By Brett Halsey ’92 and Julian Mark Kheel ’91
In the winter of 1991, we each decided that in lieu of taking up our usual winter sports we would audition for the Pine Crest musical, Anything Goes. Anything Goes is a silly comedy that remains a classic because of its magnificent Cole Porter songs. We had previously sung in church and danced at bar mitzvahs. It is a testament to the talent and dedication of our instructors that we eventually learned to sing and dance well enough in Anything Goes to keep the audience from fleeing the auditorium. Tad Harrington was the director, Jim Mullen was the musical director, and Stacy Donovan was the choreographer/costume designer. All three made us feel as though we were professionals putting on a professional show. In a sense we were, because at the time the Pine Crest musical was the major cultural event of the year. The auditorium was always full, and if you managed to put on a good show, you knew it would be appreciated. The essentials were to get the laughs, hit the right notes, and keep things moving. Our era at Pine Crest was notable for an abundance of creative talent. Jeff Marx ’89 went on to create the enormous Broadway hit Avenue Q. Kate Kondell ’91 became a successful screenwriter. Mike Lerman ’90 and Alyson Latz ’91, both of whom were outstanding Pine Crest actors, now have impressive careers in film production. Dan Goldman ’92 is a widely-read comic book artist and illustrator. Mark Ledbetter ’96 and Amir Arison ’96, who were also in our production of Anything Goes, are now prolific professional actors. Curtis Kheel ’94, another Anything Goes alum, is a television writer and producer. These are only the first names that come to mind – no doubt more have been mentioned in this magazine. We took our early creative work seriously not only because we wanted to impress our teachers, but also because of the people we were surrounded by and those we knew were in the audience.
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Brett Halsey on his way to stardom
Our first video project was a montage of rehearsal footage from Anything Goes set to that 90’s classic, Robert Plant’s “Ship of Fools.” We followed that with some video sketches for the Senior Skits, the goal of which seems to have been to thoroughly humiliate ourselves and any faculty members who were willing to join us. Soon we were running around Fort Lauderdale with our friends shooting whatever came to mind. There were short documentaries that addressed the question of whether one could pass a lobster through an airport x-ray machine, or if we could order a raw Whopper at Burger King. The most sophisticated project we made during this period was a three-minute music video called Home Alone about the hijinks we pursued at a friend’s house while his parents were out of town. Looking back, it seems our first videos were not only creative experiments, but also minor grasps at freedom. We were studious and well-behaved Pine Crest kids who thought the rules evaporated whenever someone hit the “record” button on the video camera. To some degree this early work also set the tone for everything that followed. Growing up in the golden age of MTV and Saturday Night Live, we naturally loved to cut images closely to music, and we had a healthy appreciation for the absurd. The results were very similar to what you might see on YouTube today, but with about a tenth of the production value. At the time there was no instant,