In the late winter of 2005, I had been checking the Brian Wilson official site as soon as I got home from work each day, to see if they had finally announced the winner of the “Become a Video Hero” contest. The announcement had been delayed several times at that point. I remember it was a cold day, and I had still been wearing my fedora, scarf and heavy overcoat when I refreshed the browser to see I had been declared the winner. The sudden rush is unlike anything else I have experienced. All I recall is actually walking quickly in small circles, going “OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD” until I fell to the floor. I am actually a bit embarrassed by that and am glad nobody was there to see it happen.
Roughly three months earlier, almost every minute I wasn’t at work, eating or sleeping was spent down in our basement, working on my stop-motion video for the contest. My equipment was little more than a couple of desk lamps, lots of toys and a huge assortment of modeling clay my wife had left over from when she had been using it to make jewelry. All the photography was done with a half-megapixel camera. Yes, half-megapixel. This was near-cutting-edge tech at the time.
The contest had been announced in fall of 2004, for the purpose of creating a music video for “Heroes & Villains” from the recently-released Brian Wilson presents SMiLE. It would be the official video for the song and would appear as a bonus feature on a DVD Rhino would release in 2005 of Wilson performing the album in concert. The winner would also be flown out to L.A., where they and a guest would have dinner with the artist.
As soon as I saw the announcement of the contest, I knew I was going to participate. I am prone to second, triple, and nth-degree guessing myself, but I proceeded immediately and with a dedication I wish I devoted to all my endeavors. I didn’t even have any uncertainty as to whether I was going to win. It largely felt like I was simply going through the motions to materialize the required contest entry.
For the most part, all I was doing was rendering into physical form the imagery already in my head. My shortcomings as an artist and inexperience as an animator were the biggest hurdles. Despite a lack of experience in stop-motion, I was enough of a fan of the art to have cataloged in my memory some tricks and techniques over the years. I knew the biggest problem would be faces, so I went in knowing I would do those over the stills in Photograph (or, in this case, Gimp, which is and was the poor man’s Photoshop). At times, there would be a section of the song where I realized what was in my imagination was not as fully formed as I thought it was, but I soldiered on.
It helped that I had already heard the album a great many times since it had been released earlier that year. And I had been breathlessly awaiting the release of the finished work, having been obsessed with the legend of the lost Beach Boys’ album for roughly a decade before that.
Quick summary for those not in the know: SMiLE was originally supposed to be released as an album by the group in 1967, after much anticipation had built up following the release of the Pet Sounds album and the “Good Vibrations” single. But a number of factors led to band leader Wilson walking away from the project. Some of the material originally slated for SMiLE appeared on various group albums over the next few years, but the floodgates were truly opened by the 1993 box set Good Vibrations: 30 Years of the Beach Boys, which had 30 minutes of previously unreleased content from the sessions.
That box set was my introduction to the group. As a U.S. resident, it was impossible to be completely unaware of The Beach Boys, yet I had only recently been listening to them actively before then. My gateway to serious appreciation was Pet Sounds, which I can now not imagine life without, but which took considerable time to grow on me. To be fair, so did Sgt. Pepper a few years earlier, when I spent a year immersing myself in the music of The Beatles. And nobody, I do mean nobody, understood my suddenly fascination with The Beach Boys, not people my own age nor even people who were young when that music was new. My fandom was one more aspect of growing and learning, of developing my own tastes and becoming my own person.
And nothing intrigues me more than lost and abandoned media. From there on out, I devoured every morsel of information I could find about SMiLE. A key part of my education was Dominic Priore’s book Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!, which was more like a zine of assorted articles and which did not have a clear through-line. Since nobody knew what the album’s track listing would have been if it had been finished in 1967, this sprawling mess of a book conveys the unsettled nature of the album when it was abandoned. On the other hand, all it did for me was obfuscate things further.
So, all that is why I was stunned Wilson had finally completed the album, though without any of the Beach Boys. And all of this background is why I entered the video contest.
The particulars of the contest package were my wife and I were flown out to L.A. and provided a rental car and per diem. We would attend a dinner with Brian and his wife Melinda on May 19th. The next day, we would be guests at the unveiling of the Beach Boys childhood home memorial in Hawthorne, followed by a reception at the local VFW.
Arrangements were made by Rhino Records, the company set to release that two DVD set I mentioned earlier, which included that concert, my video and a feature-length documentary on Brian and SMiLE by David Leaf. In my conversation with the Rhino rep, I asked if I could get a tour of their facilities while I was out there, as I have been a huge fan of their catalog for quite some time. I remember the rep’s reaction, which was roughly, “We’re just some office building. Why would you want to see that?” To be fair, I received a similarly stunned reaction when I called Ardent Studios in Memphis and asked for a tour of their facilities, though they obliged me.
Now, as much as I said I was a fan of The Beach Boys, it isn’t like I was familiar with every track of their vast catalogue. With that in mind, I decided to cram in preparation for the trip. We also watched 1995’s Wilson documentary I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times. There are moments in the film such as Brian and wife Melinda going to where his childhood home used to be, only to find it is now a highway embankment. In another segment, he talks about how father Murray Wilson would administer physical punishment, and Brian demonstrates this while distorting his features in a gruesome manner, slamming down his fist repeatedly and actually barking with each hit. I realized with growing horror this seemingly mild-mannered guy is also quite large physically. Suddenly, I am feeling even more apprehensive about the upcoming meeting.
Rhino put us up in the Universal City Hilton, from where I could look out the widows during the day and find my eyeline almost exactly level with where the smog layer would be in the distance. The pollution was no surprise, given the amount of vehicular traffic, and we found the 101 congested at all hours, with ourselves stuck on it in the middle of the night. Our hotel was only minutes away by foot to Universal CityWalk, and it seemed odd to walk anywhere in a city so unfriendly to pedestrians, and by design. From our perspective, we could also see the businesses on the other side of the 101, where the offices of adult entertainment company Vivid proudly made their presence known. Somehow, that is L.A. in a nutshell–the porn company unabashedly making its presence known within visibility of a family-friendly tourist area.
I had never been to L.A. before nor to anywhere else in California. For those who haven’t been, pretty much everything you’ve heard about it or seen in movies or on TV is true, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff. To put it concisely, it is what it would be like to have high school continue through the rest of your life, and all that entails. Everything is a popularity contest and everybody wants to be seen. So, not a good environment for this writer who prefers anonymity.
In our unscheduled time, we did some tourist activities, like Santa Monica Pier, the La Brea tar pits and the aforementioned Universal CityWalk. Our time was largely spent driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway and marveling at houses we vaguely recalled from issues of Architectural Digest. I visit record stores in any city new to me and found the Sunset Boulevard location of Amoeba Records (since relocated) to be the only time I have been intimidated by the size and scope of such a store. I found one item for which I had been searching for years and hightailed out of this shop that was the size of a large grocery.
Speaking of music, I probably should get back to the lede, and that was the dinner with Brian Wilson. One of the city’s ubiquitous Lincoln Town Cars picked us up from the Universal City Hilton and we were off to Vibrato, a restaurant owned by Herb Alpert. We arrived early, and I sat there sweating profusely. I was glad I wore a dark shirt.
Brian and his wife Melinda show up along with filmmaker and writer David Leaf. Melinda and David are very friendly. In fact, Melinda is the nicest and most genuine person we encountered in our time in L.A. David gifted me some DVD’s, including the new Rhino DVD set that included my video, the SMiLE concert and his documentary on the album, Beautiful Dreamer.
Brian, on the other hand, was obviously apprehensive. He was pleasant enough, though reserved. Largely, David drove the conversation, prompting Brian when there were lapses in the conversation—and there are many long silences. When Brian does start actively participating in the conversation, it is largely to ask about seemingly random deep cuts in The Beach Boys oeuvre. The questions aren’t even phrased as to inquire what I think about them. These are as vague as possible and are like statements ending in a question mark. The one that sticks out in my memory is “What about ‘Salt Lake City’”? My brain ground completely to a halt. Is he asking about the actual city? If so, what about it, specifically? And that is a Beach Boys song, right? And, if so, what about that? I could barely recall it. I think my response was, “I like it!”
My impression of him from the dinner and the conversation was he had a bit of a “wise fool” act going on, with him playing more out of it than he really was. I strongly believe he was an expert at reading people. At the same time, I also didn’t feel I was seated across the table from somebody who was always in the present. He composed himself admirably for an event that was nothing more than a contest winner meet, an obligation to fulfil. That said, he did start to bail early and David cheerfully encouraged him to sit back down, in the same manner he reigned in some of Brian’s questions.
The most interesting question Brian asked, and completely out of the blue, was, “Are you afraid to die?” I told him honestly that I am not, that I am only afraid of pain. He nodded once and subtly. In that fleeting moment, I felt a genuine connection had been made.
Then this comically massive dessert arrives, topped with a tiny biscotti that appeared to be there only as an ironic touch. Brian took it and ate half. Then he sat it back down where it had been and gestured to me. I ate it and he nodded again, and I felt I had participated in a strange communion.
He remembered us when we saw him the next day at the unveiling of the Beach Boys childhood home memorial in Hawthorne. The location was that same place where I had seen Brian and Melinda, in the documentary, laughing in shock at the highway that had displaced the original structure. So, I had the bizarre experience of being at the base of a steep embankment under a freeway to see a rather unusual brick monument unveiled. I had hoped there would be other members of the group there, and Al Jardine was the only one to make an appearance. Everything about this moment felt surreal.
Afterwards, there was a reception at the Hawthorne VFW Hall. There was much buzz among the attendees that Paul McCartney would appear, but this seemed unlikely to me and I was correct in that assumption. We passed an unusual couple of hours at a table with people we didn’t know, all of whom were interested in which celebrities we had seen. Aside from the obvious ones, I think we may have seen Chazz Palminteri at a distant table at Vibrato. We also saw, while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, a rotund man in a brown bathrobe and sunglasses, walking a small dog. I immediately wondered if that was Jack Nicholson, but had my doubts until everybody at the reception I told this to said, “Yeah, that’s him.” It was odd how each person said these exact words and in the same manner, as if they had just tasted something unpleasant. The weirdest moment was Olivia Harrison’s mother passing around a photo she had taken of Tom Petty and deceased son-in-law and ex-Beatle George, two guys just standing as awkwardly as any others in a photo taken by somebody’s mom. By this point, I was starting to feel woozy.
Once I was back home, I found myself feeling conflicted about the contest win. It wasn’t something I ever brought up in conversation, but others did. There was an article about me in the local city paper and I made an appearance on a Fox affiliate’s morning program, with my manner was described by at least one person as “bug-eyed terror”. But others brought up the contest frequently and in a derisive manner, which I can only chalk up to jealousy. One person from my job at the time seemed to bring it up in every chance encounter, saying things like, “Is Brian Wilson going to send you a CHRISTMAS CAAARD? HAHAHAHAHA”.
I also got the smallest taste of internet trolling as result of the contest. At the dinner, Melinda had encouraged me to contribute to the forum on Brian’s official site. When I went there, I found nothing but blistering vitriol regarding my video. One person went on interminably and with great outrage that my work did not incorporate any footage of a bicycle rider, imagery that is not even in “Heroes & Villains”, even if it is in other elements of the SMiLE mythos. Another was apoplectic the contest winner did not make themselves known and solicit questions from forum members to ask Brian at the dinner. My initial thought was “who are you to demand anything?”, and I try to keep that reaction in mind when encountering somebody from whom I should not be making unreasonable requests. Also, I was bemused by a Pitchfork news item prior to that SMiLE DVD set being released, a blurb which said all that had been released from the set at that point was “some crappy fan video”.
I at least tried to parlay this rare opportunity into a career in video work, which led to a decade-long detour from Information Technology. Things did not go well at the first job, with one extraordinarily petty individual consistently saying such things as, “Do you think you deserve this job just because you won some contest?” In my next job, however, I was employed for nine years, working with some people from whom I learned a great deal and some who appeared to have that same grudge about my contest-winning video. Some of these people fell in both categories.
The contest win was a seismic event in my life. I can’t deny the impact and am grateful for the opportunity, yet it is still something I am uncomfortable discussing. This essay you are reading took a ridiculous amount of time to compose and was only initiated because of the recent passing of Brian Wilson. I think my discomfort is largely because I don’t want it to define my life. Also, the more I talk about it, the less special it somehow becomes. From the moment I won, I was already aware the clock was ticking on that time I was special and soon I would be nobody again. So here I am, a nobody who put their whole heart into their silly video, which won a contest and changed their life in all kinds of ways. To Brian, Melinda and David: thanks for choosing that video and giving me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
