Prisoner of Fun

My degree is in Art. I wanted as my senior project to do a video, which was unheard of at the time for the film students at my school. I was working in video while going to school so it seemed crazy to me not to do it. Mt preceptor said he wouldn't sponsor me because he was starting work at the casinos. The head film teacher said he wouldn't sponsor me because no one would ever consider video a real medium. He's now a video curator at some other college.

So I turned to a photography professor who said he'd do it after I told him my 3 favorite directors were Werner Herzog, Jean Luc Godard, and Ken Russell. (Nowadays its Michael Curtiz, Alfred Hitchcock and Quentin Tarantino)

His name was Joel Sternfeld. He's a big shot artist, and does really compelling work in large color photography. I ran across a remaindered copy of his book Campagna Romana once and saw an exhibition of his work at SFMOMA - the crowd was in love with it. It was great stuff.
Buy one of his books at my Amazon Store:



So here's my tribute to TV, nuclear war, hedonism, and work; in a series of vignettes: Prisoner of Fun. I attempted to clean it up but to no avail. This is 3rd generation (I broke the tape in editing and had to dub the first half and then transferred to the only remaining copy- a decades old VHS) so, uh, warts and all.

Incidentally, because I had no department representation it was never exhibited, but I received an Honors grade.

Also, be ready to play with the volume. I'll continue to try to sweeten on another version.