Making a Banana

My wife (Mimi) and I got married in 1975 and as many couples when we first got married we were living on a shoestring budget but happy.  Many weekends we would run short on cash and have to got to the “ugly teller” to get some cash which was one of the 1^st after hour bank machines (now called ATM) but I guess in todays world this would be considered an unacceptable term even though an ATM is a machine. However the real story is that we ended up making up our on fun because we didn’t have the extra money for entertainment.  I did however have a super 8mm movie camera that I received from my parents plus a young and goofy imagination. 

So I thought wouldn’t it be fun to make a home movie, my parents made some goofy movies when they were a young married couple so why not us.  I started out with the idea to make a film about how to make a banana as if it was something you could create in the kitchen.  Don’t ask me how I came up with this, as far as I know it was just a goofy thought that I pursued. 

I decided the 1^st step was to write a script, some cue cards and get my wife (Mimi) to act as the director and cameraman (person).   I would be the producer and actor (Diego Miercoles), which was my chosen alternate name, I’ll explain later.

I created fake bags of ingredients to use in the movie.  The script I wrote was rough and just more of an outline as I expected that I would adlib much of it.  This was not a Hollywood movie so a few mistakes were expected and may even add to the humor of the movie.  To here is a short synopsis of the movie.  I planned to shoot the movie in the kitchen basically taking the banana apart then run the movie backwards to show a banana as if was being handmade.  I remember practicing a number of times without running the camera to get comfortable because we were only going to shoot it once, there would not be any retakes. This film was first created this film in 1979 on with a super 8mm camera and in 1990 the movie was transferred to VHS by running the film backwards on a movie screen while using a VHS camera to document the effect and also add sound.   

Earlier I stated that my acting name would be Diego Miercoles so you might ask why well my only answer is when I took Spanish class in high school for so unknown reason I really liked the sound of Miercoles, which means Wednesday, so I decided that would be a cool alternate name especially if I ever lived in Spain.  I also liked the name Diego, which roughly translated to Jim.  So from that time on my alternate name was Diego Miercoles.  Later in life I would use my alternate name as my wine maker name and create goofy labels. I decided to use a Spanish accent, which accidently turned into an Italian accent. 

So when I transferred the film to VHS in 1990, I attempted to use a Spanish accent which turned into a n Italian accent neither of which were any good.  My accents were terrible, I’m talking really bad but that’s what I did. 

Later as technology improved I transferred the VHS tape to a DVD in 2009 and posted in on youtube.  Consequently due to the original format and the transferring the film to different formats the film quality is not very good but the fun experience of making, sharing it with friends and family was great.  Sometimes it’s not about the outcome but the process and fun getting there.