Calvin’s Story
The story begins at Oconomowoc High School, in the fall of 2014. The first semester of my Senior Year.
I was assigned a debate topic at random-whether or not teachers should be armed.
I had never given guns much thought up until that point, and I didn’t know anything about the gun control debate. So when I sat down in the OHS library to begin my research, I didn’t know what to expect.
Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. Columbine.
I was appalled. I was devastated. I was in disbelief at what I was reading. All of these shootings, all of these victims-I had heard these names before, sure, but the extent of the violence, and the seemingly complete indifference from my country shook me to my core. In the fifteen years (At the time,) since Columbine, no real change had come.
In one afternoon, I went from someone who had never once considered gun violence as an issue, to a young activist.
After that project came another-an open ended assignment at semester end that was a short speech about the social issue of our choice. I approached my teacher and asked him if I could discuss the issue of gun violence once more. He gave me his blessing. I knocked that speech out of the park, as well.
And with that, I had done what I had set out to do- I’d delivered some fantastic speeches on the topic of school shootings and their prevention, and I had really struck a chord with my classmates. I should’ve been feeling really good about what I had done- and I did!
But, something was wrong. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know how, but something was off.
I felt like there was something I was missing, something that I was grasping for that I couldn’t quite make out. I felt like I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. This was 2015. Years before Parkland, years before the March for our Lives movement took the nation by storm—
What could I do? I was just a kid.
“[Society] so often looked to those who suffered a great loss to step in and rally others…Why look to them to point out the obvious need for change?”
Tom Mauser
The Original Wild Life
Wild Life started as an idea- one that I never thought I could bring to life. It was a short script. It was a storyboard-something to just get my feelings out on the page. It was an idea that lived only in my notebooks, for my eyes only.
For awhile, anyway.
I was thrown yet another curveball the day that my film teacher proudly walked into class and announced that a prestigious film school in Chicago was holding a festival for High School students, and we were encouraged to participate! That year’s theme?
The best or worst day of school.
It felt like fate.
I gathered my friends and my fellow film students, and told them what I planned to do. I wanted to portray a fictitious school shooting within the walls of my high school in the most respectful way possible. No violence, no weapons, no shooter. Just the concerned faces of the school’s students as they watched horror unfold offscreen. I could see it so vividly in my head. I knew that I could get my friends to help if I gave them that incentive of having a winning festival film. So, we got to work.
“Be a nuisance when it counts. Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action. Be depressed, discouraged, and disappointed at failure and the disheartening effects of ignorance, greed, corruption, and bad politics-but never give up.”
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
Wild Life made it into the film festival. It did not win, (And I’m mad about it to this day!) But I had a bigger victory. My short film went viral across my small Midwestern campus. Teachers were showing it in their classrooms without prompting, random kids were coming up to me after seeing it and asking to know more- the last few months of my high school career revolved around that little film.
Looking back, there’s a lot I’d do differently. But to this day, I am still endlessly proud of this film, and the things it did.
I was able to honor those who have been lost. I was able to raise awareness. I was able to provide comfort to an individual in my life who had been hurt by gun violence, (Though, that is not my story to tell,)
But still, that feeling came back.
It wasn’t enough.
Summer of 2021, I directed my first ever feature film—this film, Wild Life. For all the reasons I just listed, and more.
I wanted a film that starts a conversation. I wanted a film that reminds people that when the news crews are gone, the survivors are still there, picking up the pieces. I wanted a film that details what gun violence does to a community. I wanted a film that presented these things in an accessible way, that would get people concerned about an issue they seem to largely be ignoring.
I wanted a film that tells people that we are not done yet. Something needs to be done.