News Staff Reporter
Choate alum Tom Dey’83 has directed a major film recnetly opened nationally: “Failure to Launch.” This film is a romantic comedy about a middle-aged bachelor, Tripp (played by Matthew McConaughey) who simply has no desire to leave the comfort of his parents’ home. However, his parents have other plans for him so they hire the lovely Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) to convince him that it’s finally time to fly away.
Not only did Dey attend Choate, but his father, Mr. Charley Dey, was headmaster and principal of Choate Rosemary Hall from 1973-91. It is not an easy task to attend a school where one’s father is head; nevertheless, according to Mr. Davidson, a religion teacher who knew Dey, ”He handled being a student at the school where his father was head very well...”
Dey was also an aspiring artist on the Mastheads of both “The News” and “The Lit.” He performed in the student production of “The Dumbwaiter” and had a lead role in “The Lover” in his sophomore year, 1980. Though Davidson remembers that “on the spectrum of students, he was on the quieter end, very reflective,” Davidson also recalls him as interested in writing while at Choate, and was not too shocked when he found out that Dey was getting into the film industry because, “...it’s related to writing, and I definitely could have seen him do something with writing.”
Upon graduating from Choate, Dey attended Brown University and later went on to learn more about the art of filmmaking at the Centre des Etudes Critiques in Paris as well as the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. His previous films as director include “Shanghai Noon,” (a comedy that is a cross between a Western and a kung-fu movie) starring Jackie Chan, and Showtime, a spoof starring Eddie Murphy and Robert DeNiro as cops in a reality television show. For an “introspective” boy, Dey seems to have no trouble asserting himself in the world of moviemaking.
Another example of Choate’s connections with Hollywood can be found in Kevin Walker ’06, whose summer occupation towers above most teenagers’ minimum-wage jobs: Kevin received an internship from the well-known director Spike Lee for the movie “The Inside Man.”
Walker’s internship took place last summer from June 28th to August 19th, when the film “The Inside Man,” a movie about a police officer dealing with a conniving bank robber who has taken hostages, was shot in New York City. His experience as an intern entailed approximately a week of office work (answering phones, making copies of the “dailies”, which contained just the part of the script the actors would be working on that day), although Walker claims, “I really didn’t want to be in the office, I wanted to be out on the field.” When he left the office, Walker did behind the scenes work such as security to make sure onlookers wouldn’t disrupt the shooting of the film, grip work, which is building tracks for the camera to slide on in order to get “smooth transitions,” and gaffing work, properly setting up the lights.
Walker procured this unique position through the help of a friend who was in contact with Lee and knew that Lee was looking for interns for his latest endeavor, and by his own sheer persistence, “I wrote him, I e-mailed him, I sent him letters all the time.” Walker had taken Digital Video 1 at Choate, which got him acquainted with “the concepts of film, like camerawork and cinematography (the art of making and developing a film)” and had made a few, short pictures in his spare time. By being an intern, he hoped to gain “an understanding of how a film is made” as well as “first-hand experience”.
Lee is known for sparking controversy with his unflinching works about Black life as well as tension between races. Walker was able to talk to Lee one-on-one, and said, “The insight that he gave me was very shocking... he told me that you have to understand your ideals for them to shine through in your films.” From the entire experience, Walker enhanced his film terminology, and, perhaps most importantly, learned that “moviemaking is a collective process... it’s not just about the hotshots, it’s really about the people behind the scenes.” On occasion, Walker was even allowed to hold the camera during a shot, so some of his filming is on the big screen.
And, the burning question: What was it like to work with stars such as Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster, who both have major roles in the movie? Walker answered, “Yeah, they’re famous... but I’m a filmmaker. I’m not going to stand in awe in front of them, I’m going to act like a peer.” He especially liked Washington, who he found to be “like the roles he plays in movies... cool and down-to-earth.” Still, he understood that “you’re really at the bottom of the barrel (when you’re an intern).”
Walker savored the wisdom he gained from being an intern, since next year he will be attending New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where he hopes to “learn the inner workings of cinematography.” His main goal is to be a director, but he commented, “I feel that some of my stories are not being told... If I have to write them myself, then I will.”
His advice for students interested in filmmaking is simple: they should “go out and start making things happen. Whether that is getting internships, making their own movies, or going to film class...understand that filmmaking is about experience.”
