“Who am I?” An Introduction

Hello, readers.

My name is César, but you can call me Caesar, yes, like the salad although I prefer the Emperor, Julius. I’m a young man in his 20’s who happens to love movies. I would say that I more than love movies. Ever since I can remember I’ve been watching television and movies. That was and still is my favorite pastime. Nothing relaxes me more than a good movie playing in the background and I don’t even have to be watching it. Just by hearing the score, the characters converse with one another, and the gunfire, screams full fear and agony along with countless explosions makes me happy. But enough with my fetish with movies. I’m gonna talk to you about myself. Who am I and where do I come from? Let’s get started and please bare with me.

Who am I? Well, like I said, my name is César. I was born in Puerto Rico during a hot 31st of May. How do I know it was a hot day? Because there is nothing I despise more than very hot days and I can’t imagine my baby self coming out of my mother’s cozy wound into a hot day (I was born in a hospital which obviously has air conditioning but you get the point). I most likely cried. I still cry whenever it is too hot. Not literally but you get my point. I grew up from Puerto Rico. I went to the same private school for 14 years of my life. Yeah, private school, the mecca of privileged and economically accommodated hubris. I come from a working class family who struggle to keep me in that private school just so I could get a good education. The reason they did that? Most if not all public schools in Puerto Rico are pretty bad. Think inner city bad but worse. For years I had a dislike for people with money that liked to gloat and show off. I thought everybody with money was the same. Growing up in a place like that and coming from a working class family that struggles to make ends meet would make you hate them, but I learned that not all of them are the same but all run the risk of turning out that way. So what happened to that hatred? I went from hating people with money to hating money itself. So when that time in high school came where I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I decided that I wanted to do something I love and not something that will make lots of money. I looked at my strengths and my weakness to figure out what it was that I wanted to do. I’m not  good with math, science was murder to me and history was a little to depressing for my tastes (although I do appreciate history). So what was I good at? I was good at drawing, painting, and I had a great appreciation for things like movies, music and culture. It came down to movies. Film was my true passion. There’s nothing else I wanted to do. If I could tell stories for the rest of my life on the big screen, I would die a happy man. I can send people on a dangerous and exciting journey with an action adventure movie, make them laugh with a comedy, send shivers down their spine with a tense thriller or make them scream and jump out of their seats with a horror movie. That’s what I wanted to do and that’s how my journey started. A journey that has me here back to square one.

On my senior year I looked for schools that had a film program, but not just a film program. I wanted a film program that fit my needs. I wanted to touch the equipment, learn how to use it and experiment with fellow filmmakers. I wanted to learn every aspect of the filmmaking process. This was hard because I quickly found out that none of the universities in Puerto Rico had what I wanted. Sure they had communication programs and digital cinematography courses but I wanted more. I wanted to learn the old school tactics and the new as well. So, I started to look in the states (United States of America). I looked at colleges like the New York Film Academy, The University of Southern California, among others but they all required a SAT score higher than the one I had (I wasn’t that smart). All hope was lost. I didn’t know what to do. I basically had given up on the chance that I could study what I loved the way I wanted to. So my mother, being the wonderful and dedicated human being she is, started to look online for alternatives. In her search, as I had already given up, she found Full Sail University, a small yet advanced college in central Florida a couple of minutes outside of Orlando. She showed me the website and I loved what I saw. I was mesmerized with the equipment they were presenting on their website, so I told my mom that this might be it. We scheduled an open house tour or this case a Behind the Scenes tour, as they call it, and we packed our bags and headed to Florida. The Behind the Scenes tour was fantastic, the campus was great and the equipment they had displayed on the tour fascinated me. I was sold. This was it. This was the university where I would get my degree, but there was one last issue. The school was expensive and I do mean expensive. I would have to play tuition, housing, living expenses, etc. My parents didn’t have that kind of money and finding a part time job in Puerto Rico during high school is nearly impossible, unless you know the right people. Our only option, if I wanted to study there, was financial aid. Student loans, the doubled edged sword that was great for me during college and now it is my worst enemy. We were able to get the student loans and financial aid we needed for me to go to college with a little bit of hustle and co-signers but we did it. I was going to leave Puerto Rico and study “abroad”. Something I always wanted was to live away from Puerto Rico and it was finally happening. Goodbye, Puerto Rico and hello, Full Sail University.

My time at Full Sail was very pleasant. It was a ray of sunshine with a couple of rainy days which I was responsible for. I met some wonderful people at Full Sail. I also made some close friends and lost some as well. It was funny because the first group of people I ever hung out with looked like something written for a sitcom show. There was a tall city boy from Washington, D.C., a Christian Kid from Ohio, a jewish kid from New Jersey that looked like George Lucas on shrooms, a half black, half white kid also from New Jersey that looked like John Belushi’s lost child with Jonah Hill and myself, a Puerto Rican kid who curiously happens to look a little middle eastern with a funny accent. I stayed close to them all throughout college, along with some other great people whom I had the privilege to call friends and the whole experience was great. Meeting people from different parts of the country was great for me because it let me experience how culture works in the United Sates. In Puerto Rico there was a myth at my school in which teachers would tell the class that Americans were all the same and I refused to believe that and turns out I was right not to. Each individual I met, wether they were from the same State or not they were different and as a man who appreciated different cultures, I loved that.

The classes at Full Sail where ok. I wasn’t a fan of lectures but that was simply because I’m a man of action. I like to learn by doing rather by hearing a professor or instructor talk about it. I was a fan of the labs for that reason. During our laboratory sessions (sessions in which we would learn how to use the equipment) the instructors would teach us how to handle equipment properly and then they will give us challenges for us to complete, following what they had taught us beforehand. It was great. Those I were in love with. I couldn’t wait to go into a lab and put a light up, climb up a ladder, destroy a set only to build another, or smell the celluloid on film rolls as they are being loaded on a magazine (the compartment where film rolls are stored to be attached to the camera, like bullets). It was great having all this knowledge being cramped into my brain. Then we even had the chance to make our own short films. Those were stressful days but fun in the end. Our class became a family. Some people weren’t too fond of each other but that’s how families work. We spent so much time together that we felt like we have known each other for a decade. Graduation day came and it was like saying goodbye to some of the best people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. I admit that I wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea but I doubt I made any enemies, but if I did and they happen to be reading this, I apologize for whatever stupid thing it was that I did back then. In the end, I couldn’t have asked for a better college to attend.

After graduation I started to look for jobs but I kept constantly putting walls in front of me. I didn’t have a car, so I didn’t look for jobs far away fro  my places of living and I was negative about all of it most of the time. In the end, I ran out of money and I had to go back to Puerto Rico to my parents’ house. Loans were coming in and I had to pay so I had to get a job no matter what. Unfortunately I didn’t find any paying jobs in Puerto Rico at the time so I ended working at McDonald’s for almost a year. I didn’t like it very much but that job made me appreciate the value of money and it kept me busy and moving fast on a work environment something that is very similar to a film set. Time is money no matter where you go, even in McDonald’s. During my time in McDonald’s I stayed in touch with my friends from college through social media. It was great seeing what some of them were up to but at the same time it depressed me a little. Some of them were making their lives step by step and I was back home on a job that had nothing to do with what I studied. So after some planning, and quitting from my job at McDonalds’ I went on another adventure. I was going to move in with my friends from college in Los Angeles, California. Hollywood here I come!

I couldn’t believe it. I was finally in Hollywood. The home of American cinema. The stars, the glamour, great weather, it was the place I’ve always wanted to be. I was finally there. Living in a four room house full with seven people, counting me. I slept in the garage, but that didn’t bother me. I was in hollywood and I was ready to make this town mine or was I? Turns out I wasn’t. Although I loved the atmosphere, went hiking, loved jogging by Warner Bros. Studios, this was not the Hollywood I was expecting. It was a different Hollywood. Big time Hollywood movies where jumping ship and shooting on different parts of the united States, finding a job was hard and most of the movies being produced were low budget productions that could barely afford to feed their crew. But that didn’t matter, I was in Hollywood. I was loving it still, even if I didn’t have a job. Then, suddenly, a David Bowie loving, Muppets fanatic that I met in college gave me a call.

His name is Schuyler and he was one cool dude in college, he still is. He was working in New Orleans when he called about a possible job opportunity. They needed a script supervisor (person who makes sure that everything in the script is shot and covered among other duties) that spoke Spanish for an Italian dance movie being shot down in the Big Easy. I accepted and I went down to New Orleans for what I still call the best month of my life. It was my first time in New Orleans or Louisiana for that matter and it was great. The production, like any other production, had it’s good days and it’s not so good days but in the end I had a lot of fun working for a crew of locals from New Orleans and some kick-ass Italians. During my stay in New Orleans, I learned some Italian, had some of the most delicious food, experienced some of the most fun nights of my life, met some amazing people from both Louisiana and Italy, and I fell in love with a city and its culture.  I miss that city but as the month ended and we wrapped out production, it was time for me to say goodbye to the wonderful friends I made and to the city I fell in love with. Back to Los Angeles it was for round two.

Back in Los Angeles I was able to work for free in a couple of productions. It was for free but I worked with some great people and that’s all that matters to me. We created something and I love that. I also had a job interview at Warner Bros. Studios, which gave me the opportunity to explore their backlot (outside movie sets) and sound stages (large soundproof buildings where TV shows and movies are shot). That was a great experience as well. But, unfortunately, I wasn’t getting any luck with jobs. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough, and I honestly think that might have been it. I kept putting obstacles in my way and it affected me. I again ran out of money after a while so I had to return home to Puerto Rico. So here I am.

I find myself back in Puerto Rico, working a short documentary that I’m directing for a friend, writing this blog, living with my parents and no idea of what to do with my life or what it may bring me. This is my story so far. I’ve had my ups and downs and although I feel like my downs have dominated my life, those ups have been so high up that they make up for all the negativity. I will always remember those college days at Full Sail, experiencing new things and learning how to live on my own, my job at McDonald’s and trying to fight hard not to let my pride overtake me and accepting that I have to work with what I got, the amazing feeling of living in the City of Angels surround by what I love, the month I spend in New Orleans learning about their culture and falling in love, and the fact that now I’ve reached a new chapter of my life. A chapter I plan on sharing with those who care enough to read this blog. I hope I don’t bore you and I hope you enjoy this blog and come with me in this journey in which I watch and work in movies, listen to music, live everyday life and learn new things along the way. Let the chapter start.

Please excuse any grammatical errors.