Stuff that I Have Noticed #32 The Ant and the Grasshopper

It’s difficult to imagine that any of you dear readers do not know Aesop’s fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper but I will summarize just in case.

This tale presents moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and planning for the future. It describes how a Happy-go-lucky Grasshopper, having been too busy having fun to properly prepare, found himself hungry when winter came and begged for food from the Hardworking Ant who refused his request.

In many (not all) aspects my story and that of a dear nephew run parallel to this fable.

There is a member of my family – I’ll refer to him henceforth as Andy – who in many ways shared the characteristics of that Hardworking Ant and reaped abundant ultimate rewards for his diligence.

Andy studied hard, got a BA and went to work for a big-time accounting firm right out of college. He wore a three-piece suit, kept his nose to the proverbial grindstone and advanced quickly. While I don’t know the details of his ascension on the corporate ladder I do know that his climb was not all that slow. And he reached a very high level which came with substantial paychecks.

He retired from the position of Vice Chairman and CFO in a major corporation when he was fifty (or fifty-five). The company treasured his brilliance and offered him a lot (A Lot) of money to stay but he told them that he already had more money than he was ever going to need and he wanted to relax, play lots of golf, drive his little tractor around his many wooded acres and simply enjoy the fruits of his labors while he was young enough to get the most out of them. That was thirteen (?) years ago and with the exception of weddings, funerals and the occasional board meeting, he’s never worn a tie since.

I don’t know if Andy had a “life plan”, we’ve never discussed it, but I’d be surprised if he did not.

Now, to the Happy-go-lucky Grasshopper; me. If I had a life plan it was the Yogi Berra version: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

When in high school I did have a plan. I was going to be a football and track coach and, maybe, a church choir director/soloist. I went to college on a football grant (not quite a scholarship) with a major in Physical Education and a minor in Music.

That plan went by the wayside when a chance meeting resulted in my getting a job in a full scale Broadway (type) production of South Pacific starring none other than Mary Martin herself! (That story will be found in Three Stages, the first book of my memoir trilogy.)

Steve Jobs: One of the biggest reasons most of us don’t set out to achieve a huge goal is that we think we first need to develop a comprehensively detailed grand plan, one where every step is charted, every milestone identified—where success is pre-ordained.
But because we don’t have that kind of plan—because creating that kind of plan is basically impossible—we hesitate. We need to see an end before we see a beginning.
Here’s what really happens. People who eventually find success start by trying things. Lots of things. They succeed at some. They fail at others. They learn from those successes and those failures.

And along the way they seize and at times even create their own opportunities to advance themselves.

Most important, trust yourself.

I, of course, didn’t know this in 1957 when I got that South Pacific gig. (Steve Jobs was only three years old.)

Anyhow at age twenty one I found myself in Showbiz! I loved it. And I got jobs. For the next fifteen years I worked as an actor/singer in summer stock, regional theatre, TV, movies, on Broadway, off-Broadway, national tours, Las Vegas, even sang at the Metropolitan Opera.

But after a dozen or so years I found myself gradually becoming bored with the life of a performer while at the same time becoming more and more fascinated by the details of film production. Every time I was on a shoot as an actor I drove the various technicians nuts with my endless questions about what they did and the gear with which they did it.

Once again ProfessorYogi Berra came through with another fork in the road.

My oldest friend, Bob Collins (a film editor turned cinematographer) had started a company in Hollywood. which he named Group One Productions.

Without going into the details here (You’ll find them in my second memoir book.) over the next three years I managed to get on to several Group One shoots and learn a lot of nuts and bolts about film production. By 1973 I knew enough to find work with a NYC based company and from there my film production career began to develop.

From that time until the early 1990s I worked steadily as a freelance producer, production manager and first assistant director on over 1,000 commercials, dozens of corporate films and several feature movies. I made a good living and built a small retirement account.

In the late ‘80s the film biz began to shrink in NYC and we started “eating” the retirement account. which was gone in a couple of years, then the cash advances on the credit cards sustained us for a while, Elizabeth got a “day job” and I got a little work but not really enough.

And along came another fork in the road.

With a partner (who turned out to be a real turkey) I started a video service for actors and when that didn’t take off it was: Time to learn yet another creative discipline: Video Editing.

I’d worked with an excellent editor on several video projects I directed in the late ‘80s so I had a feel for it but had never edited anything “hands on”.

So we bought a Sony EVO 9700 Hi-8 (cuts only) editing system and I had to learn how to use the thing.

Sony EVO 9700

Just off the main area of our little studio there was a small storage room with a desk in it. When the EVO 9700 was delivered I unpacked it and set it up on that desk. As I was doing this one of my friends, asked what it was. When I told her she said, ‘Are you an editor?’ To which I replied, “Ask me again in a week.”

With the operating manual on the desk, I sat in that room for ten hours a day for the next several days until I could comfortably execute the basic tasks required for assembling a video. When the partnership enterprise died I kept the EVO 9700 in lieu of pay of which I’d received zero during the two years of that failed effort.

What a blessing in disguise this turned out to be. I gradually became more and more skilled at editing video and it became the most successful and satisfying creative skill I’d ever had since retiring as a singer. Once I got a Mac and Apple’s editing software, Final Cut Pro, I was off to the races. Here’s one of the first videos I did for a client with my new software. Then, five years later, one I did for fun.

At eighty-five I’m still editing and still loving it. Got a little money in the bank and don’t expect to be begging Andy the Ant for any nuts or berries.

As for Yogi’s forks in the road… I’ll see what the next one is and keep on truckin’.

Like Robert Frost, I have Miles to go before I sleep.