Film School (25 page)

When we get the Arriflex, I take it home and practice loading film into it. I'll be doing all the camera work on our first film. The last thing I want is to expose a roll of film or have an operator error. I load a dummy roll into the camera over and over. I practice it in the dark. I feel kinship with the camera, an old German machine that purrs loudly when it runs.

Before our first shooting weekends, we have a test weekend. It's a chance to shoot a hundred feet of film and check our lighting and focusing and exposures. Because Dan still doesn't have a story nailed down, we elect to shoot at his studio apartment. We need an actor, so I call my nineteen-year-old nephew, Mikey, who is living on a small sailboat in the San Pedro harbor. Mikey is glad to help.

Dan still doesn't have a script. He's still toying with a whiskey-loving boy meets girl, but the asshole father has gone through major modifications. Pablo is nervous. I'm nervous. Dan keeps reassuring us. “Relax,” he says.

O
n Friday late afternoon, I'm out for a jog. My legs feel a little better, but they're still heavy. I've been out of the hospital for nine days. I'm still living out of the hotel near campus. Our test shoot is coming up within twenty four hours, and I'm looking forward to it. Then my phone rings. It's a number from Minneapolis.

“Steve. This is Scott Flaata. What's going on?”

He's not calling for a friendly chat. He sounds upset.

“Uh, hi, Dr. Flaata. I seem to have had a little stroke.”

Dr. Flaata is my doctor back home. I've seen him in the past for basic checkup stuff. We've become friends and compare notes about waterskiing during my annual checkups.

“I see that, Steve. That's what I'm calling about. I got all your paperwork from UCLA today. What's going on? Why didn't you tell me? What kind of medicine are you on?”

Actually, he sounds
very
upset. I tell him I'm taking a baby aspirin a day, some cholesterol-lowering meds, and that's it.

“That's all you're taking?”

Now he sounds really upset. I assure him that's what I'm taking.

“I got your lab tests today. Did UCLA ever talk to you about them?”

I assure him they found everything was normal.

“No, everything is
not
normal. There are some labs that came back later. They show you have an elevated risk for clotting. I don't know why they didn't contact you about this.”

I feel my anxiety rising. What is he talking about?

“Steve, this is serious. You had two positive results on your lab tests. Both are indicators for clotting. They
really
didn't contact you?”

I assure him they didn't. I did try to call one of the doctors a few days afterward about my concern over my heavy legs, but he was on vacation. Obviously, someone dropped the ball at UCLA. Dr. Flaata got a copy because I put him down as my primary care physician, and he was mailed my charts as part of normal protocol. Flaata said he was reading my charts on Friday evening and came across the two red flags.

“Steve. I don't know what is going on there. But I want you back here ASAP. Like,
yesterday
. I want to do more tests on you and have you talk to a hematologist and a cardiologist. I want to find out what the hell is going on with you. Can you get back to see me Monday morning?”

Now my heart is pounding. Crap! “I also want you on blood thinners. I'm going to write you a prescription for heparin. Do you feel comfortable injecting yourself with a syringe?”

As he says this, my adrenaline level creeps ever higher. What the hell is wrong with me? My adventure-seeking hometown doctor, a guy who goes downhill skiing in Colorado with a video camera attached to his helmet, is worried enough about me that he wants me back in Minnesota immediately for additional testing? Yikes!

“I don't like what's going on,” he says. “If you need surgery, I want to get it done right away. There's no reason to wait four months. Not with these lab results.”

I ride the elevator to my hotel room expecting to keel over from another stroke any minute. I'm seriously freaked. I find out where he can send a prescription for heparin, a common blood thinner. And I check flights. I can fly out Saturday at midnight on the red-eye.

I spend my Friday evening going from pharmacy to pharmacy, looking for heparin. When I finally get the medicine, I sit in the front seat of the Suburban, turn on the interior lights, and jab myself in the thigh with the disposable syringe. It doesn't hurt; the needle is tiny. I imagine the heparin flowing through my vessels and dissolving a monster clot just seconds before it hits my brain. I sit back and relax and hope no one is watching me. I'm sure I look like a junkie. I feel like a junkie.

On test-shoot day, I once again walk a fine line with Dan. I try to downplay the seriousness of what's going on. “Say, Dan, I need to dart out of here for a couple days. My doc wants to run a few tests for me back in Minnesota.”

Dan, to his everlasting credit, doesn't freak out. He shrugs and says, “Okay. Do what you need to do, I guess.” I can't read him. Either he doesn't care or he's good at concealing his fears.

We shoot test footage, and it's very fun. Mikey, my six-foot-four nephew, shows up. He's my oldest brother's son, and he's living the dream at nineteen: he works on sailboats, lives on his own tiny sailboat, and gets around on a beater motorcycle.

We are somewhat sloppy with our tests. Our lighting is only some floodlights we set up against a wall. We shoot a few seconds of Mikey sitting. Standing. Posing. Flexing. Then we do some double images, running the camera backward and reshooting over the same footage. We're just messing around. I'm preoccupied with getting home. Dan is preoccupied with his script. Mikey is preoccupied with the free meal I promised him for showing up.

We have a few seconds of film left in the camera, so I draw a heart on my chest with a Sharpie. I put a hole in the heart. Dan films me. I figure if I keel over in the coming weeks my kids will have at least a tiny reminder that I was indeed at film school.

We eat dinner together and joke a lot. Being busy is the best cure for anxiety. Then I drive to LAX and wait. My flight doesn't leave 'til midnight. I pace.

On the plane, I continue to pace in the aisle. I've been warned not to sit too long, and I take it to heart. I'm standing for as much of the flight as I can. The plane is full of sleeping people, except for me. We land in Minneapolis at 6
A.M.

O
n Monday morning, I'm not thinking about Dan at all. I'm not thinking about USC. I'm only thinking about what is wrong with my body. I'm seeing Dr. Flaata, who explains I tested positive for lupus anticoagulant and anticardiolipin antibodies. Both are markers for an autoimmune disorder that causes clotting. He tells me a lot of depressing stuff. He tries to keep it in layman's terms, but I soon get the gist.

It's called
antiphospholipid syndrome
, a condition that can cause clotting of your arteries or veins. If those clots form in your legs, it's known as deep vein thrombosis. But the clots can also form in your kidneys, lungs, and other organs. A clot in your brain can cause a stroke. The amount of damage to your system depends on where the clot forms and how extensive it is.

Apparently, my tongue-twister syndrome triggers my immune system to mistakenly produce antibodies that attack certain proteins in my blood. Normally, antibodies attacking is a good thing because they go after viruses and bacteria. But now they're targeting friends not foes.

Then Dr. Flaata really gets my attention. In very rare cases,
antiphospholipid syndrome
can be life-threatening, he tells me. And there's no cure. Luckily, there are medications that can reduce the blood-clot risk.

Swell. I've got a hole in my heart and an autoimmune disorder that causes me to clot. It's doubly depressing.

Dr. Flaata has made appointments for me with Minneapolis' gold-plated specialists. I immediately see a hematologist. Then I see a cardiologist, who explains to me that because of my blood disorder, he can't operate on my heart. He says if there was no disorder, he'd operate in a, well, heartbeat. But he says there's no clear proof that the hole in my heart was the cause of the stroke—and he adds that the FDA won't allow him to install a device that seals a PFO in people with my clotting factors.

To me, it seems stupid. I've got a hole in my heart, and I have prone-to-clot blood. It seems all the more imperative to close the hole.

But the cardiologist explains there's no proof that surgery has any better outcome than taking blood thinners. He goes on: if my stroke was caused by a blood clot that
didn't
sneak through my heart hole but instead developed in my head or neck, closing the hole might give false comfort. He says that instead of fixing the hole, I'll be treating my blood to make it less likely to clot. He explains I'll likely be on blood thinners for the rest of my life.

I don't like hearing this at all. I read up some more on
antiphospholipid syndrome
and learn that because I'm taking blood thinners, I've got to be especially careful not to injure myself and to avoid bleeding.

The medical literature all says I'm supposed to give up all contact sports and other dangerous activities that could result in a fall. I should use a softer bristle toothbrush and waxed floss, not unwaxed. I should shave with an electric razor, no blades. Also, I've got to be careful when using any sharp instrument—knives, scissors, corkscrews, ice picks, glass cutters, thumb tacks, awls, chainsaws—it's a long list.

My whole life has been one long contradiction. I love playing touch football and soccer. I ride a mountain bike. I water-ski. Snow ski. Sometimes I ride motorcycles. I've got a four-foot-high Craftsman roller-chest full of sharp tools. And my toothbrush is extra-firm. I'm screwed. The next stop on the Dr. Flaata magical mystery tour is a neurologist. First, I'll get another MRI of my brain. They inject me with a liquid they say will help them see within my gray matter better. The liquid makes me feel like I need to take a pee, and afterward it makes me dizzy and nauseated. It's like beer—without any of the benefits.

Then the neurologist tells me I definitely had a small stroke, but the good news is it has healed up so well he can hardly see the scarring on this most recent brain scan, taken less than three weeks after the first scans at UCLA. He says there's bad news. He sees several other places in my brain that were likely either damaged slightly by previous concussions or from previous tiny strokes.

Now I really feel glum.

A onetime stroke is a fluke. More than one? I don't want to think about it.

I
have a choice to make. I'm sitting on the back steps of our house. It's a beautiful September day in Minnesota. The three kids are at school. Julie is at work.

Dan and I are scheduled to shoot in two days. I don't know what we're supposed to shoot. He still hasn't come up with a script as far as I know.

I mull over my medical news. It sucks, basically. My condition seems much worse than I knew about just a few days earlier. I talk with my oldest brother, the surgeon. Even though the decades have grayed us, he remains the caring and protective big brother. He also knows much more about medicine than I do. He thinks the smart idea is to stop going to USC. He points out that I'm alone in California, away from family, away from support, away from my doctor. It's a wise recommendation. I agree with him that it's a pretty stupid thing for a middle-aged guy in my condition to go back to film school.

The next morning I get on an airplane heading to Los Angeles. I'm going back to USC. I simply don't want to live my life in fear. If I quit, it would be because I'm afraid of being debilitated or dying. I don't want to miss a single day with my kids, yet I want to teach them the importance of working hard at something they believe in. I need to plan on living a long life. To do anything else would be cowardice.

Fundamentally, I want to ignore my PFO, my antiphospholipid syndrome, my stupid little stroke. I don't want them to define me. I don't want them to limit me.

I'm scared and sad as I fly back, that's for certain, but I'm strangely relaxed. I know what I'm facing. I think of troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan—they have it tough. I think of my sister and mother-in-law—they had an awful deal. My stuff is minor compared to that. So I say a prayer to the Big Man upstairs and try to let my worries go.

I return to Carl and Irene's house. The heat wave is over; everything is dry in my bedroom; four rooms and a hallway have had the sheetrock partially removed. The carpeting is gone, so the floor is concrete. They're delighted to have me back, and Irene fires up her kitchen to prepare me a welcome-home dinner.

I meet Dan, and he seems calm. He's come up with a script. No more boy and girl and dad. Now it's a story about a boy who lives by himself in a little run-down house by a railroad track. And he teaches himself how to play a guitar by watching TV. And it's going to be a symphony of all the items in the house that make noise: dripping water pipes, boiling water, a ticking clock—plus the guitar.

I
think
I understand the story. At this point, I don't care what his story is, just so we get something on film. When I left, we were weeks behind the other partnerships.

Dan wants to shoot the entire project in his studio apartment. He has pushed his bed and personal items into one end of the studio. We have a tiny amount of space to work with—about seven feet by fifteen feet—and part of that is a kitchenette. We have perhaps the smallest film studio in all of Los Angeles.

It's tiny, but I like it. We have complete control over shooting. We don't have to contend with bad weather, darkness, sunlight, nosy neighbors, police, thieves, or noise.

The studio has a damaged ceiling. Dan had his own pipe leak, and there's a section of the ceiling that features exposed rusty pipes and missing plaster. Dan doesn't tell his landlord because he likes the effect, and because he doesn't want his landlord snooping around while we transform his apartment into a shooting stage.