My twin brother Marv is a cameraman for a news station in San Francisco. In truth, he has an auteur's eye and can present the simplest images as three dimensional art. He's won several Emmy awards and been nominated for multiple more. He should have gone into film; he's that good. We tease him endlessly about his "The Homeless on Thanksgiving" and "The Veterans on Memorial Day" packages, but he does bring a certain verve and stylization to each piece that is uniquely his own. I am proud of him.

The genesis of his skill started at an early age. As children, we would take my dad's Super 8 camera and film one another tearing up the house and doing our Bionic Man impressions. Little did we realize that the photographic results would later show up interspersed with the family vacation footage in Hawaii. A little awkward, but so incredibly hilarious. We were hooked.

Marv took the lead. Having mastered the Super 8 camera, he decided to make his own versions of shorts. We all worked on the script. Any spare body in the house was pressed into acting/extra service. Even the mailman, once, when he had the misfortune to have his route coincide with our filming schedule, was recruited. Game on.

I remember the first outing was called "Laurel & Hardy In The Old West." Marv directed and acted as one of the leads. We patched together some backdrops and took over our kitchen as our studio. People were costumed, lighting (floor lamps without shades) positioned and filming commenced. I recall I played a heavily mustached villain named McVarmit. The shoot was slow because it was interrupted by real life: one of the dogs wandering into the shot, the kitchen phone ringing or Grandma striding into the kitchen set, oblivious, with the sole intent of making a cup of tea. When we chastised her, she'd say, "Love, I'm gasping for a cuppa!" We realized that location shoots would be necessary for future works once this fine feature was in the can.

Location shoots meant our back yard. We had a very large yard around our house--an orchard, many large and sheltering eucalyptus trees, paths and spacious banks of oleander bushes. It was a heavenly haven for us as children; it would be ideal as the background for our shoots.

At about this time, Marv went to his first horror movie and clearly found his oeuvre. Our lives would never be the same.

His freshman effort was a gem called "He Kills At Night." He persuaded MaryCatherineFullofGrace as well as our good friend Anus into taking the leads. I think I was I was the grip and tea maker on that shoot. At a young age, Anus was over six feet tall, and he was often tagged for the roles of the homicidal maniac in Marv's films. In this film, MaryCatherineFullofGrace was stalked throughout our house by the madman (Anus in a bad mask). In the film's climax, she is chased into our orchard where we had dug a "grave" for her to fall into to be await her doom at the hands of the maniac. Now please note that the grave was about the size of a puddle indentation and Marv commanded MaryCatherineFullofGrace to fall into it with resignation and distress. She hopped into it. Marv never was happy with that shot, but his direction didn't specify "method."

He continued to churn out little films and time passed. I went away to college. When I would come home on the odd weekend, Marv was always ready to press me into some sort of film duty. He clearly had a passion for it, a gift. I always participated in some way.

Marv's masterpiece finally came about when I was a sophomore in college. He was in a filmmaking class in college and they had an assignment which would be screened to a wide audience as part of a "film festival." Marv was wildly inspired. I was pressed into acting duty--as was my boyfriend at the time, an affable guy named Greg White--as was the long suffering but always cooperative Anus (aside: that sounds like a prison drama, no?).

This opus was called "Models of Madness" and involved a couple (me and poor Greg) who set up a booby trapped haunted house to mess with the neighborhood kids. It all goes terribly, horribly, wrong when the monster models we've set out suddenly come to life and start killing their makers. OK, that's the premise. In retrospect:

1. Would have been helpful if Marv told me I'd be doing a lot of running in this film. I would have worn a bra. All you see my forehead and tits a-flapping.
2. Poor Anus kept running into walls. There was a bag on his head.
3. In an nod to a more "mature" film, we incorporated profanity in this film. The opening line from Greg was, "That'll teach those god damn kids from fucking with our shit." We thought we were so bad.
4. My Buick Opel skidding out on the head of one of the zombies. Great shot save Marv's saying (caught on film), "Yeah! Awesome!"

In the end, the previewed film at the festival had parents and their chidlren running from the room, horrified. Small chidlren in tears. People objecting. Success.

Come on, Marv. I'm ready for the sequel.