A biographical film a kid was going to make

"Why don't you and your cherry tree get a room?"

I was in a biography class in high school. We had to write a "chapter" of a biography of someone. But the teacher said we could do something else. Something creative. Make a movie, perhaps.

Without a thought, a kid jumped at it. He'd make a movie! He knew nothing about it. I told him that used movie cameras sold for $5 at Goodwill. A roll of film from a drug store was seven dollars plus three dollars for processing.

I told him that recording live sound was more trouble than it was worth and that you could get used splicers and editors at Goodwill, too, but they were harder to come by. I didn't tell him that editing wasn't worth the trouble, either. He could film in sequence and when the film came back from the lab, there it would be---his finished work!

I didn't know the guy. I didn't have the impression that he knew anyone who would act in it. I have no idea who the subject of his biography was or how he was going to film a chapter of his or her life.

I don't know what I would have done back then, but thinking about it now, I would have made a short film called "The Time George Washington Threw a Silver Dollar Across the Potomac River For Some Reason".

I just googled it. It turns out that Washington allegedly threw a piece of slate the size a silver dollar (dollars didn't exist at that time) across a different river that was 250 feet across---not physically impossible and not nearly as stupid as throwing away a dollar. In 1800, a dollar was worth twenty dollars in today's money.

Just get an actor. Find a frilly shirt for him in the ladies' department at Goodwill. And find a pair of pumps and women's pedal pushers. There's a river about a mile from the school.

Poke around the used records at Goodwill. Look for classical music, preferably with harpsichord, that would be suitable for film of a teenage boy mincing around a river bank in drag.

Chopping down the cherry tree

George Washington chopped down his father's favorite cherry tree. But why? I would have made it a Cain and Abel thing. His father loves the cherry tree more than he loves his son, so little George Washington murders it. And to make it more historical, I'd have him order a slave to chop it down for him.