Lockedown, 1997

“Tabula Rasa baby!!!!”
- Joe Brescia, commenting on “Lockedown, 1776.”

YAB would be remissed if it did not retell the reasons that it knows the in-depth teachings of British philosopher John Locke. And since no normal person should show such enthusiasm for a 250 year-old human nature theory as Mr. Daytona has above, it also warrants mentioning that Joe Brescia has a whole lot to do with it.

Long before Lost was the supernatural show to end all supernatural shows, the FOX network was running on fumes of its first bona fide dramatic hit in the X-Files. I wasn’t a regular fan of the show, but apparent for some reason back in 1997 I was extra-psyched about its late-October season premiere. However, if I was to watch it, I had a pesky World Cultures assignment I had to knock out of the park beforehand. Was it one of those “this should take you six weeks to compile and present your research” types? Oh yeah. Had I started it? Oh no…

Paired with the only guy to lose his voice playing soccer, Joe Brescia, we had been assigned the task of preparing a fifteen minute presentation on a famous philosopher. We drew Mr. Locke. Now while others did charts, graphs, and the rare graphical chart, we decided it was time to put out best talents to work in the name of education, not to mention my dad’s video camera that was roughly 13 years old. Education: It’s Cutting Edge.

You think Oscar Sunday looked complicated? Check out these special effects.

First things first. We had to write a script for this thing. The premise was simple. Two high school kids are trying to watch a hockey game, but know they have to get this John Locke project done. They turn on the TV, and after awhile, a certain ancient smart guy comes on-screen and imparts his knowledge. Everybody learns, the two slackers get an A, and everybody’s happy.

In order to pull off such a stunt, you need John Locke. Or at the very least, Joe Brescia wearing one of my dad’s blazers, enough Kleenex to have that frilly thing pass as a cravat, and baby powder in the hair to give Go-Go-Joey a distinguished look. And just to make sure you know he’s from the UK, we’ll have him munch on an English muffin and drink tea. (Of course, we did not anticipate doing multiple takes of John Locke drinking tea and eating the English muffin, and since this had to be a one-take pony, the final cut had Mr. Locke picking up the English muffin only to find a large bite missing. Call that our continuity error.)

The script was written so that the Joe and I would be sitting in the classroom talking with Locke on the TV. In order to make this impressive, we decided not to have Locke join the conversation until 90 seconds in. He was scripted to tap on the glass of the TV to get our attention. But since we didn’t have a Joe-sized pane of glass handy, this effect was reduced to Chris tapping 2 drinking glasses together near the camcorder while Joe fake-knocked.

I swear, this took 12 takes.

Other gimmicks to provide the illusion that this conversation was live included Locke throwing a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 off-camera, only to have the book itself fly across the classroom. The was achieved by planting a classmate (codename: DIXON!) hiding behind the giant world map stand just below the tv. (In hindsight, everybody saw Dixon go behind the map, and then forgot about him. What attention spans we have.) Also, Locke “handed” a set of Cliffs Notes to me. On camera, I had crawled just below the shot to raise my hand into view, grab the book, and go back down. At the same time, real Chris walked over to the tv and put his hand up behind it, where the Notes had been taped to the back. Genius.

There’s a saying that insists a magician should never reveal his secrets. Yeah, well he shouldn’t spend a week in a saltwater bubble either.

Postscript: I would LOVE to put this video on YouTube for you all to see, but a certain someone whose name ends in “–oe Brescia” might have taped over it for the ’98 Nagano Olympic USA vs. Canada game.