One Man Band
By Grace Carballo ‘17
If there is one thing I like more than watching a movie it is watching a movie during a class. And if there is one thing I like even more than that, it is watching a movie created by a USC graduate.
So naturally I was thrilled when last Wednesday night, my Advanced Screenwriting (CTWR 415A) class went to the Visions and Voices Screening of Llyn Foulkes: One Man Band, Tamar Halpern’s first feature-length documentary film.
My writing professor, Sandy Berg, was Halpern’s first screenwriting professor when she was here, and she graduated from USC with her MFA in film production. The whole experience was a lot like that section of a magazine where they insist, “Stars…they’re just like us” with photos of Taylor Swift sweating (barely) and Reese Witherspoon with a bag of groceries.
But this was real. Looking around at my classmates, I couldn’t help get excited that one of us, maybe even all of us (woah, dream big!) could make it in “the real world”. We’d come back to our alma mater, have our work on the big screen, have our professors moderating the Q&A sessions and bringing their current students, and we’d know for certain that though college was a hoot, it certainly wasn’t “the best 4 years of our lives” because things kept getting better and better.
Professor Berg invited Tamar Halpern to speak to our class again in a few weeks, which I am certainly looking forward to. Her documentary, shot over 7 years, follows artist and musician Llyn Foulkes in his process of creating, destroying, and reworking his art, often without the recognition of the art world.
While Foulkes himself was unable to attend the Q&A section afterwards due to health reasons, she captured his persona so well I feel as though I know him.
He is one of the biggest characters I have ever seen, which made the film that much more interesting because it was unscripted. His relationships with the art community were strained, impacting his career and his self worth. Despite all this, he was fiercely independent, his own harshest critic, and steadfast in his beliefs. The soundtrack to the entire film is Foulkes’ own music, performed on the instrument he invented and calls “The Machine”- thus the title of “One Man Band”.
Halpern is still looking for a distributor to bring the documentary to a wider audience and I have no doubt she will succeed. I’ve never been so invested in the life of a stranger and rooting for someone as much as I was for Foulkes throughout the course of her movie.
I can’t help but feel like a proud relative (distant third cousin twice removed level, but still) about Halpern’s success. This is, of course, the Trojan Family.
There are so many amazing screenings and panels happening every single day of the week on campus and we are so lucky to have Visions and Voices bring the arts to broke college students like us.
Whenever I leave my family after a break, my mom often says, “Have fun on your four-year vacation.” And though the bags under my eyes high coffee content in my bloodstream are clear indicators that the academic demands of USC are nothing to sneeze at, the college experience we have is a lot like a cruise. Especially freshman year with unlimited swipes at the dining halls (buffets erryday) and shows and speakers every night, we really are living the dream. Our school is in a vacation destination and Nikias is basically our cruise director.
Fight/Sail on! And don’t ever stop appreciating the tremendous talent all around us on campus and the FREE opportunities to enjoy it.
