There were several things I usually give credit to for drumming up my latent desire to direct a film. One was my friend Rob, then studying film at Tisch. He once said to me that it made just as much sense, if not more, for someone to take their

money and make a film as it did for that person to spend the money on film school. Comparing Rob and myself, it is difficult to say if he was right or not. The other big factor was related to my employment. When I first moved back to Chapel Hill, I had been immediately conned into going back to work for my old high school employer, Papagyos. It seems that my college degree(in theater) now qualified me to wait tables out front, instead of being kept in the kitchen like some embarassment (The move to the front may have also been related to my lack of command of the Spanish Language and the definite swing in the ethnic majority in the kitchen). Unfortunately, things got off to a rocky start when I suggested they hang my degree up in the lobby, so that the customers were aware of the highly educated service staff. Now I was quite happy working my life away at Papagyo as a waiter/manager/whatever type person, but my brother appeared to be completely dissatisfied with my situation. He felt the immediate need for me to get a job

where he was working, which was the internal helpdesk at IBM. Now, I certainly rejected this idea at first, and I would like to say when I did finally agree to apply, it was simply because I felt strongly that there was no way in hell I was going to get a job there. Let me explain: Sure, I was a computer expert back in college, but at the school I went to, being a computer expert meant that people would go out of their way to go to the computer lab with me when it was time to write papers. Why? Because I was the guy who knew how to type: At Wilson, that made you a genius. But I knew better then to think this meant anything in the real world. Knowing that I would fail to get a job at IBM, perhaps my initial reluctance was simply based on the fear that in some interview someone would actually ask me what the above procedure did, and I would be forced to confess that

the only reason I knew it was because I had looked over the shoulder of one of the computer lab guys and memorized what he did. So I applied. What the heck did it matter? If it is physically possible, I think my rejection letter arrived before I sent the application in. So I didn't think about it again. A few weeks later, my brother asked me if I had heard anything, since he was apparently unaware of IBM's transcient

abilities to weed out the weak, I had to tell him. He was angry, which confused me. But the next day, he walked into his boss' office with my resume and says, "this is my brother, and you have to hire him." Perhaps IBM is nepotistic. Perhaps they just had enough faith in brother to think that any relation of his must be worthy no matter how he looks on paper. Perhaps it is the family trait of the over-developed canine-tooth that runs in my family, but whatever it was, I got the job. I worked at IBM for three and a half years, and I think the best way I can sum it up is: I should have taken notice when my brother's girlfriend(who also worked there) would drop her voice, look at the floor and pensively say, "So, you have

decided to join us in our own little living hell, huh?". Then she would drive the point in by looking up with her eyes very wide and tilting her head a little. This was a trick she always did in dark rooms(like a bar). And when she tilted her head it invariably caused the refection of some light to flash across her ocean-before-a-storm black eyes. She did this several times before I started working at IBM, but since I was overwhelmed by the coolness of this effect, I completely failed to pay attention the

obvious, ominous overtones. What this all meant, of course, was I had to quit Papagyo. So there I was having drinks with two of my soon-to-be former co-workers: Jason, who was at his post-college, I am going to graduate school or I am going to write a book phase, and Dawn, who was at her post-college, I can't believe how many idiots in the world there are, I really need to stop rape, AIDS, child abuse, animal abuse, animal dissection, vivisection, procreation, etc. phase. (I will note that all this sat very well with me, as I was in my post-college, too young to get a paying job as a director phase(The details of which, in tribute to one of my heroes, George Lucas, I am going to discuss in a preceding chapter that I haven't written yet)). Jason and Dawn were accusing me of selling out my ideals by taking this job at IBM when I should be true to my desire to be an artist and repress any desire to do the 925 shuffle. They were, in fact, surprisingly unsympathetic to the more the 100% raise this was going to afford me, which was one of my brother's big selling points. So I promised, on that night, a little tipsy, but sober nonetheless, that I would take that extra money and do something good with it. And by good, I think it was understood that it would be artistic. So that was my second reason for making Ever. I bet you forgot why the hell I was telling you all this.