Tom DiCillo

I haven’t seen this photo in 30 years. That’s me on the deck of a ship with my brother. We were just about to cross the Atlantic. I had just graduated from college. I had a BFA in Creative Writing and no idea what to do with it. My advisor advised that I become a teacher, of Creative Writing. Instead, I applied to two film schools.

My brother graduated a year before me with a BFA in Fine Arts. We had an apartment together in Norfolk, VA. A friend told us about a coal ship that took passengers across the Atlantic to Genoa, Italy for $300. We decided to make the trip.

The night before, some friends threw a going away party for us. We’d been up all night. My brother’s girlfriend, Diane, drove us to the pier. I gave her my camera and she took the photo of my brother and me on deck. I took the photo of them at the table.

I had no idea where I was going. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got back. My brother spent the whole trip agonizing if he should leave Diane and go to New York to become a painter. I told him I didn't understand why it had to be one or the other.

The ship was a coal freighter, long and narrow. The winter swells in the North Atlantic were so massive the ship rolled side to side like a huge cigar. We were the only passengers. The trip took 16 days. I spent most of the time sitting at the bow of the ship, staring down into the ocean as the prow surged through it. I saw many strange things. In the middle of the ocean the ship plowed through some debris that I quickly glimpsed contained a croquet mallet, a football and a single swim fin.

One morning as I was staring down, a school of dolphin appeared out of nowhere and glided ahead of the ship, riding the propelling surge for several minutes before splitting in half and arcing away to the sides.

I explored the ship by myself. All the rooms were abandoned. I opened a small closet to find a 16mm projector and a single, gigantic reel of The Green Berets, with John Wayne. I figured out how to thread it through the projector and that night we had a screening with a few of the Spanish crew. They didn’t speak English which was OK because I couldn’t figure out how to get the sound working so we watched the whole film in silence.

The dead of winter is not the ideal time to be in Italy. However, when we went to the Sistine Chapel, we were the only ones there. My brother’s obsession with making a decision about Diane intensified. We fought a lot, from Rome to Venice, Milan and Florence. After a month we flew back to Norfolk.

Having no money, and no place to stay, we took a floor in an abandoned building with no heat and no hot water. A week later I found out that I’d been accepted to NYU Graduate Film School.