John Paxton Jr.’s first feature film focuses on the gangs and pimps of his home town.
By: Anthony Stoeckert
When he was 15, John Paxton Jr. saw one of his best friends get shot right in front of him. They were walking in the streets of Atlantic City and the friend, Antoine, who wasn’t involved with gangs, was mistaken for his brother, Jackie, who was. "They were looking for his older brother and they thought it was him," Mr. Paxton says of the shooting that killed Antoine.
Knowing the bullets were meant for him, the older brother left town. Mr. Paxton went on to get educated, work as an adjunct at his alma mater, Rutgers University, and become a film director. He hadn’t seen or heard from his friend’s brother since, until the day last year when he was shooting scenes for his first feature, Rebecca’s Window, at a bus station in Atlantic City.
"His brother was hanging out, watching us filming," Mr. Paxton says. "I had no idea it was him… But I kept hearing, ‘John!’ And I said, ‘Jackie’ and I swore I was looking at Antoine."
Rebecca’s Window is about the gangs and pimps who inhabit the streets of Atlantic City, and the people like Mr. Paxton, who wears scars from the fights he was in, but was steered onto the right path by his family, primarily his parents, John Sr. and Eddie Mae. John Sr. worked two or three jobs at a time to put his kids through private school and college. Eddie Mae took care of the home and drove the kids to wherever they had to go piano lessons, basketball practice, friends’ houses. His aunts, Mary and Rachel, also looked out for him, with Mary being the person who, despite having only a sixth-grade education, instilled a love of culture and books in John Jr.
"I had my own little heaven inside of hell," he says.
He’s convinced that without that structure, he wouldn’t have gone to Rutgers, wouldn’t have earned a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees in eight years. That he wouldn’t be teaching at G Smith Upper Elementary School in Franklin, and African-American economics at Rutgers. He would have ended up like so many of his friends, the ones who are addicted to heroin, or dealing drugs.
"What would have been my alternative?" he asks. "I watch kids now who get caught in the cycle, and they can’t get out of it. I don’t (believe) myself to have any supernatural power that I would have been able to avoid it. If that’s what’s set up around you, do you really have a choice?"
Mr. Paxton’s choices have led to Rebecca’s Window, which he directed, wrote and produced, on a $25,000 budget. The film explores Mr. Paxton’s Atlantic City, following the lives of people who try to overcome their pasts to make better lives for themselves. The film premiered in Manhattan (Mr. Paxton keeps a photo of the theater’s marquee advertising his film on his cell phone) and was screened in Philadelphia. It’s also making rounds at several festivals, including the New York Film and Video festival on Nov. 11.
Mr. Paxton, who lives in Franklin with his wife (and public relations manager), Nora, and their two daughters, isn’t a formal student of film he didn’t take a single film class in college but it’s one of his passions. He has studied photography, which he says has influenced his approach to filmmaking.
"I started to employ what (photographs) would do in motion," he says of his style. "It was a beautiful hybrid and it’s come out well. I watched a billion and one movies, which every film school tells you to do. I (watched) a lot of Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Gordon Parks, and really was able to see that you don’t necessarily have to go the traditional route to tell a compelling story."
He also got some on-the-job lessons. One of his actors had to pull out of a role on the day of filming because his father was in the hospital. Mr. Paxton took on the role since he was the only person who knew the lines. That meant holding up filming while someone went to his home to get one of his suits, a tense situation for a producer. The original lead actor, who plays the street kid Josh, bailed out after shooting began. The part had to be re-cast and the scenes re-shot, but the film still came in under budget.
Mr. Paxton has plans to tell more stories, and to make different types of films while doing so. He recently finished a short film, Multiple Letters, which he says is a love story. His next feature (which he hopes to release in 2008) will be a political satire both of them are worlds away from Rebecca’s Window.
No doubt Rebecca’s Window is a work from Mr. Paxton’s heart, but in a way it was also a convenient choice for a first feature. He says it’s a virtual pre-requisite for African-American directors to begin their careers with movies about inner-city life (think John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood).
"As an African-American filmmaker, the ‘establishment’ wants to see if you can tell that kind of story," he says. "Can you tell an urban story? Because if you can’t, what makes you think you can tell any other story? Because that may be what you have seen, that may be what you have experienced."
But not every black person grew up that way, and that’s why he wants to make other kinds of films.
"That’s why I’m so hell-bent on this next story," he says of his political comedy, adding that telling an urban story is only part of what he can do. "I’m part of a movement that wants to change that. It shouldn’t matter if you’re white, black, red, green or blue, if you have the ability to tell stories, open up the book to tell whatever kind of story you want to tell."
Rebecca’s Window will be screened at the New York Film and Video Festival,
Village East Cinemas, 181 Second Ave at 12th Street, New York, N.Y., Nov. 11,
8:05 p.m.. For information, visit www.nyfilmvideo.com.
DVDs of Rebecca’s Window are available by e-mailing [email protected]

