For most of my life, people around me seldom saw me without a book or two in hand. I had no interest in either watching or playing sports. The neighborhood kids knew better than to ask me and I was nearly always the last pick of schoolyard teams. It wasn’t that I was undersized, sickly, or in any other way undesirable. Everyone knew that I had no idea what the rules of play or engagement were and that I didn’t care who had won which pennant or trophy, or when. I was completely indifferent, not exactly a team player, and certainly not a fan.
By now you might be saying, “Ok, I get it, you’re not an athlete…so you were a bookish type…one who knew all of the answers.” But you would be wrong. I was a full-fledged Geek but a “C” student at best. Neither did I sketch, draw, paint, or play a musical instrument. In short, I was untalented, unconcerned, and very uninvolved. Regardless of my lack of interest in the arts, it later developed that I had an eye for composition. I didn’t own a camera until late in college and didn’t care about lenses, filters, or film speeds. I saw pictures and took them.
I was preparing to return to University for my senior year when my mom told me about a newspaper article she had read. It was about a Public Television Network opening up in New Jersey. I applied for a job and dropped out of school with the same impulsive nonchalance that had led me to enter a Catholic Seminary in high school and study to be a priest. It was something different and my ties to wherever I was were tenuous. Since I had no skills, the HR person hired me as the station’s driver. That was my foot in the door. In a year, I was a camera operator, and 3 years after that found me at the ABC Network in New York City. This was not the usual result of nepotism or having an “In.” I knew no one in the television business, no one in Manhattan for that matter. I stepped into an industry and a career. It worked 52 years ago and I’m searching for that lightning strike with my book, “ATTABOY.”
The title refers to those words camera operators used to long to hear from the Director. It conferred respect, appreciation, and deep approval of whatever we happened to be shooting. It was your basic, “Ya done good kid!” and the polar opposite of “GODDAMMIT… WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” and, “AW SHIT!”
During my career I have been the recipient of all three comments but had there been fewer of the former, I would not have lasted half a century, especially not in that cut-throat business in one of the world’s most competitive cities. I invite you to read on and experience with me a few of my Television stories.
Thank you,
Jim