That it was. To the delight of the crowd, Kavanagh screened some of the finest films made in his class of late, none of which contained explicit violence; for instance, The Mathrix, a gloss on The Matrix, spotlighted faux kung fu action. Most showed extreme promise, in particular a technically jaw-dropping music video by director Max Nova, who will soon be bound for the film school at New York University -- one of several Kavanagh students to be accepted by the institution.
There's no telling whether student panelists Peterson and Messimer will follow Nova's lead, but their golf-club narrative, titled Don't Piss Me Off, has certainly gotten plenty of attention. At the assembly, Peterson said he and Messimer had chosen to start their film in a bathroom because it afforded "very interesting lighting," and they'd had one character urinate on another after seeing a similar scene in a Cheech & Chong movie. "It was very comical, and we thought it would make people laugh," Peterson maintained. He also griped that the Rocky had chopped up the film when placing it on the paper's website, excising everything that wasn't violent to make it seem worse than it was.
Mark Manger
During a Boulder High assembly, Jim Kavanagh
throws it back at the media.
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Added Messimer, "We would like an apology from Channel 4 and the Rocky Mountain News for sensationalizing something that shouldn't have been sensational in the first place."
As it turns out, Channel 4 representatives were present for at least part of the show, but they didn't take the opportunity to say they were sorry. So Peterson and Messimer had to settle for the next best thing: hundreds of their peers, roaring their approval. Michael Kennedy wouldn't have been pleased.
Weather or not: Don't they ever learn? In recent years, onetime Channel 9 stars Ron Zappolo and Jim Benemannthreatened to jump to a competitor if they didn't receive big raises at contract renewal time -- and in both cases, station president Roger Ogden figuratively said, "See ya later." (Zappolo's now on Channel 31; Benemann helms Channel 4.) Déjà vu struck again on April 8. After months of fruitless negotiations, Mike Nelson, Channel 9's primary forecaster since the early '90s, left the market's number-one station in favor of a pot of money from a ratings-starved rival, Channel 7. Nelson will be on Channel 9 until his contract expires in mid-June, but he won't turn up at his new home until year's end unless the six-month no-compete clause in his contract is negotiated down.
Byron Grandy, Channel 7's news director, ballyhoos this hire, depicting Nelson as "one of the most respected meteorologists in the country. We believe his hiring underscores our commitment to strengthening our weather coverage." That comment can't bode well for current Channel 7 prognosticator Marty Coniglio, who's under contract through 2004. Grandy says he and Coniglio will be having a talk down the line.
Ogden seems relatively unconcerned about Nelson's departure. After all, Kathy Sabine, who's already accepted Channel 9's top weather job, is a rising star who's gotten national exposure via recent cameos on Today. He insists that he tried to keep Nelson in the fold, but the ultimate cost "didn't make sense to us in the context of running our business." In other words, Ogden believes Channel 9 can stay atop the Nielsen mountain without being held hostage by money-hungry talent, and so far, he's been right.
Which means that, next year at this time, Nelson will be doing his tornado dance somewhere else.
