I correctly identified the concert footage as the Rolling Thunder Revue. But look at those credits! Bob Dylan is a crazy man. He has Ronnie Hawkins playing himself (and by "himself" I mean Dylan--Dylan plays Renaldo), Joan Baez and his wife in the movie, for all intents and purposes reenacting their actual love triangle, Allen Ginsberg and some character called The Masked Tortillo. Sadly, it is not commercially available and it would be unwise to discuss any plans I may have to obtain a copy in a forum such as this one.
So that's my job. I've got about 3 weeks to go, but any crazed movie allusions doubtless have to do with it.
You see, this film scholar who...attended my school? Taught at my school? No, I think he taught at a neighboring school...but anyway, he had a ginormous film collection his family donated to the school upon his death. My job is to look through about 5000 VHS tapes (labeled, thank god) containing movies he'd pirated over the course of his life. He's very much enamored of Alexander Kluge, Peter Greenaway and Stan Brakhage, who has now made the list of "people for whom I would journey back in time so that I might kill them in their infancy." 373 films. He needs to be stopped.
But I spend most of my day staring at screens, doing crosswords, reading a little bit, and laughing at morons on imdb's boards. Basically, we have to 1) read the label on the film; 2) verify that it is labeled correctly; 3) look the film up on imdb; 4) enter info into an excel spreadsheet. It's not terribly exciting, but sometimes we (I work with another student) find something good. Or, you know, just sit there and watch Billy Madison (yes, he had that in his collection) for a half hour.
Highlights of late:
-An unlabeled tape that turned out to be Totally Naked. I know how it begins and ends, but I won't spoil anybody.
-A tape labeled as Our Lips Are Sealed (which my sisters own) that turned out to be Renaldo and Clara without any sort of credits. We were only able to identify it because I correctly identified the concert footage as the Rolling Thunder Revue. But look at those credits! Bob Dylan is a crazy man. He has Ronnie Hawkins playing himself (and by "himself" I mean Dylan--Dylan plays Renaldo), Joan Baez and his wife in the movie, for all intents and purposes reenacting their actual love triangle, Allen Ginsberg and some character called The Masked Tortillo. Sadly, it is not commercially available and it would be unwise to discuss any plans I may have to obtain a copy in a forum such as this one.
So that's my job. I've got about 3 weeks to go, but any crazed movie allusions doubtless have to do with it.
