Almost made my own Yentl

 

So, years ago, I got invited over to a friend's house. He had a roll of Super 8 film. He wanted to make a movie in his backyard. We were going to make a kung fu movie. They were big at the time and we weren't the brightest guys in the world.

My friend wanted to "strike a blow for ERA." The ERA was the Equal Right Amendment mandating legal equality between men and women. I can't remember what year the deadline for ratification expired, but my friend wanted to have a queen in the movie. I was anti-monarchy and didn't see how a movie with a queen in it would make people think better of the ERA. We didn't know any girls so one of us would have to be in drag, and no one else was going to see the movie so it wouldn't strike a blow for anything.

I talked him out of the queen idea. We made a straight kung fu movie. A guy is practicing his kung fu with another guy. And bear in mind that none of us studied any martial art of any kind. I was fat and weak. A couple of us were skinny and weak. One of us looked athletic but was completely uncoordinated.

So he was practicing kung fu with another guy who is shot with an arrow and killed, so he kills the guy with the bow and arrow and then fights to the death with the person who sent the guy with the bow and arrow.

It was one of our better kung fu movies, really. Although later, we made another one that worked around our physical limitations through editing. The editing was all done in-camera---we never edited film. You'd see one of us about to throw a kick and then it would cut to a close up of a foot hitting the other guy in the face.

Thinking back to it, a kung fu movie starring a teenager in drag might have had some weird appeal.