Confessions of a Control Freak – Part 2: An Excess of Perfection

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Confessions of a Control Freak is a memoir blog series exploring the impact of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, its origins, and the rocky path to recovery. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of all featured individuals. Subscribe to receive all future posts. More about OCPD here.

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I

“Police car!” I murmured.

At the far end of the alley, a police van had crawled into view. No sooner was it glimpsed, however, did the vehicle reverse back the way it had come.

My filming companion Nia looked up from the camera viewfinder.

“I can’t see anyone?” she said. “I think we’re good.”

At that very instant, we were standing a few feet from the McDonald’s parking lot, recording a scene for one of my college film assignments. 

By scene, I am referring to a few shaky shots of me approaching the storefront, toy handgun in hand.

It was meant to be a cinematic allusion to a shooting that had occurred in the 80s. Minus, of course, the shooting part.

Nia and I had spent the past 15 minutes filming me doing multiple takes of me walking up an alley in a hoodie and taking a few bold strides across the lot.

After each take, we’d return to the alley to review the footage, whereupon I would identify some fault. Either I was walking too fast, the shot was too shaky, or the framing was somehow off.

I’d asked Nia if she didn’t mind “getting one more in the can”. A freshman keen for more filming experience, she’d obliged.

Soon, what had started as a quick-and-dirty exercise had ballooned out to become my own private Ben Hur.

“I’m pretty sure I just saw a paddy wagon,” I said, after a moment.

“Well, they’re gone now,” Nia said, raising the camera for another take.

“OK,” I said warily, “but this is the last take.” 

Certainly, this wasn’t the first time today I’d said it, but this time I meant it.

I was part way across the McDonald’s parking lot when I heard a shout.

“Drop the weapon!”

Officers burst from cover, surrounding me like in some scene from a cop show, guns pointed in readiness to shoot.

Instinct took over and I squatted, placing the toy gun on the ground.

“On your knees,” one of the officers shouted. “Hands behind your head.”

Next thing I was being cuffed and forced onto my face. Somewhere nearby I heard Nia’s voice. 

“We’re making a student film,” she cried, playing the part. “The gun isn’t real! The gun isn’t real!”

“Shut up!” someone barked. My pockets were searched and a barrage of questions followed.

Did I have anything on me I shouldn’t have? Did I not realize that from a distance my gun had looked real? That I had been this close to being shot?

“Not that I’m aware”, “apparently not”, “it never entered my mind”, went my responses.

Little did the officer questioning me know that a few hours prior, I had considered painting over the toy gun’s fluorescent orange tip “for the sake of realism”, only to change my mind at the last minute.

This reflexive decision may have been what ultimately saved my life.

I tried, lamely, to explain myself, while the officer chastised me for my recklessness. It was revealed that just before Nia and I had shown up, a McDonald’s patron had called the police to report her child missing.

This patron had been sitting in her four-wheel drive, parked in the McDonald’s lot when I’d rolled up, toy gun in hand. Our eyes had even met on the first take.

By the second take, however, the woman had vanished. It was only now I realized that she in her panic had somehow connected her child’s disappearance with my appearance and called the cops on me.

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II

I was 19. Just a kid, really. And I was about to be arrested and charged. My fledgling film career—if that was what you wanted to call it—was, as of that moment, over.

But after a few minutes, the police officers realized the extent of my naivety, and Nia and I were let go with only a warning.

We drifted back to the college campus, shell-shocked, trying to process what had just happened.

I eventually made my way home, vowing to never do something so stupid again. A few hours after my brush with death, I worked up the will to look through the footage on my desktop.

The resulting footage proved rather dramatic. Applying a black-and-white filter conveyed a certain impression of documentary realism. Our little gambit, it seemed, had paid off. 

But there was one problem. We had plenty of takes of me approaching the McDonalds, but none of me firing the gun. We hadn’t, in short, got the money shot…pun not intended. 

And given the gun was barely visible in my low-res MiniDV footage, how would viewers ever realize what I was trying to depict?

The solution was obvious, if unpalatable, but I summoned my courage all the same. I was a serious filmmaker, and no serious filmmaker should be stopped by some fear of being arrested. Or say, killed.

Having honored my resolution not to take my life into my own hands again for a total of three hours, I collected my filming kit and went out to the front lawn of my apartment complex. 

Mounting the camera on a tripod, I pointed it towards the sky. Then, checking that the coast was clear, I hit record, extended the toy gun into view, and proceeded to hammer the trigger.

I played back the shot on the camera’s built-in LCD. The result was gloriously realistic, the toy pistol’s slider flicking backward with each pull of the trigger.

Tucking the toy gun out of view, I packed up my gear and returned indoors to begin work editing my masterpiece.

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III

A few days later, the assignment was complete. It wasn’t due for a few more weeks yet however, which left me with time—time should be spent sharpening the filmmaking saw.

When the due date rolled around, I had not one but three films to submit from. I showed my classmates what I had accomplished and their only response was to stare. 

What person in their right mind would do a school assignment three times?

But this was, I told myself, what was required if I wanted to become a capital P Professional.

So I continued to film, adding new techniques bit by bit to my repertoire. Spooling through the raw footage, I would marvel at what I’d accomplished.

But I also wavered between a celebration of my artistic ability and insecurity.

Would my stilted acting pass for naturalistic? Would viewers appreciate that my choice to weave the camera around subjects was inspired by the rich tradition of cinéma vérité?

What I ultimately ended up with would be either worthy homages to my favorite films or confused pastiches: a little bit of everyday Italian neorealism here, a little bit of classic horror tension-building there.

As my skills improved, the bar rose. Determined to rise with it, I agonized over the little details: the choice of camera angle, the position of a prop, the lilt of an actress’s voice.

My growing competency meant that while my classmates were mastering basic editing in iMovie, I was trying to recreate Apple’s classic “silhouetted dancer” ad. 

My strategy was something that may best be described as…unique. 

One attempt at creating a chroma key effect involved assembling a green screen on my tiny balcony (because it offered the best lighting). 

Recording myself singing the backing track required that I crouch beneath a tented mattress (because it dampened reverb). 

Then, finally, performing the actual dancing required I shimmy and pirouette in my underwear for all my neighbors to see (because wearing clothes interfered with pulling a key).

As time went by, my experiments grew bolder. I taught myself how to operate a soundboard and assemble a 5.1 surround soundtrack, tasks which involved spending days locked in the sound-dampened gloom of a mixing studio.

I taught myself to composite live footage with special effects, creating complex tracking shots across Photoshopped fantasy landscapes.

The plastic shell of my Macbook laptop was literally going to pieces, and yet still I would sit patiently as it rendered its shot, sometimes for hours, sometimes days, leaving the entry-level computer basically inoperable.

For a final project, I directed a short film set in both modern and 1980s East Germany (despite being in Sydney, Australia), with dialogue written exclusively in German (which I didn’t speak fluently), using native Germans (who weren’t actors).

The only limits, I told myself, would be those set by my own imagination.

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IV

These various projects were so time-consuming that I was barely able to hold down a job.

On one hand, I was content to live on the smell of an oily rag, but on the other, the absence of funds meant I had to serve multiple roles on any given project: storyboarder, scriptwriter, sound recordist, mixer, composer, producer, director, and editor.

And when there were no actors, I would hit “record’ and insert myself in front of the camera instead.

I cast myself in a variety of roles: cosmic fetus, creepy Hollywood executive, political terrorist, medieval village boy, zombie, time traveler, and barbarian warrior. Limits of my imagination, indeed.

When one role called for me to shave my head and don a monk’s habit, I didn’t hesitate. I was a card-carrying anything-for-art-ist.

As for having no funds or actors, there were always friends I could beg to shoot, star, or be interviewed. 

None of them proved immune to my approach, which could perhaps be best described as “exacting”. 

I’d dominate group meetings, interrogate doubters and argue detractors into silence. If someone gave me an inch, I’d take 10 miles. 

Some may have dared crack a whip or brandish a chair against this onslaught, but fewer still would be able to back me in a corner. 

During a shoot, I’d niggle and micromanage. Inevitably I would learn that my volunteer crew members either weren’t up to snuff or didn’t share my level of dedication, I’d shoulder them aside and take the camera or boom.

When an actor didn’t hit their mark, I’d overcorrect with detailed instructions. A dozen takes were, as a general rule, mandatory. 

My “leadership”—and to call it that would be generous—was met with hostile silence and exchanged looks.

“Can you believe this guy?” my collaborators seemed to be saying to one another.

I was unrelenting; exhaustive in my film-from-every-angle approach and exhausting with my endless stream of instructions. 

There was one person, Nia—poor, indefatigable Nia—however, who weathered it all, always with a bounce in her step and nary a broadside. 

From her very first on-camera debut as a victim of spousal abuse, Nia carried herself with total aplomb.

When asked if she would be willing to smear her face with fake blood, she didn’t so much as blink and even offered to do it herself.

When handed a frying pan and instructed to wail on a phonebook in lieu of her onscreen abuser, Nia summoned rage with the ease of a seasoned pro.

When her role called for an emotional breakdown, Nia melted into hysterics so electrifying I almost didn’t dare to yell “cut”. And all of this on the first take. 

After the incident outside McDonald’s, I wouldn’t have blamed Nia if she’d decided to back out of future projects. 

Yet time and time again, Nia would turn up, eager to do anything that was asked of her.

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V

There were many things Nia was prepared to tolerate in the name of my cinematic vision, but hectoring was not one of them.

Some months later, Nia turned up on a set we were both volunteering on, waving a script I had sent her several days late.

Fearing that her little flourishes might somehow signal to the crew we were amateurs, I asked if she wouldn’t mind putting it away.

“Stop bossing me around,” Nia snapped and walked away. 

This show of defiance was not only out of character—it was also just plain confusing. Couldn’t Nia see I was trying to save her—and by extension, me?

Despite our little row, Nia agreed to feature in another film of mine. She was to star as a wood nymph: a malevolent, shape-shifting seductress.

Not only did Nia agree to brave the cold, sludge-filled waters of a public lake—she also did it topless. 

While Nia was her usual no-questions-asked self, I sensed for the first time some reluctance. This proved our last collaboration together, and we soon fell out of touch. 

Then, some years later, by pure accident, I happened to spot her crossing the campus. 

“Hey, Nia!” I called. Nia turned and saw me.

“Oh, hi Essy,” she said, without so much as breaking her stride.

“How have you been?” I asked, catching up to her.

“Sorry, can’t talk—late for class!” Nia explained and left me in the dust.

This was, I understood, a dismissal…and possibly a deserved one at that.

The loss of my chief collaborator proved a blow to my filmmaking ambitions. It also left my conscience burdened more than ever by the realization that maybe—just maybe—it was my obsessiveness and not others’ lack of staying power that was driving them away.

My drive to reach some always-out-of-reach destination had meant not only that I had failed to truly make the journey, but that I also made it hospitable for my travel companions.

If people like Nia had been the cement foundations of my aspirations, I was like the workman with the earmuffs and jackhammer.

The problem wasn’t so much that I was a workaholic as that I—barring all obstacles save complete physical incapacitation—refused to settle for anything less than absolute perfection. And absolute perfection, for anybody, is a pretty tall order. 

I convinced myself all the same that it was one I absolutely had to meet. That road to success was not paved by half-measures, after all.

But very quickly the pursuit of perfection would bleed into other aspects of my life, sometimes quite literally. I brushed my gums so hard that they bled, then eventually started to recede. 

While trying to meet one of my many perpetual deadlines, I sat at my desk, absently cramming the contents of a salad bowl into my mouth.

Thinking I was biting into a piece of capsicum, I chomped down on the tine of a metal fork instead. 

Later that week, while surveying my normally perfect pearly whites in the mirror, I saw that the bottom part of one front tooth had broken off. 

Most people I expect chip their teeth through genuine misadventure: a drunken faceplant or a brawl. 

But not me. I had managed such a feat with nothing less dramatic than an eating implement. 

This was, I realized, a case in point. My perfectionism and untiring ambition meant I was also forcing outcomes and rushing processes. Processes as basic as eating.

My little accident not only landed me in a dentist’s chair with a hefty bill—it also led me to a troubling realization. 

Sooner or later, there would be another accident just like this. And the results, potentially, could prove far, far worse.

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Confessions of a Control Freak continues with Part 3: “A rebel yell”.