Nick Cominos
March 21, 2008 02:02 PM
In the mid to late eighties, I attended the University of Texas film school. I managed to accumulate enough credits to get my BS in only three years, and was permitted to spend my fourth year as a master’s student. I got a peek at academia and was actually paid to serve as a teacher’s assistant for a professor -- Nick Cominos. The faculty at this time was filled with wannabe’s, almost were’s and never-was’s. Then there was Nick. He was a tall gangly man with a thick shock of black hair now seriously streaked with grey. He had a wizard’s deep-set eyes. He was older than the rest of the faculty, and a little out of step with the other faculty members and definitely out of step with the students. He actually worked in old Hollywood and would bore us with his stories of working on films like The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing and how he was actually the guy pushing Joan Collins in the swing… Most students would either roll their eyes or worse yet, have them glaze over (It was the 80’s and we were punks). It wasn’t until I saw the speed and dexterity with which he handled a stand-up Moviola filmstrip editor that I realized Nick was someone to be revered.
All the other professors and students preferred the Steenbeck flatbed editors that allowed the filmmaker to sit and wallow in the angst of putting together their supposed works of art, whereas the Moviola required the filmmaker to stand and use his hands and even his feet. It was more of a tool for a craftsman attending to his craft. I realized that Nick was the only faculty member that understood that filmmaking was not just an art form but was also a craft. An important lesson unheeded by most students.
Although Nick was clearly rooted in the past, he was not falling into irrelevance. The eighties was a time of great technological changes in the motion picture industry, where electronic editing, videotape, and time-code started to replace the filmstrips, moviolas and lab work. Nick was on top of the revolution and actually taught the school’s electronic editing class where the students learned to perform A-B roll edits in a roomful of massive overheating electronic equipment. All this equipment was necessary to perform frame accurate repeatable dissolves from one image to another – you know, the same sort of thing that any given laptop computer can do today.
My favorite story about Nick was when I was attending one of his afternoon classes as his teaching assistance. He was wearing his trademark black turtleneck sweater with a grey pullover sweater over that. I was dog-tired that afternoon, as I had been up all night working on my pre-thesis film. I was struggling to stay awake as Nick droned on about something I cannot recall. But then I noticed him twitch. He continued with his lecture, and then he twitched again. I wondered if something was wrong. Then he swatted his hand under his arm. He continued his lecture, but by now the whole class was wondering what was going on underneath his sweater. Finally, he apologized, stood up, gave a self-deprecating smile and pulled off the grey sweater. Then he started working something out of his turtleneck. He worked it (whatever it was) all the way from his rib cage to his neck. Then finally he expelled the irritant onto the table that all his students were sitting around. A wasp crawled drunkenly across the table. His students looked on in slack-mouthed amazement.
My first thought was: It’s three in the afternoon. He probably put that sweater on what, eight hours ago? How long had that wasp been in there? But Nick didn’t miss a beat. “That reminds me of these African beekeepers I made a documentary about. These guys would work all day without any protective clothing whatsoever. They would be covered with bees and stings and would just keep working.” My next thought was: Bees only sting once. That was a wasp. Suffice it to say, Nick was quite a character.
Nick especially endeared himself to me during the faculty evaluation of my pre-thesis film. It was a very intimidating scene. All the graduate students and all the faculty members screened each student’s thesis or pre-thesis and the faculty proceeded to rip the film to shreds and explain how they could have done it better. My film was a twenty-minute gangster drama set in the early 60’s. It had impressive production values for a film made for a grand total of $3,500, particularly given the fact that most of that budget went to film stock and processing. It, like most short films, was missing one of its three acts, but all in all, not too bad for a first try. However, every aspect of my film was being completely brutalized by this lesbian professor whose only claim to fame was that she made documentaries about midgets and dwarfs. Then Nick came to my defense. He argued for my film, point by point. He described it as “a morality play for small time hoods.” I’ll never forget that, because he had not seen it before that screening yet he immediately “got” what I was going for. I didn’t finish the master’s program – I went to law school instead – but I’ll always appreciate the way Nick stood up for me and my silly little film.
Nick obviously left an impact on my life, but that was even before I found out that he was the real life freakin’ Gregory Peck in the Guns of Navarone. I did not learn until much later, but Nick was a super secret OSS commando who fought the Nazi behind enemy lines in Greece. In 1944, Nick as a member of the Greek / American Operational Group Office of Strategic Services raided Nazi controlled islands in the Adriatic then parachuted into occupied Greece, formed coalitions with local fighters, and harassed the Axis garrisons until they were forced to withdraw. His operation was so super secret that it remained classified until 1988, and serves to this day as a model for operations in Afghanistan.
I do not know how I knew, but I could always tell that the waters ran deep.
RIP Nick Cominos 3/14/08
All the other professors and students preferred the Steenbeck flatbed editors that allowed the filmmaker to sit and wallow in the angst of putting together their supposed works of art, whereas the Moviola required the filmmaker to stand and use his hands and even his feet. It was more of a tool for a craftsman attending to his craft. I realized that Nick was the only faculty member that understood that filmmaking was not just an art form but was also a craft. An important lesson unheeded by most students.
Although Nick was clearly rooted in the past, he was not falling into irrelevance. The eighties was a time of great technological changes in the motion picture industry, where electronic editing, videotape, and time-code started to replace the filmstrips, moviolas and lab work. Nick was on top of the revolution and actually taught the school’s electronic editing class where the students learned to perform A-B roll edits in a roomful of massive overheating electronic equipment. All this equipment was necessary to perform frame accurate repeatable dissolves from one image to another – you know, the same sort of thing that any given laptop computer can do today.
My favorite story about Nick was when I was attending one of his afternoon classes as his teaching assistance. He was wearing his trademark black turtleneck sweater with a grey pullover sweater over that. I was dog-tired that afternoon, as I had been up all night working on my pre-thesis film. I was struggling to stay awake as Nick droned on about something I cannot recall. But then I noticed him twitch. He continued with his lecture, and then he twitched again. I wondered if something was wrong. Then he swatted his hand under his arm. He continued his lecture, but by now the whole class was wondering what was going on underneath his sweater. Finally, he apologized, stood up, gave a self-deprecating smile and pulled off the grey sweater. Then he started working something out of his turtleneck. He worked it (whatever it was) all the way from his rib cage to his neck. Then finally he expelled the irritant onto the table that all his students were sitting around. A wasp crawled drunkenly across the table. His students looked on in slack-mouthed amazement.
My first thought was: It’s three in the afternoon. He probably put that sweater on what, eight hours ago? How long had that wasp been in there? But Nick didn’t miss a beat. “That reminds me of these African beekeepers I made a documentary about. These guys would work all day without any protective clothing whatsoever. They would be covered with bees and stings and would just keep working.” My next thought was: Bees only sting once. That was a wasp. Suffice it to say, Nick was quite a character.
Nick especially endeared himself to me during the faculty evaluation of my pre-thesis film. It was a very intimidating scene. All the graduate students and all the faculty members screened each student’s thesis or pre-thesis and the faculty proceeded to rip the film to shreds and explain how they could have done it better. My film was a twenty-minute gangster drama set in the early 60’s. It had impressive production values for a film made for a grand total of $3,500, particularly given the fact that most of that budget went to film stock and processing. It, like most short films, was missing one of its three acts, but all in all, not too bad for a first try. However, every aspect of my film was being completely brutalized by this lesbian professor whose only claim to fame was that she made documentaries about midgets and dwarfs. Then Nick came to my defense. He argued for my film, point by point. He described it as “a morality play for small time hoods.” I’ll never forget that, because he had not seen it before that screening yet he immediately “got” what I was going for. I didn’t finish the master’s program – I went to law school instead – but I’ll always appreciate the way Nick stood up for me and my silly little film.
Nick obviously left an impact on my life, but that was even before I found out that he was the real life freakin’ Gregory Peck in the Guns of Navarone. I did not learn until much later, but Nick was a super secret OSS commando who fought the Nazi behind enemy lines in Greece. In 1944, Nick as a member of the Greek / American Operational Group Office of Strategic Services raided Nazi controlled islands in the Adriatic then parachuted into occupied Greece, formed coalitions with local fighters, and harassed the Axis garrisons until they were forced to withdraw. His operation was so super secret that it remained classified until 1988, and serves to this day as a model for operations in Afghanistan.
I do not know how I knew, but I could always tell that the waters ran deep.
RIP Nick Cominos 3/14/08
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