MY OBSESSION WITH CHEERLEADERS

How the objects of ocasional cultural ridicule become a lifelong love affair I went to an all girls school in New York City that was strictly academic- sports were kind of a sidebar. We certainly didn't have cheerleaders. I didn't even know they existed. One night when I was senior in high school my friend took me to the Bronx to watch a basketball game at St. Johns University. Before the game even began these women appeared in a line, waving pom poms and shouting out songs in perfect unison. What really struck me was their gaze- each of them had their eyes fixed on a distant point, unseen by all of us in the audience- and I decided I had to find out what they were looking at. When I got out of college I moved to Los Angeles and began to invesitgate in earnest. The result was a film and that contained somewhere within it my basic hypothesis about this far away gaze: they were disciples of joy and somewhere out there was the source of it. They bring it into our gyms and onto playing fields and sometimes into statewide and nationwide competitions. And sometimes people cheer back, and sometimes people say, "whoa, sexy..." And sometimes people laugh. When my film played at The Telluride Film festival, the five hundred people in the audience took a minute to figure out that they I didn't bring them there to snicker. I listened as those snickers faded into a kind of hushed awe and love for youth and earnestness and celebration and I felt pretty good about taking my obsession as far as I did. I mean, at least I got to make my point