The Dumbest Kid in Gifted Class

by Dan Ryckert

  Brandon (as Morgan Freeman) walked through the crowd and looked at the stage as I panned around and shot from over his shoulder. My viewfinder had Nugent performing a solo on the right side of the frame and the back of Brandon’s head on the left. As I monitored the shot from behind the camera, a security guard entered the frame. He was beelining toward me with his hand out.

  “Put that fucking camera down,” he yelled. “Put it down!”

  I stopped recording and brought the camera down to my side. The security guard was furious as I tried my best to explain that I had permission to shoot there. When I produced the media passes, he told me that they didn’t permit anyone to film from the amphitheater crowd. As he was explaining this, Nugent was onstage shooting a flaming crossbow into an effigy of Saddam Hussein.

  “I need to watch you delete that footage,” the security guard said. “Pull up the screen and delete the footage right now.”

  As soon as I did, the guard ordered us to leave the premises. I pleaded with him to contact Nugent’s tour manager. He wasn’t having any of it, saying that an act’s manager couldn’t override venue policy. Nothing I said was getting through to this dude and we were kicked out. I tried to call Nugent’s tour manager several times to no avail. The cameo wasn’t going to happen.

  Nugent’s cameo falling through was a disappointment, but I was still determined to nab a big star. For weeks, I sent out requests to PR people and tour managers, trying as hard as I could to garner even a shred of interest.

  After sending out e-mails to every notable act that was coming through the area, I heard back from one of them. A tour manager for George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic was up for chatting about the idea and asked for a script. I was working on one about a young Canadian hitman who moves to Kansas to try to corner the local assassin market. It would be easy enough to write in a mafia godfather character, and naturally, I’d have it played by the Godfather of Funk.

  I finished the script, adding a scene where George Clinton orders the Canadian hitman to assassinate one of his organization’s enemies. Not long after I sent it in, Clinton’s manager responded enthusiastically. She had brought it up to Clinton, and he was all for it. She was setting up me, my actor, and my second cameraman with passes to a P-Funk show in East St. Louis, Illinois.

  Since I was already going to be there with cameras, she had another request: footage of the current tour. I immediately agreed. She wanted one roaming cameraman onstage throughout the concert, one in the crowd, and one stationary wide shot from the back of the room. I wasn’t about to pass up on the onstage role, so I took that and tasked my actor and cameraman with the other spots.

  In the weeks leading up to the concert, the plan was for my friend Chris to drive us to St. Louis in his car and serve as one of the cameramen. The hitman role would be played by Tyler from my floor in Hashinger. He and I may not have been great friends, but he was a theater major with an acting background, so I picked him for the role.

  Days before we were set to head out, Chris told me he wouldn’t be able to go because of a school commitment, leaving us without a driver. Tyler didn’t have a license and I was terrified at the prospect of driving for four hours on the highway. Merging on a highway was enough to give me a panic attack, let alone driving across the entirety of Missouri. At one point, I was actually researching ways to get across the state without getting on a highway. MapQuest told me that the drive would take four hours if I took I-70. I wasn’t able to find any routes that would take me across the state exclusively on local roads.

  Thankfully, my friend Nick stepped in and offered to drive. He also had video production experience, so I could trust him to get good shots from the crowd. A couple of days before the concert, we packed into Nick’s car and made the drive. For those who haven’t taken I-70 through Missouri, just picture one long, boring road with at least 6,000 billboards for fireworks, pornography, and Jesus every half-mile.

  The day of the concert came and everything went much smoother than the Nugent situation. Clinton’s manager greeted us at the venue a couple of hours before the show and gave us all-access passes. She told us that we were free to film anywhere in the building. We were to shoot concert footage during the show and then meet up with Clinton afterward and head to the Renaissance Hotel for the cameo shoot.

  Scouting the club for shooting locations didn’t take long. We set up a tripod in the back and stored the rest of our gear backstage, then just hung around the catering table until people started to filter in. Parliament Funkadelic seems to vary between having about 16 or 600 members at any given time. Based on how packed the backstage area became, I think they were closer to the latter at this point.

  Despite most of them having no idea why we were there, everyone seemed enthusiastic when we said that Clinton would be doing a cameo in our short film. As I introduced myself to the band, I kept noticing a tall guy who looked tremendously familiar. I eventually had to ask somebody.

  “Hey, where have I seen that guy before?” I asked a guy who introduced himself as “Poo Poo Man.”

  “Ever seen the Urkel show?” Poo Poo asked. “That’s Darius, he was the older brother.”

  Holy crap. I had watched a ton of Family Matters growing up and was just informed that Eddie Winslow was backstage at this P-Funk concert for some wholly unexplained reason.

  The band took the stage once the crowd had all funneled into the venue. They started jamming for a while with no sign of Clinton. I hadn’t even seen a glimpse of him backstage despite being there for hours.

  “Where’s George?” I asked a man who was at least 50 years old and wearing nothing but a diaper.

  “This must be your first time,” he said. “George always gets ‘relaxed’ on the bus until he’s ready to come out.”

  For almost two hours, Parliament jammed onstage as a revolving door of vocalists jumped on and offstage whenever they felt like it. George’s niece took the stage, followed by Eddie Winslow. Diaper Guy danced around for a while. There was no real rhyme or reason to anything that was happening, but the crowd was loving it. It was fascinating to be backstage and see just how loosely the entire crew operated.

  This was all treated like a warm-up to the main event. I wasn’t expected to start filming until Clinton was ready to kick things off in a proper manner. Without warning, I heard clapping near the catering table as the back door opened and the sea of roadies and musicians parted. George Clinton was done with his fun on the bus and floated through the backstage area with a gigantic smile on his face.

  I didn’t have time to be starstruck. I grabbed my camera from the bag, ran up the stairs on the side of the stage, and hit record. Ducking down by the drums, I filmed Clinton as he walked up the stairs and emerged onstage to loud cheers.

  For the rest of the concert, I did my best to film the band without drawing attention to myself. I hoped that the crowd was too busy staring at George Clinton, a guy in a diaper, and the gyrating dude with the giant prosthetic nose to notice the dorky white 18-year-old in a polo shirt. Parliament’s drummer kept yelling at me to see if I wanted Heinekens from a plastic tub. Between songs, I occasionally snuck one or two while trying to stay incognito. People were doing drugs openly backstage, and I was still worried about somehow getting caught drinking a beer while underage.

  When the show ended, the fans started heading out of the venue’s front door while the band headed to the parking lot in the back. Crew members wasted no time tearing down the stage and hauling equipment to the buses. Before Clinton left, I wanted to make sure that he remembered we’d be shooting the scene back at the hotel.

  His manager made sure I wouldn’t have to worry about that. As the band dispersed, she was trying to secure a ride for Clinton. More equipment needed to be loaded onto the tour buses before they could head to the hotel, so other arrangements needed to be made for the man himself. After asking a couple of people if they had space in their car, the manager approached me, Tyler, and Nick.

  �
�Hey, do you guys have room in your car?” she asked.

  She was seriously asking three teenage strangers if we’d be willing to transport the Godfather of Funk to his hotel. There was only the three of us, so we agreed to act as his chauffeurs. Clinton was holding a Styrofoam container of fried chicken from catering and talking to a couple of the band members when she pulled him away.

  “George, these guys are gonna give you a ride to the Renaissance,” she explained. “They’re the ones that are shooting the video with you.”

  He shook our hands, mumbled a bit, and walked with us to Nick’s car. One of his backup singers was with him, so we did our best to squeeze in. Nick jumped in the driver’s seat and Tyler took the passenger seat, while I crammed into the back with Clinton and his backup singer.

  My brain was already reeling at how ridiculous this situation was when I heard a frantic knocking on the window to my left. I turned to see Eddie Winslow through the glass, about six inches from my face. When I rolled the window down, he asked if we had room for him in the car. I told Eddie Winslow that no, there was no room for him in my friend’s car.

  Making conversation in the backseat with Clinton was difficult. He was mumbling and easily distracted. Tyler asked Nick about the best way to get to the hotel, and Clinton perked up. Before we went to the hotel, he said he needed to meet up with someone behind a nearby convenience store. His backup singer led us there, and we remained parked as she talked to someone on the phone.

  That someone walked up to Clinton’s window and knocked on it. The Godfather of Funk rolled his window down, handed money to the mystery man, took something from him, and slipped it into his pocket. I was still processing the part where Eddie Winslow had been knocking on my window, and now I had definitely just watched George Clinton buy drugs from the seat next to me.

  We got back on the road as the backup singer made another phone call. She was telling somebody that we were going to shoot a quick movie scene at the hotel. Not long into the conversation, she put her hand over the phone and relayed a question to me.

  “Can the band be in it?” she asked.

  “The band? They want to be in the scene?”

  “Yeah. Poo Poo, Sir Nose, Kim, Darius, and Garry are on the way. They wanna be in it.”

  Darius was Eddie Winslow, which meant I’d be getting a wholly unexpected second cameo in the same scene. Adding more members of Parliament Funkadelic surely wasn’t something that I was going to turn down, and they could easily be written in as henchmen of Clinton’s mafia godfather character.

  We arrived at the Renaissance Hotel at the same time as the car filled with other Parliament members. George walked behind us with his backup singer and the Parliament guys asked questions about what they’d be doing. I told them it was a dumb comedy, and they didn’t have to worry. George was gonna play their boss and they’d flank him as he gave a young hitman his assignment.

  I was worried about how lucid George would be, but he came to life almost instantly when we got to the room. When I handed him his script, he slid his sunglasses up and read every word several times before we started filming. He asked a couple of questions, I did some basic camera prep, and we got right into it.

  Eddie Winslow wanted to be involved, so I added a quick bit where he greeted the young hitman at the door to the hotel room. From there, I just had to film a brief conversation between Tyler and Clinton about his assignment. Clinton handed Tyler a photograph, told him to “put some funk in [the target’s] trunk,” and sent him on his way.

  Once the scene was done, we hung around for a bit and drank more of their seemingly endless Heineken stash. I was worried for a moment that this little afterparty was going to get druggy thanks to the transaction I had witnessed earlier, but it never did. A few beers later, the three of us thanked the entire band (and Eddie Winslow) profusely, and headed back to our own hotel.

  After I finished shooting and editing the entire project back in Lawrence, I was thrilled to get the word out. I took great pride in having been able to make such a weird thing happen. It was ready to be released online, and I wanted it to get as much exposure as possible. I sent news tips to just about every local outlet I could think of and got a few bites. The Kansas City Star ran a large article with a photo, as did The Kansan, our campus newspaper. A George Clinton fan site—the prestigious New Funk Times—also ran a story and an interview.

  While the Kansas City Star piece would certainly reach more people, I knew that those in my immediate vicinity would be more likely to see the Kansan article. Editions of The Kansan were all over campus every day, and it was actually read frequently in the days before smartphones. In my mind, I’d almost certainly be stopped a few times on the day the article ran.

  “Hey, you’re that guy from the paper!” is what they’d say. Most of them would be attractive women, I imagined, and this article would almost certainly give them the desire to have sexual intercourse with me.

  On the morning the Kansan article was supposed to run, I rushed down to our dorm’s first floor to confirm it. Sure enough, the top of page 5A read “Student Film to Star George Clinton.” Below the headline was a photo of Clinton and me from the video shoot. It wasn’t the cover of the paper, but surely the big picture would be enough to get people to recognize me.

  Desperate to be recognized in public for the first time, I went to Mrs. E’s cafeteria. This was the dining hall that served all of the dorms, and plenty of students read The Kansan there while they ate. Classes could never get me to wake up this early in the morning, but the chance of being recognized for my short film certainly did. I sat by myself at a table, slowly chipping away at a giant plate of sausage and bacon.

  As I expected, several students were reading The Kansan at Mrs. E’s that day. From over their shoulders, I could even tell that some of them were on the page with my article. I waited for someone to look in my direction and make the connection. My vain hope of being recognized was something I was able to live with, but I wasn’t about to walk up to someone, point at the picture, and pull a “hey, that’s me!” or anything so overt. After about an hour with no luck, I swallowed my pride and headed back to my dorm room.

  I gave it one more shot later in the afternoon. Maybe by then more people would have read the article. Instead of Mrs. E’s, I strolled around campus aimlessly. Once again, the chance of recognition had me doing something—visiting campus—that classes almost never did. It ended up being as ill-conceived as the cafeteria attempt.

  I’d continue making short films and comedy sketches for a couple of years. As time went on, I became less concerned about being recognized and more interested in doing it just for fun. During the few times that I actually would attend classes, I learned to hate my fellow film students. They somehow seemed even more pretentious than the worst musicians, poets, and artists in Hashinger Hall.

  All of their projects were drenched in contrived metaphors and everyone was convinced that they were going to become the next great filmmaker. I eventually started making all of my productions as lowbrow as possible, in some form of silent protest. One of my shorts featured a rapper whose colon and bowel function were destroyed by a raccoon that crawled into his ass during summer camp. As a result, he became plagued by a condition that constantly made him fart and pee his pants. I still have a robust folder of fart sound effects on my computer thanks to that one.

  My fellow students turned me off to the very idea of pursuing film as a career. A handful of older classmates graduated and moved to Los Angeles, only to come back within a year with nothing but bad things to say about the city and the industry. Getting work in Hollywood seemed like the best-case scenario if this was going to be my chosen path, and that didn’t sound all that great to me. I certainly didn’t want to work in a field that had me working alongside the types of people that were in my classes.

  Making sketches and short films kept me busy for a couple of years, but I eventually couldn’t justify spending that much time on something that
I didn’t want to pursue. Video games were still my greatest passion, and it was time to dedicate 100 percent of my efforts to making inroads in that arena.

  Game Shark

  Turning 14 meant that I was finally eligible to work with one of my passions. I made that happen once by getting hired at AMC Theatres—twice if McDonald’s counts as a passion—but I wouldn’t be able to work around video games until I turned 16. That’s when I’d be eligible for a job at FuncoLand, the used game retailer that eventually fell under the GameStop umbrella.

  FuncoLand was my favorite place growing up. I’d spend hours there as a customer, excitedly asking questions about upcoming consoles and ogling new games that I didn’t have the money to buy yet. Once I had mowed enough lawns and accumulated enough old games to trade in, I’d head to their location off 95th Street and grab whatever new game I was obsessing over. This usually involved trading in my old favorites for next to nothing, but that didn’t matter as long as it was getting me closer to the newest thing that I wanted. I’ll admit that it did sting a bit when I traded in my NES and many of my favorite games so that I could afford a Sega CD.

  I was a kid with no real social life, but at FuncoLand, I felt like I belonged. The cashiers were willing to humor all of my questions, and they didn’t mind changing out games in their demo kiosks so that I could try out the newest releases. FuncoLand is where my excitement for the Virtual Boy instantly evaporated once I played a few games. It’s where my jaw dropped when I saw the killer whale demolish the dock in Sonic Adventure before the Dreamcast came out. It’s where I had my first conversation with Seaman.

  It’s also where I discovered Game Informer, the magazine that would eventually give me my first full-time job in the games press.