"Wait, young man. You cannot escape destiny..."

What was the best thing about college?

The academic experience infused in me a sense of social responsibility and purpose where I… just kidding. It was about making new friends. In high school you kind of dealt with what you were given. You chose the people closest to you in thought and prayed you were cool enough not to be the group of kids that got it’s ass kicked. I had seen enough John Hughes movies to know and understand the perils of the high school fiasco. Thankfully, I was not in that group. In college, however, you seemed to have more of a choice in the friend selecting process and unbeknownst to us all it began by simply selecting a major. You were studying a particular subject surrounded by others who shared the same interest in the topic. I had chosen art so I was surrounded by more creative minds than I had ever known before. Introductions were made, hands were shaken and bonds were formed that still stand to this very day. (Oh… and the girls in college were hot too.)

My girlfriend in college (we shall call her… Katherine) studied drama at the University of Puerto Rico. I was over at La Escuela de Artes Plásticas (School of Fine Arts) trying to figure out exactly what major appealed to me the most. Sometimes between classes (and sometimes during) I would drive over to the UPR to visit Kate on the off chance that we could make out under a tree or something.

She had introduced me to a lot of people at her university and among them was a motley little crew of people that included graphic designers, actors, writers, musicians and most importantly… movie fans. Suddenly I was able to engage in conversations about film that ran deeper than things like “Wow…that was cool.” and “You could totally see her boob. Best movie ever!” Truth be told, at the time, my knowledge was limited to mostly Hollwood blockbusters. Among the crew of intellectual degenerates was a bizarre individual whose diminutive stature and bright blue hair made him stand out from the crowd. We were about the same age but I immediately got the sense he was better informed about things than I was. He spoke mostly of music but when engaged in the topic of cinema, he seemed to show an equal amount of enthusiasm. We quickly became good friends mainly out of our mutual fascination with Beavis and Butthead and all things MTV. His name was Danny.

One day, while hanging around the UPR halls waiting for Katherine to finish her classes, Danny showed up with a small dark box in his hand. It was a VHS tape. He was passing it around to the group. They handled it with a sense of reverence and Danny seemed very proud and protective of the little cassette. I finally got a glimpse of the plastic anomaly. The title read: Nosferatu. I had heard of this before. I knew it was a silent movie about Dracula or something. A silent movie… I had to see it.

He agreed to hang out and watch the movie with me (certain things you just don’t lend.) and while it was only a VHS version and not the original celluloid masterpiece you couldn’t help but feel that you were in the presence of something that had to be treated with the utmost care.  At first I feared I would fall asleep but as the film progressed I was mesmerized… truly mesmerized by this beautiful and haunting tale of love and obsession with no color and no sound. Questions arose… questions about technique and visual narrative... questions about the subject I hated most in high school… history! How must it have felt to see this for the first time back in 1922? It must have scared the crap out of people. The Count had to have been the most terrifying creature people had ever seen! What was going on in Germany in the early 1920’s that could spawn such a transcendent film style that I would later come to know as German expressionism? The lighting, the set design, the composition along with the dust and scratches of a century old film had sent me to a time and place I had never given a second thought to before.

I went on a hunt for all the silent movies I could find. I devoured my way through the obvious classics like Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari not to mention the D.W. Griffith epics. It wasn’t enough! I wanted to go further back. Back to beginning. Where did it start? How did it start and who started it? I was overwhelmed by all the names and countries… Lumière, Méliès, Muybridge, Eisenstein, Guy-Blaché, Feuillade, Murnau, Edison, Gance and Lang to name just a pitiful fraction of the pioneers involved. There was more to this thing than just the big special effects and loud explosions I was used to seeing. This was beyond the Hollywood flicks I had grown up with. This was the origin… the birth of a medium that would haunt me for the rest of my life. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know… everything!

Art school, cute girlfriend, band of misfits, guy with blue hair and a VHS copy of a buck-toothed vampire. I love origin stories.