by Steve Boman
Yet I didn’t get a nibble from the big Chicago papers. Yes, the Inquirer liked me, but the recruiters at the Tribune and Sun-Times didn’t. The Wall Street Journal’s Chicago editor called me, said he liked my clips, and invited me to lunch but emphasized they weren’t hiring. I had offers from newspapers in New Jersey and North Carolina and Pennsylvania—places where Julie was also accepted to medical schools—but no offers from any of the big Chicago media outlets.
Yet one newspaper in Chicago did offer me a job: The Daily Southtown, circulation fifty-five thousand. It covered Chicago’s South Side and the southern suburbs, a working-class paper for a working-class audience. It was a big step down from the Inquirer, which had nearly ten times the circulation. It was supposed to be a temporary gig. I ended up working at The Daily Southtown during all four years of Julie’s medical school. I called it The Daily Saltmine.
And the characters in the newsroom! There were foul-mouthed miscreants, neurotic workaholics, the politically connected, the very talented, the inebriated. And those were just the women.
What the paper lacked in prestige, it made up for in character. The newspaper’s billboards on South Side Chicago expressways showed a toilet, a razor blade, and a rolled-up Southtown. The not-so-subtle message: a shit, a shave, a Southtown.
I had great friends at the Saltmine. I think being at such a journalistic underdog made us tighter. My colleagues and I played tennis at 6 A.M., dealt cards at night, went to dingy South Side bars on weekends. And never underestimate the skills of people at a smaller paper. Two of the people I worked with have since won Pulitzer Prizes, journalism’s highest award. Michael J. Kelley, who hired me at the Saltmine, later became managing editor of the Las Vegas Sun. Under Kelley’s hand, that paper won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2009 for investigating the high number of construction worker deaths in Las Vegas. And my fellow reporter and sometime-lunchmate M.L. Elrick later moved on to the Detroit Free Press, where he won a Pulitzer for Local Reporting, also in 2009. Elrick, funnier than most professional comedians, reported on the text-messaging scandal that resulted in the jailing of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. In addition, my Southtown pal David Heinzmann is now a big wheel at the Chicago Tribune and an acclaimed crime novelist. (In the spirit of full disclosure, Dave wrote one of my letters of recommendation for USC.)
Working at the Southtown put me in some of Chicago’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Once, while working a night shift, I covered the story of a young woman who had worked her way out of a bad neighborhood only to be shot in the head outside her new job in the supposedly safe suburbs. The shooter was her ex-boyfriend; he hid in her car and ambushed her.
I was sent to interview the woman’s mourning family and neighbors in the heart of a South Side ghetto. It was dark. I was the only reporter on the scene. When I got out of my car, I was approached by five men, all older teens. They demanded to know what I was doing there—a white guy wearing a dress shirt and tie. I explained I wanted to learn more about the woman and her successes. They listened, five gangbangers. They told me they knew the woman well and that she never gave anyone any trouble. They were sad and, it seemed, furious. I drove back to the newsroom physically untouched—but emotionally touched—and wrote the story. I made my hundred bucks for the day, and saw another hard example of life in Chicago’s South Side.
Julie got pregnant in her third year of med school, and I told Kelley I wanted a cushier job when the baby came. He moved me from the news desk to the features desk. No more breaking news, but I had an easy nine-to-five schedule. It was, however, yet another step down in the journalism world. When our baby was born, a lovely little girl we named Lara, Julie could take only a few weeks away from school. I took three months off work to stay home with our infant. Raising a baby seemed so much more important than covering the news.
When Julie graduated, she received a residency position at the University of Minnesota. For my going-away party, my reporter pal Heinzmann wrote an invitation touting me as “St. Paul’s brawniest soccer-mom.”
He was wrong on one point. We moved to Minneapolis, not St. Paul.
I thought paradise awaited us. I even planned to write a film script.
I was wrong on the paradise part. Residency for Julie meant ninety-hour weeks, working overnight at the hospital every fourth night. That went on for three years. I freelanced and juggled the domestic duties.
Our bright spot was when we had another daughter, a beautiful girl we named Maria.
T
he different levels of talent in our 507 class are starting to show. In the first class exercise, the little two-minute film, we all did roughly the same kind of work. Now that we’re on the second film, we see a real difference in quality.
J., the guy with the great story about his dying grandfather, remains an enigma in class. He’s opinionated and irritable at times, supportive and friendly other times. His second film is a revelation.
It’s a play on the silent films of the 1910s. A lady and a robber meet and have a relationship. It’s a great-looking work. He’s using lots of locations and several actors, all in early-twentieth-century period costume. The video looks very film-like, and the acting and editing seem lifted from 1915. It’s very amusing, and the class loves it from the first few seconds. We start clapping and shouting during the film, we’re so impressed. The film uses old-fashioned title cards to get around the use of the one-word-only restriction, and the number of the title cards keeps increasing until by the end of the film, title cards are literally raining down on the characters. It’s a postmodern take on early silent films, and it’s breathtaking how much effort J. put into the film. In a final scene, the characters dodge dozens of three-foot by two-foot title cards that appear to be falling from the sky. When I watch it, I’m wondering how many people J. had helping him throw title cards. And how did he print that many cards in the first place? I’m impressed, and so is the class. My comments are typical: “Very funny and VERY clever.”
J. is beaming in the hot seat as he hears us students talk. We are all, I think, taken aback by his talents. I know I feel suddenly unworthy. Who is this guy? In the back of my mind, I know that somewhere in our class there may be a real talent, someone who will later turn out to be big, someone in the pages of Variety, someone we’ll see interviewed at the Oscars. When I watch the film, I can’t help but think, Damn, this guy is good.
As always, we students critique first, then the instructors get the last word. J. is beaming when FTC begins to talk. FTC is not smiling. In fact, he looks positively angry. He’s angry at J., and he lets loose a tirade against the film. The gist of it is this: FTC thought the film was just a clever exercise in getting around the one-word rule. The longer FTC talks, the more upset he becomes. He accuses J. of mocking the process, of not taking the film or the class seriously.
When FTC is done, the class is silent. So is J. He looks shell-shocked. I’m wondering what the hell FTC is talking about. Yes, J. did get around the one-word rule, but incorporating title cards into the action of the film was brilliant and funny. It was raining title cards! In my notes, I had told J. it was “sort of cheating by using all those title cards.” But FTC seems to be going overboard. Way overboard. J.’s work was fantastic, and FTC had not a word of praise for it. Could FTC have felt threatened? Jealous? Upstaged by some cocky student with an outlandish story about his dying grandfather and a big helping of talent who makes it look easy?
After screenings, our class gathers for a dinner at the 2-9 Café, a restaurant just a few blocks off campus. The dinners had started a week before, and they were a nice way to spend some time together and socialize. For those screening films, Thursday nights marked the end of an often-frantic three-week push. I drive Fee Fee from the Shrine parking lot to the restaurant in my Oldsmobile, and we talk only about J.’s treatment at the hands of FTC. Neither of us understands it. At the restaurant, we are all there—all but J. We sit at an outdoor table and wonder if he is going to show u
p. Perhaps he’s going to lick his wounds in private.
Fifteen minutes later, J. enters, looking downcast. Almost in unison, we rise to our feet and give him a standing ovation. We are loud, and we hoot and high-five him. I start chanting his name. He looks extremely glad to be surrounded by us. In class, J. had been rendered mute by FTC’s criticism. Now in the outdoor bar, he loosens up.
I look at the group of us, smiling and cheering on J. We are cohesive as a group in a way we never were in the first weeks. It seems to be the happiest I’ve seen any of us. We’re having beers, talking excitedly, and the sense of togetherness is tangible. I wonder if FTC staged the outburst as a way to build unity among the class, the same way a drill sergeant will harangue new recruits to create a brotherhood in the barracks. I doubt it, though. My guess is he was just angry.
As we roll into the second month of school, I’m getting to know my 507 classmates a little better. I’m at a real disadvantage going home on weekends to Camarillo. Most of the shooting, and almost all socializing, takes place on weekends. I hear my classmates talk about events on Monday that happened over the previous weekend and I know they are getting closer. I don’t share in those events, which makes me feel even more like the odd man out.
Even though I’m missing out on class-bonding time, I am getting to know my two camera partners better.
I’m fascinated at the differences among the three of us. Fee Fee is pretty, but she tends to disappear in our class. She slumps into her chair, seemingly hiding, and often wears baggy, oversized clothes that drag on the ground. Fee Fee doesn’t talk much in class, and she sits in the corner, like a shy spider.
My other camera partner is Shorav, the Indian exchange student. He’s a PhD student with a thin wisp of a moustache. When he holds court in class, which he does often, he moves his arms and hands as if he’s trying to shape his words out of the air. His voice is very high and lilting. I nickname him Showbiz, a name that quickly catches on with the whole class. Showbiz likes his nickname and embraces it. The name is intentionally ironic because he’s the furthest thing from a Hollywood player. Showbiz is an academic and he’s a free-spirited freethinker. He’s so freethinking none of us knows what he’s thinking, and it’s compounded by the fact he seems stoned much of the time. Showbiz is always late for class, and he always arrives wearing a satisfied grin. His films—collages of often badly exposed, out-of-focus, seemingly random images—are as far from the mainstream as one can imagine. In class, he gives oddly looping monologues in heavily accented English.
Showbiz admits to me when we exchange the camera one afternoon that he’s taking the production class because he’s on a scholarship from the Indian government, and if he stretches out his schooling by taking some production classes, he can delay his graduation. He really likes a chance to make experimental film, he says, and he doesn’t need to prove himself. For him, it’s an adventure, and a free one, thanks to taxpayers in India. He’s going to get his PhD eventually in critical studies and, I suppose, teach in India, where he’ll confuse and mystify his students just as he confuses and mystifies us.
Showbiz’s second film is called L.A. It’s a film about people getting on and off a bus, set to music. Some of the shots are out of focus. The scenes are shot on a real Los Angeles city bus, and the characters are just regular riders. It’s interesting though, in the same way that sitting on a bench on a busy street and watching people is interesting. There is no story, however, no plot and no actors. Is it a documentary? An art film? A collection of images taken on a bus ride? Yes to all of them, apparently.
In contrast, Fee Fee spent her undergraduate years making films. She has a very good sense of how to use a camera, how to edit. The physical parts of filmmaking don’t intimidate her, and her work is glossy and focused.
But her second film is pretty dull. A woman gets a call from her boyfriend and it’s apparently a breakup call because she cries a lot and we see flashbacks of the couple. It looks like a music video. It’s a standard Film School Drama.
Fee Fee looks out at the world with large eyes that remind me of the oversized eyes on animated Disney characters. She sometimes wears a My Little Pony T-shirt. Her first film was about a cute little stuffed animal that chased people. Her second was the crying woman dumped by the boyfriend.
Then she shows her third film. It hits us like a cast-iron skillet to the skull.
In Fee Fee’s third creation, a gorgeous young woman masturbates in bed. The camera puts us viewers right there into the action. The woman wakes her hunky young boyfriend. He looks like Adonis, and he is inexplicably uninterested in having sex with her, despite her intense efforts to arouse him. The scene causes several of us males in the class to elbow each other during the screening and whisper how that sure wouldn’t happen to us, no-way, no-how.
Then Fee Fee’s lead character leaves her hunky boyfriend and goes to a sex-toy shop, where she peruses various latex wear and adult toys. Then she has sex with another hot young woman.
The film is graphic, and looks like arty soft porn. Her film leaves the class as speechless as Showbiz’s but for entirely different reasons. We’re not prudes, but we’re just stunned at the film because it comes from quiet Fee Fee.
And the credits and titles in the film are super-dazzle spectacular. The credits cite Fee Fee’s company (there is no company, all of our films are owned by USC) as Rock Star Productions!
All of us look at Fee Fee in wonderment. I thought she was a quiet kid who went home to do needlepoint.
4
Superbabe, GeezerJock, and Steve All Fall Down
It was December 2000. Julie and I walked along the beach in Ventura County, California. The Pacific was pacific and the air was warm, amazingly warm to us, coming from the freezing Midwest. Families strolled on the picturesque Ventura Pier. The sun was going down. It was a gorgeous evening. All was mellow.
Julie and I were about to move to California. We had left our two daughters in snowy Minnesota and had flown out to look at real estate. We were elated. Life looked so good. For years we had scrimped and saved and both worked around the clock. She had done her medical residency, and I had freelanced all sorts of crud—technical writing, business writing, speech writing. I ghostwrote a book about home repair for Popular Mechanics. And even though I had no idea what I was doing, I had produced a few safety videos for Cargill, the same agribusiness I wrote speeches for. All of it was to earn enough money to pay a mortgage, raise two kids, and support her dream of being a doctor.
Now Julie was going to be working her first real job. It was at a clinic for migrant workers in Oxnard, about fifty miles northwest of Los Angeles. Julie spoke Spanish and loved the location.
And me? I would be launching a magazine that my Daily Southtown pal Sean Callahan and I had dreamed up. It was called GeezerJock. It would be a snappy, beautifully illustrated monthly magazine dedicated to master athletes—those forty and older. GeezerJock had attracted the attention of a deep-pocketed New York publishing investor. He was going to pay us to develop the magazine in exchange for a minority share of the company.
Julie’s nickname, given by one of my favorite Southtown reporters, was Superbabe. In the fading sunlight on the California coast, Superbabe looked especially superbabealicious. Her long brown hair caught the sun. Her big brown eyes were liquid.
One year later, I sat and watched the ocean from the same place. Huge waves smashed into the Ventura Pier, spraying water high into the air. A storm in the Pacific was calving these monsters, the biggest to hit the coast in years. How different the scene was from a year earlier, when the ocean was so tranquil. How different our lives were.
GeezerJock was dead—the deep-pocketed New York investor had bailed out. The World Trade Center towers were piles of rubble. We had sold our house at a loss when our money ran low. We moved into a rental house. I was making zilch. And Superbabe was now recovering from cancer surgeries. What a year it had been.
Our first clue was the nausea. Julie had
gotten pregnant when we arrived in California. She never had much morning sickness during her other pregnancies, but this time she had a lot of morning sickness. And most of it came in the evening. Every single night, as predictable as the tide, she’d head for the bathroom and kneel by the toilet and barf. And barf and barf and barf. The pregnancy was very hard. She wondered if it was because it was child number three or because she was now past thirty-five or because she was exhausted from her long residency.
But it was from something different. Late in her pregnancy, Julie felt a lump in her neck. Doctors had to wait until she delivered to operate; it was too risky to do so while she was pregnant. On a sunny warm January day, beautiful little Sophia Rae Boman entered the world. Four days later, Julie went under the knife and surgeons removed half her thyroid.
The lump on her thyroid was cancerous so, less than a week later, Julie had the rest of her thyroid removed. During her second thyroid surgery, an inexperienced surgeon at the Ventura County Medical Center damaged the main nerve to Julie’s left vocal cord, leaving her rasping and choking on her own spit. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t swallow. She had big bandages around her neck. She no longer had a thyroid gland, and one of her vocal cords was paralyzed. Sophia was two weeks old, Maria was twenty-six months old, and Lara was five years old. I wasn’t making any money. Julie was at home, recovering. She received no pay from the clinic while she was home. Within two months, she returned to work. She had to wear a portable loudspeaker on her hip and a microphone around her neck so her patients could hear her thin and damaged voice. She gasped for breath while walking up stairs. I stayed home, taking care of the kids, meeting Julie at doctors’ appointments, changing diapers, doing laundry. We’d been in California for less than a year. We had no family within two thousand miles. Few close friends lived nearby. It was a lonely, frightening time.