2005 Commencement Guest Address
Given on May 28, 2005

by Malcolm Clarke P'05
Award-Winning Documentary Film-Maker

Headmaster Widmer, members of the Deerfield faculty, parents, relatives, friends, students and members of the Graduating Class...I hope I didn't miss anyone?

I stand before you this morning, feeling a little like a cocktail waitress on her shift, eager to please but more than a little apprehensive at the same time. It was, after all, only a few days ago that I learned I was to be Deerfield's commencement speaker today. And I'm not someone who's accustomed to public speaking. In my job I take great pains to hide, either behind a camera or behind the written word, anywhere in fact where I can hunker down and let others do the speaking for me.

However, having accepted the assignment to deliver a speech today, I resorted to a tried and true, three-step, self-help program which had proven effective on past occasions when I was faced with challenges far less daunting than the one before me now.

First I poured myself a stiff drink, (non-alcoholic, naturally). Second I thrashed around looking for advice from everyone I knew who'd ever graduated high school. Because I never did, not in the American sense at least.

In England, we don't mark this career milestone in quite the same way as you colonials. Not for us the rituals of release and beckoning promise. And it's a shame really, because the English are so formal you'd imagine they'd jump at the chance to rent poorly-fitting tuxedoes, redolent with moth-balls, and abandon themselves body and soul to the wanton joys of their senior prom. But I missed all that.

At my school the only time-honored ritual was that of exacting school-sanctioned revenge on our teachers. This was permitted only during the last week of term. For seven glorious days it was open season on any members of staff whom we students felt had transgressed during the school year. Imagine that. Half the fun was watching them all walking around school looking twitchy. They must have felt there was safety in numbers because teachers would huddle together in little packs, like squirrels guarding their nuts, looking sort of wild-eyed and hunted.

Their cars would be white-washed, bicycles would be dismantled and reassembled to look like an exhibit in the Tate Gallery. I remember the 'piece de resistance' an achievement so daring that it might have gone down in the annals of the school, (if any of us boys had a clue where our annals were kept). It involved a fellow pupil who was going on to art school. He sneaked into the headmaster's garden one night armed with a pair of garden shears and sculpted the headmaster's privet bush into a topiary of a giant member...but not of Parliament!

It occurs to me I may be unsuitable for this.

I tried asking friends about memorable commencement addresses they'd heard, but then I realized that most of them graduated high school back when druids still roamed the earth, and though they probably like to think of themselves as being plugged into the zeitgeist, it quickly became clear that if I was going to get any useful advice...it wasn't going to be from a bunch of graying, superannuated, Hollywood hippies.

It seemed to me the best place to solicit opinions about the possible contents of a nifty little commencement speech might be from members of the graduating class themselves. Why not let them decide what I should speak about? Well, the prevailing consensus from a delegation of soon-to-be graduates who graciously agreed to meet me last week, seems to have been; "we don't really care what you say as long as you're not a crashing bore and you try to have a point!".

Pressure.

So my third and last resort was to sit at my desk and reflect upon what this occasion means to all of us who are here today...for the graduating class, for the proud (and perhaps slightly relieved?) parents, and for the faculty, staff and students who'll remain behind after some 200 of their number drive away later today to begin the next phase of their lives.

This is of course a momentous time for everyone here, but most particularly for this year's graduating class. It's a singular rite of passage. This is your day, the occasion on which all of us come together to honor your achievement in getting this far in life relatively unscathed. And though almost certainly there are those among you whose youthful transgressions have already eliminated your chances of becoming President, it's not the end of the world. There are still lots of other things you can do.

Probably some time in the next 24 hours every graduate who has endured the slings and arrows of four outrageous years at Deerfield can expect to experience a slight lump in their throat, it's that bittersweet moment when you realize that one of the great milestones of your life, your graduation day is becoming a fond and pleasant memory. And so it's to you that I want to address a few remarks that hopefully will come together less as an 'address' which sounds awfully grandiose, than as a series of musings...some of which might even have a point.

Sometimes I think I should have listened to my Mother years ago...right after I got out of University I was lucky enough to be offered a job at the BBC. I called my parents with the good news (I thought they'd be delighted, after all, I'd finally be off their payroll.) So I was bemused when my mother shook her head pityingly and said; "Television? Oh dear. What kind of job is that for a grown man?"

I'd been a newly minted graduate for less than a week and already I was a disappointment. Her concerns, of course, were entirely warranted. And for my sins I've spent the better part of my adult life as a freelance writer of films, as a Producer and Director, and rarely does a day go by when I don't ask myself what kind of job is this for a grown man, especially one of a certain age, with a family and school fees and pets and solicitations to buy magazines like 'Modern Maturity'.

A few days ago, an old acquaintance of mine; Dan Ockrent, writing in the New York Times, characterized his profession (and one of mine) that of 'Freelance Writer' as being 'fiscally preposterous'. No kidding. I'd actually go so far as to hazard that there's probably more job security as a tightrope walker or one of those chaps who puts his head in a lion's mouth.

Pretty much everything I do is a gamble. Occasionally I get lucky and I happen upon a movie studio or a TV Network which gets as excited about a film idea as I am...then for a few months life overflows with milk and honey. Sometimes I even get to 'make the movie' rather than just write it. But hitting a home run in the film business is the longest of longshots! The rest of the time, most of the time, films in Hollywood don't get made they just get talked about. Hollywood's probably the only town in the world where you can die of encouragement.

But then Hollywood always was frustrating. All the way back to the days of Chaplin and the Keystone Cops pitched battles were being fought between the forces of evil; the studio bosses...and the forces of good; directors and writers. Yet somehow in that friction between the 'creatives' and the 'money guys' great films were made.

I suspect that was because, in spite of despotic tendencies that would make Jabba the Hut green with envy, the studio bosses loved movies more than they loved money.

I began watching films seriously in the late sixties at around the age that you guys are today. The sixties and the seventies gave us extraordinary movies like The Godfather, Dr. Strangelove, Taxi Driver, Chinatown, Butch Cassidy, Midnight Cowboy, All the Presidents' Men, Network, Bonnie & Clyde... the list goes on. And that was just the stuff coming out of America. In Europe there were extraordinary film-makers like Godard in France, Bunuel in Spain, Fellini in Italy and Bergman in Sweden. And then of course there was the mighty Kurosawa in Japan. Cinema was a global phenomenon and its greatest achievements often had more impact and cultural significance than all but the very best contemporary works of literature, drama, music or the plastic arts. It really was the Golden Age.

Then sometime in the eighties the bean-counters began to notice that a successful movie could make in a weekend what many other businesses made in a year. This marked the beginning of a slow and sorry decline.

Suddenly we began to see MBAs sitting in on story conferences. And the range of possibilities that films could be about became more and more circumscribed.

Try getting 'Cuckoos Nest' made today. I guarantee you couldn't give that idea away with a set of fine china. The mandate now is to play not to the widest possible demographic, but to the narrowest demographic with the largest disposable income; Americans between the magical ages of 18 and 30.

Congratulations, Graduates. As far as the corporate titans who run America's media are concerned, you're entering the prime of their lives.

As the huge corporations gradually ate up the studios, the networks, the cable channels and even the video rental houses...they took on debt to service their rapaciousness and naturally those costs were factored into the films and TV programs they made.

Suddenly the financial risks involved in making a film that might actually stimulate debate, or heaven forbid, offend someone's delicate sensibilities, became far too great.

Opportunities of sighting that increasingly endangered species, the really interesting, thought-provoking movie, rapidly became as rare as hens' teeth. Risk aversion is the name of the game today. In some studios it's holy writ, in others it's simply an article of faith which can occasionally be questioned...as long as film-makers can somehow coerce a movie star into signing on to whatever 'risky venture' they have in mind.

These films are euphemistically called 'passion projects'. Movie marketers hold them in roughly the same esteem as the ebola virus. A loose definition of a passion project is a film in which a movie star who's tired of constantly 'riding the horse, shooting the gun and getting the girl', graciously agrees to a salary cut. They must be 'passionate' to do that, right? Some of them practically give themselves away, working for as little as three or even two million dollars for their seven or eight weeks of work on set. The theory behind their selflessness is that without pulling the heavy freight of a movie star's salary, the passion project, the film with something to say, has a chance of getting made.

And then it's up to us, the movie-goers. Good word of mouth is like oxygen, it's still the most powerful weapon in making sure a good film finds its audience. That's why the equivalent of several kings' ransoms are often spent before a film's first weekend, the trick is to get warm bottoms into seats before word of mouth kicks in and condemns the latest blockbuster as the howler it so frequently is.

What's regrettable is that the folks who run the studios seem in constant need of reminding that their 'demographically perfect audience' is but one small sliver of a huge, under-served, potential audience. One which is aching to be cultivated and to express itself.

There is no single audience with a single personality. There is a larger audience that has a vast variety of appetites, both for thrills and excitement and for the deeper satisfactions of art and truth. It seems to me that people like myself should be permitted to try and satisfy as many of the public's tastes as our ingenuity can devise.

I wonder if anyone remembers the Kevin Costner film 'Field of Dreams' whose log-line was "If you build it, they will come." I still like to believe that if we make it, and it's good and it's honest rather than being merely formulaic and predictable, then they will come to that too… I certainly would.

In fairness there have been some marvelous films that have been made in recent years. Political films like 'Hotel Rwanda', animated films like the hugely entertaining 'Shrek' and the 'Incredibles' and thrillers like 'The Insider'. And let's not forget the 'Sword and Sorcery' epics which, almost single-handedly, are responsible for persuading an entire generation of pre-pubescent couch potatoes that horribly thick books 'full of no pictures and millions of words' can actually transport them to a place they rarely visit anymore; it's called their imagination. We should all spend more time there...it's way better than Disneyland and there's no charge at the door.

And incidentally, for his inadvertent one-man literacy campaign we should also say 'Thank you' to Mr. Tolkein.

Of course what happened in Hollywood has happened in every walk of life, largely because the focus of business has shifted from production to distribution. And whoever controls distribution shapes what is produced; whether it's to fit under the seat or in an overhead compartment. The wealthiest person in England used to be the Queen. But today that distinction is enjoyed by the man who invented the 'TetraPak', that ubiquitous milk or juice carton which we all use everyday. Distribution's the King.

Meanwhile we all stand by and watch as the odd, the old, the personal, the traditional, the idiosyncratic, or the regional disappear from both our movie screens and our supermarket shelves. We retaliate with the Farmers Market or the yard sale. In Film and Television our best defense may be the DVD.

A couple of years ago I made a film about the holocaust. Not exactly a subject that the 'demographically perfect' moviegoer was dying to run out and see on a rainy Saturday night. Nevertheless the critics loved it. And to quote the late Samuel Goldwyn, "the audience stayed away in droves".

Ten years ago, my film would have been deemed a financial fiasco; great reviews, bad B.O. (that's 'Box Office' not body odor), but today with the congruence of four newly powerful 'delivery systems'; the internet, big box stores, satellite TV and DVD's, my little movie is making money. Go figure. You won't see it at your local multiplex, but you can get it at Wal-Mart, or Amazon and through your satellite dish.

Maybe there's hope after all.

When I look back at the wreckage strewn across the landscape of my career, it's true that I see the occasional success. But scattered all the way back to the vanishing point I see dozens of my still-born 'great ideas'... at least they seemed great at the time.

If you give me the benefit of the doubt and allow that I'm not completely crazy, the obvious question becomes; if it's so difficult why do you still do it? Well, there's always the old fallback; I'm not much good at anything else. And while my kids, two of whom are here today would probably attest to that being true, it's still a little disingenuous.

The reason I continue to pursue a career which is 'fiscally preposterous' is because I love it - and I'm a great believer in pursuing anything and everything that I can feel passionate about.

I also try to keep in mind that pretty much everybody else in the world has to work for a living, and even if they're not exactly living lives of 'quiet desperation' as Mr. Thoreau observed, far too many people are unfulfilled by the jobs they do. And while fulfillment doesn't put food on the table, it is payment and it does count.

Whatever it is I do, I can't really call it 'work' because I love it so much. It's a job of course, and while it's not always a living, making films is always a pleasure, because films are more than just a commodity. They express the mystery, and help define the nature of who we are and what we're becoming. So despite all the difficulties attendant on my being a part of this vexing, 'creative' profession, I wouldn't do anything else if you paid me.

And this leads me to my point; remember? I promised you a point.

All my working life I've tried to do what I love to do, not what seemed most expedient or worse, most sensible. I suspect that among your parents, your relatives and faculty members gathered here today there are more than a few of us who have regrets about the things we didn't do, or haven't done yet. It's natural. Life is a chronicle of extraordinary opportunities both found and lost.

Wherever and whenever possible we try to explore as many of these opportunities as we can reasonably shoe-horn into our busy lives, but given all the stuff we have to do just to stay afloat...things get put aside, they get postponed and forgotten.

That's never good

We owe it to ourselves to live our lives to the fullest. I learned this from my Father who was fond of saying; "We're all sailing on the Titanic, so why go steerage?" He was a great advocate of trying everything at least twice, of 'squeezing the orange dry', he knew all too well that life would get in the way even when we tried to prevent it. Life is like that. There's always 'another dead cat that gets thrown over the wall', (that's my Dad again); there's always another obstacle, another reason not to do this or that, it's always easier not to get involved, not to make that journey or make that gesture to someone you've been meaning to reach out to.

Nobody ever comes close to fulfilling all their ambitions, but at least in the big things; the job you do, the company you keep, and the way you conduct yourself, nurture your dreams and hopes instead of merely raw ambition. Follow your heart and your conscience as well as your head, even if, in the doing of it you sometimes feel like you're pushing a rock up a hill.

In the end, when you gaze back down the hill and see how far you've come and what you've achieved, I suspect you'll like what you see a whole lot more if the work you've done is work you loved to do.

That is both your challenge and your opportunity. We're all counting on you.

Thank you.