_Arts & Entertainment —
Crew shoots movie under the rhino
By Geoff McMurtry
Staff Reporter
It's hot n Elephant Hall. The eyes of the
prehistoric rhinoceros stare blankly down at the
maze of 20-foot-high light stands, reflectors, a
camera and assorted equipment scattered
across the room. Actors, extras and technicians
go about their assorted tasks under a buzz of
cinematic conversations.
A rail-thin woman in a red and black striped
minidress and black leotards moves back and
forth through the maze, nimbly stepping over a
pile of rolled-up electrical cord as she and the
cinematographer discuss the lighting under
neath the huge, ancient beast.
EleanoreGaver, writer/director of “Bom To
Lose,” turns to a small assemblage of college
age women and begins instructing them on their
actions in the upcoming scene.
Filming in Morrill Hall began at 10 a.m.
Tuesday on “Born To Lose,” Gaver’s first
feature film since graduating from New York
University’s prestigious graduate film pro
gram.
Although Tuesday was the only day of film
ing in Lincoln, the entire production is being
shot in Nebraska, most of it in Fremont. The
crew arrived in Fremont Oct. 10, and shooting
started two days later. Co-producer Don Schain
said filming is expected to last two more weeks.
The plot of “Bom To Lose” revolves around
an ex-bike gang member (John D’ A quino) who
has changed his ways and now ha^ job work
ing at a women’s college. Some lentsat the
school (Michelle Johnson, Kris Kaufman,
Anastasia Fielding) accident; y kill his
brother (Vito Ruginis), and things utkeoff from
there. David Sherrill also starv as another gang
member.
Schain, who normally produces films in Los
Xngelcs, hooked up with a mostly New York
crew to shoot “Born To Lose” in Nebraska.
Schain said, “We scouted a number of states,
md Elcanorc creatively found the look’ she
vanted here.”
Nebraska is never specifically mentioned in
the film, but serves as a general location.
Back on the set, there is a call for quiet. A
small crowd of women stand on one side of the
large room, 15 feet in front of the camera,
concentrating on looking like casual tourists.
Three women stand off to the other side of the
room, and a middle-aged woman in a brown
suit-skirt holds a brown folder in the middle of
the room. The rhino looks impassively down at
the entire scene.
Gaver takes one last look at the actors, the
set, the camera, then turns to the back of the
room and calls, “Roll sound.”
“Rolling,” an: vers a voice.
“Mark,” says the camera operator, and a red
light blinks on.
Another man stands two feet in front of the
camera, holding a black and white clapper
board with “scene 37A” scrawled on in black
magic marker. On the word “mark” he slaps it
together, then steps quickly out of the way.
Camera operator Bob Bukowski kneels on a
small dolly cart mounted next to an Arriflex
BL1I1 camera. He adjusts it slightly, then says,
“Frame.”
“Action!” shouts Gaver.
The middle-aged woman (Susan Beck)
turns to the group to her left and speaks, picking
up in the middle of her tour-guide litany.
“Richer, deeper, thicker, than any animal
sound heard before or since ..
The dolly moves forward. The three women
walk across the room, just in front of the
camera, which is hydraulically rising as it
moves forward. The three pass by, and the dolly
moves toward, and then past the larger group
who are joined by more people standing along
the far wall. As the camera moves past, a
woman in her early 20s in a black jumpsuit
looks in the dolly’s direction. She looks almost
straight into the camera, but not quite.
The camera follows alongside the group as
it makes its way along the wall and turns toward
the huge rhino, still staring with great uncon
cern at the tension-filled room below.
The group is under the rhino now. The
camera is on the other side, about three feet
Andrea Hoy/Daily Nebraskan
"Born to Los» ’ lirector Eleanore Gaver runs through a scene with actresses
(from left) A.u sia Fielding, Kristen Kauffman and Michelle Johnson.
from the faces of two young men who appear to
be in their late 20s. They look around, passing
a bottle back and forth. They drink surrepti
tiously from it, and nervously look around some
more.
“Cut!”
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i
Business essays don’t tell ’truth’
By Charles Lieurance
Senior Editor
I work in an office. 1 even sit at a com
puter terminal.
That’s as close as I’ll probably ever come
to what I think “business” is like.
To be honest, I don’t know what people
do with master’s degrees in business ad
ministration. I see people go into the College
of Business Administration and I see them
leave CBA. I hear they want to go into
business. 1 see businessmen downtown on
their lunch breaks in dark, fashionable tics
and conservative suit coats and slacks. I sec
them eating lunch as I pass by Julio’s, taking
in respectable mouthfuls, chewing thor
oughly and swallowing w ith a little dainty
twitch of their Adam’s apples.
Book Review
But once they gel “busy” doing “busi
ness,” they lose me.
Maybe they don’t want us to understand.
But that’s just paranoia talking. Everybody
wants to talk about what they do for a I iving.
CIA agents have to concoct whole working
lives to tell their relatives about. No one can
just come out and say, “What I do is a
secret.” It’s just not human nature.
Being honest again, I have to say that I
haven’t tried too hard to discover what
“business” is about. But sometimes review
copies of new books come in the mail —
strategics for business majors, how to dress
for business, how to write business resumes,
how not to get lost in the crowd at business
school — and instead of reading it to dispel
the mysteries of CBA, I reach for the new
“Bloom County” book or the review copy of
the latest U2album. I remain unenlightened.
Then the oilier day there was only one
book in the mailbox. There were no records.
I tried to ignore the book. I waited for the
afternoon UPS delivery. Nothing. I searched
the editor’s desk. Nothing.
Finally I was forced to take the book out
of the mail slot ami deal with it. Its title,
“Essays That Worked For Business
Schools,” didn’t exactly promise plenty of
martial arts scenes and Beverly Hills leop
ard-skin-clad starlets sitting on the hoods of
red Corvettes.
What it did promise was “35 essays from
successful applications to the nation’s lop
business schools with commcnLs from
admissions officers.” Promises, promises.
On the back cover is a photo of editors
Brian Kasbar and Boykin Curry standing in
front of a sign that reads “Office of Under
graduate Admissions, Yale University, 149
Elm” (anarchist fire-bombers lake note of
ihc address: I threw it in to help you). Both
arc members of the class of 1^88 at Yale.
Brian’s a big guy who smiles a lot and sticks
his thumbs in the pockets of his 501s.
Boykin’s smaller and he can stick his whole
hands in the pockets of his white slacks.
I checked my mailbox again. 1 checked
some other people’s mailboxes. I went home
and checked my mailbox there. A letter from
an animal rights advocacy group with a
raster of a vivisected beagle was enclosed.
called my upstairs neighbor and asked if
she’d gotten any of my mail by mistake.
Nope.
The momeni of truth.
Kasbar and Curry start by stressing the
importance of writing a decent essay on your
applications to business school. They even
have a sense of humor about it. Under a
question like “What is your greatest weak
ness?” some of the self-deprecating sample
responses were: .. my tendency to over
research topics when time is available”; “..
. my desire to excel”; .. that I do not like
to waste time”; and — how could anyone
admit such a thing — “... that I'm too much
of a leader.”
“That I'm prone to occasional fits of gun
play in fast-food restaurants” and, my per
sonal favorite, “that, in certain unusually
tense situations, I often drop my pants and
recite the Pledge of Allegiance,” were not
included.
Some sample questions on business
school applications are also included. My
favorite here is UCLA’s zinger, “Write your
own essay question and answer it. l ake a
risk."
Okay, I thought, I’ll play along.
“When you used to sleep with your
mother during really violent thunderstorms,
did you dream about her wearing pink
poodle slippers and drop-kicking dachsunds
into a pond full of peach-flavored Jcllo?”
Yes, I did.
Wow, business.
Theessaysthemselvesarerevealing. The
first lines alone ring with modest determina
tion.
“My investment bank’s internal system
for the allocation of revenues and expenses
among divisions produces a competitive,
uncooperative relationship between invest
ment banking and sales and trading that has
resulted in the loss of business and market
share for the firm.” t ally. If you drove 150
miles per hour for tour days going cast eating
three pounds of doughnuts, how many
doughnuts would you have left by the lime
you reached Vermont? Answer that one,
smart guy.
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