When I was younger, I had more respect for shorts. I grew up in San Francisco as an active little kid, going to clown school, running around playing soccer and basketball, reading short stories from Bruce Coville’s “Book of” series (a fine bunch of collections), and watching children’s programs such as Street Sharks, Animaniacs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and All That. The primetime of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network weren’t far from my grasp when my parents finally shelled out for cable (short lived, though it was) and I was happy with my little 22 minute attention span, gobbling up shorts, wearing them, and reading them.
I’d say this continued for a while, I got a new Bruce Coville or Goosebumps book, caught TV shows aimed for my soft growing mind, and wore shorts as I ran around, but somewhere this stopped. Someday the city grew a little colder, I grew a little taller and less active (heavier I suppose too) and my attention span grew to respect features, novels, and I switched to wearing strictly jeans.
I wouldn’t say this was a darker time, just different. After all, there are countless amazing novels, movies, and pairs of jeans out there. What strikes me as odd upon this writing is just how short lived that time was, where I strived to be adult. The fact of the matter is that short in length and high and substance describes some of the most impressive works in our world today.
As a filmmaker, we’re often told to look at photography and paintings as examples of what we can hope to achieve. We’re told to look at our works as wholes and pieces, a contrasting but important focus. For each film can be broken into 24 pictures per second, with sound to complicate and enhance each bit. The more telling each frame is, the more controlled and poignant each picture, the better our goals are understood and hopefully our audience is entertained.
If the masters of image could grapple attention with a single painting, with our numerous tools available to us today we strive to shift through the clutter of technology and tell as good a story as we can.
Today I started reading a collection of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s short fiction, and today I was reminded of how shorts have staid with me through my life. His works are some of the most beautiful I’ve read. It reminds me of the joy I had reading and re-reading Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End, one of my favorite short stories. It reminded me of how much joy I had discovering Adventure time, Powerpuff girls, and The Regular show, childish as they are they tell great stories, and pack more entertainment into 10 minutes than some films pack into 2 hours. It also reminded me that this year I started wearing shorts again, first out of necessity, then utility, and finally comfort.
I’m not ashamed of my love for short fiction, and while I don’t have the same love for my long, pale legs, they’re as much a part of me as any other part, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. This is just a reminder that some amazing things come in smaller packages, and to respect and enjoy them, cause to not take advantage of the shorts out there is to only deprive yourself.
