Me and Spike Lee Part 2

I couldn’t believe it. For the last four years I had had two claims to fame. One was seeing Brad Pitt at the University of Missouri Columbia supporting a filmmaker who had made a documentary about John Kerry during his run for president in 2004. The other was the same year when Spike Lee visited and spoke about his education and early years in the filmmaking industry. What stood out to me most at that time was his commitment to encouraging and mentoring young, unknown talent. His most impressive move came when someone asked how one could get a script made into a film. This is when Spike Lee gave entire audience his office fax number and encouraged us to fax him our unsolicited scripts. I had scoured the Internet and nagged professors about how to get work published or sold, but it was practically unheard of for any company to accept a random nobody’s script. Yet, one of the most successful filmmakers in the industry not only accepted these same scripts but wanted to have them and assured they would be read by his assistants. I kept that number and bragged to everyone about how Spike Lee gave me his fax number. Unfortunately my phone broke before I ever took advantage of my treasured possession.

I was visibly more excited than the average NYFA student about Spike Lee’s visit. Perhaps this was because by this time, Spike and I were pretty much old friends. After all, I had seen him four years ago, and I used to have his fax number, and it’s always exciting to say hello to an old friend. I was pretty sure he would remember me, that blond girl from Jesse Hall who was sitting on the sort of left center but a little toward the back. Maybe this time, I could even get a photo with him.

I donned a white, linen wrap around dress with gold embroidery, hoping to somehow blend in among the insanely rich. I hitched a ride with a few of the instructors that lived in my villa. Gautam was the tall, lanky, broody Indian American from Boston, whose feigned disinterest in everything but his own writing, in combination with his dark silences that begged for the attention he had no interested in, let you know he was clearly doing everyone a favor by driving the car. Sky and Mike were the twenty-three and twenty-two year old editing teachers. NYFA imported Sky directly from its high school summer program out of desperation for someone to initiate and run the brand new editing program at Abu Dhabi. Sky was a little brainy guy with a dark, unkempt, strawberry blond Jew fro and some mad break dancing skills. Mike was his physical opposite. Sky, the brains of the duo, agreed to the position a week before leaving only if his childhood buddy, aka assistant, Mike, could come along. This pair of born and bread New Yorkers made it very clear their presence was little more than a professional requirement. Neither was really into celebrity showings. Zameer also rode with us. I liked Zameer. He was a fellow student from India, who had classic, beautiful Indian locks for hair. He was very shy and pulled his curls with his right hand and laughed nervously every time someone attempted conversation with him. Zameer always tried to hide a feeling of blissful innocence at events like the Shangri-la dinner. I think he wanted to blend in too. However, it turned out all of us really only blended in with the other student filmmakers, ecstatic about free smorgasbord of delectable, Arabic cuisine and ready to relish the free beer and wine.

The Shangri-la was not a palace. But it was the next best thing. Like most things in Abu Dhabi, the Shangri-la from a distance was really a regal display of brilliant luminescence. Up close was a swooping driveway arched over a manmade stream, radiating warm light from below. On either side of the drive stood a corridor supported by arches in the faux classic Islamic style of the cross-section of a Mosque. The entire hotel was an off white color about two shades lighter than actual sand. It reminded me that everything begins and humble pieces of earth, but some things end up looking way better.

Other than perhaps its color, there was no humility in the Shangri-la. After the valet took the car, gorgeous Philippine women with their black hair pinned into neat buns, greeted us with a proud Sir or Madam. They wore identical long, red, fitted dresses with stiff, white and gold, long-sleeved jackets, and they ushered us in to the grand rotunda, where the ceiling was placed at a height sure to remind all who entered just how far down they were. The rotunda was filled with pretty women in cocktail dresses and average-looking men in suits sipping from wine glasses. They mingled with indistinguishable men in crisp, white dishdashes with their heads covered in flowing red and white checkered scarves secured with a black bands. Women draped in fine, black robes adorned with lavish embroidery would occasionally flash the Gucci or Prada or Louis Vuitton they lazily attempted to cover as they puffed smoke that encircled their overly made-up faces. Their hair was often sprayed and teased into measurable heights, and they draped it leisurely with translucent black scarves.

Either out of insecurity or fear of losing my ride, I stuck close to Sky and Mike, both of whom wore slacks and poorly match collard shirts and ties. It was clearly the most effort either had made in years to look something like professionals. With Zameer close, we made our way down a sharply curved, marble staircase where suited, middle-aged businessmen bumped into each other and greeted themselves loudly, exchanged business cards and entered reminders into their iPhones to have their secretaries schedule a lunch. We entered into a multi-level dining room with a grand piano surrounded by an overly stocked buffet and tables draped in spotless white clothes. From there we stepped out into pool area where the ceremony would be held.

Though only a few feet deep, the pool stretched about twenty-five yards and was about eight yards in width. It glowed turquoise, and at the far end, just before it appeared to drop of the face of the earth, blue, red and yellow rock star lights above a podium and a flat screen television and placed on four, shining pink towers signified a stage. Several miles out into the black desert, Sheikh Zayed Mosque, the world’s third largest, stood like a glowing cardboard cutout against the colorless sky. More flat screen TVs lined each side of the pool and played looped highlights from all the independent Middle Eastern films being awarded. Beyond the TVs, tables cloaked in heavy, crimson clothes sat no more than a foot and a half off the pool deck, each lined on three sides with embroidered cushions for sitting. Buffet tables at the near end of the pool steamed with covered dishes, as Philippine waiters in starched, white jackets and black slacks took drink orders as they cleared away empty glasses.

The group split up. With my purse made from tattered Brazilian army material strapped across my body, I set out to photograph all the lights. I was a moth in heaven. Each blink, glitter or sparkle caused me to flitter in a different direction. A group of North Americans voiced themselves around a table with typical North American tact. They dressed worse than Sky and Mike, and their volume sounded a cockiness that affirmed they were a part of the ceremony. I wondered if they were some of Spike Lee’s grad students or crew.

After about the third time I passed the group, I could tell they had noticed my out-of-town appearance. Suddenly I became aware of my photographic habits, and each click of my camera smacked another “Tourist” stamp dead on my forehead. Despite eye contact, I opted not to make conversation with Spike Lee’s grad students, feeling too out of my element. Instead, I joined a group of NYFA students at a table near the bar.

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