Auteur Watch - Brandon Harris

On to the next Brandon Harris.  I mean, sure, everyone wants to direct, but often times you've gotta learn one of the underling crafts that a director depends upon.  If you see the world in terms of winners and losers, well, you have to recognize that it takes a lot of losers to hoist up a winner.  Unless you're Trump, probably, in which case you just tie up everything in court for years and years.  In the case of the second Brandon Harris, however, it looks like the craft of gaffer would have to suffice before getting to sit in the director's chair...
...or would it?  I mean, check this out.  Brandon's first two directorial efforts: 2009.  Brandon's first gaffer job: 2010!  Hmm... gotta rethink the whole paradigm, maybe.  Now, if you're like me, you still have to look up certain words like 'gaffer' or 'emoluments clause.'  Maybe there's a few very, very good reasons I haven't gotten anywhere in this life.  And so, if you're like me, you see the word 'gaffer' in the credits, and you think, sure!  Those long-neck creatures from Africa they always have in the zoo... WRONG!  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  That's a giraffe, not a gaffer.  If you go to Wikipedia, you'll see that a gaffer is, like, the chief electrician on a movie set... incidentally, there's another million dollar fortune right there.  See, it used to be that when you double-click on a word... gotta go!  Dinner time.
(later) Ah, another fine dinner.  Anyway, when you're doing, say, a blog entry like this one, and you double-click on a word, the word gets highlighted PLUS the one space after it.  It still does, but it'll back up after a fraction of a second, and only highlight the word.  It's not quite enough to get you a guest shot on Colbert, but it's gotta be worth a couple million. 
But back to being a gaffer, which is what Brandon Harris does during the day, in order to pay for his bad habit of directing at night.  See, when you build a house, call me home... sorry, that's the lyrics to Fleetwood Mac's "Sara."  But seriously, when you build a house, it inevitably comes with some electrical wires, especially if you live in the first world.  America used to be like that, but standards are slipping lately, along with everything else.  Electrical systems in homes are supposed to be built to last.  Hollywood, on the other hand, allows for more fluid electrical systems.  Say you have to travel to a far distant location like Vasquez Rock.  Why, you've got to bring your cables, lights and batteries with you!  And set 'em all up there! 
That's the kind of crap Harris has to do, unless he's in the director's chair.  Of course, when you do short films like Harris, you're not sitting in the chair that long.  He had two shorts in 2009.  One is clearly about what he plans to do as a director, and it's called Portrait of a Monster... no, wait, it's about a hitman who grows weary of his job... something like that.  Yeah, I liked it the first time, when it was called Grosse Pointe Blank.  His second is called L'amor est... which could either be French or Italian for "Love is..."  What is this, the Choose Your Own Adventure series?  You're the filmmaker!  It's your job to tell us what love is, not the audience's job to tell you!  Find some spine.
So, directing didn't work out.  That is, until the right project came along.  Well, it didn't come along, but something called The Neon Demon... no, wait, that's Nicolas Winding Refn's 2016 project, and it's available on Amazon Prime.  No, this one's called Beneath the Neon, and it's clearly not as glamorous.  But you gotta give mad props to the gaffing work on this short film.  Alas, gaffers kept quitting on him, because Brandon kept finding gaffes in their work (drumroll... is this thing on?)  Now, the film itself isn't available on the YouTubes,... but a trailer is!  A trailer for a short film... the wonders of this world.  I guess it's the official trailer.  I'd do more research, but... oops!  On to my next posts.  No time for anything.