According to the recently released Child Well-Being Index, an annual report from the Foundation for Child Development, we are experiencing 10- and 12-year lows among teens regarding pregnancies, alcohol abuse and criminal offenses.
In response to this, Jeffrey Butts, director of youth justice programs for the Urban Institute, proclaimed: "Maybe we have the next 'greatest generation' coming along."
I say let's drop the 'maybe' because, looking around, there can be little doubt that today's youth culture is the next "greatest generation." And we have bellwether examples to celebrate right here in our community.
Youth culture has become an enormous positive influence in society. This is due in no small part to modern technologies like the Internet, online web logs ("blogs") and other forms of communication that allow high-achieving young people to find, challenge and encourage each other. Because of the Web, kids now can meet-up, power-up and take off with a synergistic bounce.
The mark of prior generations has been ambition and drive in the areas of commerce and professions. Today, making one's mark in youth culture is derived by no less ambition and drive through the power of ideas and creativity.
Let me give you an example from right here in our own community: Making their homes in Magnolia and Queen Anne are three recent graduates of Seattle Pacific University who last year created a project called Acting on AIDS (www.actingonaids.org) - a powerful creative concept that helps participants viscerally see and feel the impact of HIV/AIDS. The program is designed to encourage personal commitment and action in response to how the disease is ravaging people around the world.
To make it all the more powerful, participants in Acting on AIDS experience the disease from the perspective of the orphans AIDS leaves behind.
Flash forward one year: Jackie Yoshimura, James Pedrick and Lisa Krohn have created a partnership with Federal Way-based World Vision, and have introduced the program on more than 40 college campuses around the country. Acting on AIDS takes elements of the 1960s civil rights and anti-war movements - reminiscent of teach-ins and campus theater - and applies these elements to frustration regarding the global AIDS pandemic as well as the virulent poverty in which the disease festers.
And then there is Jesse Harris, a 2004 Ballard High School graduate who directed the motion picture "Living Life" (www.livinglifethemovie.com) which premiered Friday, April 8.
As a sophomore, Harris wrote the screenplay about a young man's triumph in the face of terminal illness. By his senior year he had shot the movie, and used his own college money to fund the project's development.
Harris' film garnered an "audience choice" award from the Bay Area's prestigious Orinda Film Festival, which led to a post-production and distribution contract with a major Hollywood distributor.
And that brings us to the most important weekend of Jesse Harris' life, when his movie officially debuted at the Landmark Metro Cinema in the University District.
How is it that a teenager in Seattle can write, cast, direct and then shepherd the release of a major motion picture? Of course, Jesse Harris is a rare and talented individual. And there is a team of talented collaborators, such as Magnolia's own John Jeffcoat, who provided "big budget" talent as a film editor on "Living Life."
And Harris, true to form, credits the skill and mentoring of his collaborators for making the project successful.
A week back I spent four hours with Harris, who would strike you as any 19 year old might. True, Harris exudes a complex mixture of friendly confidence and laser-like ability to focus, and he measures his responses like a seasoned diplomat.
But his normal teenage-becoming-a-man characteristics are all there. So what is it? I can see it in Jesse Harris: he has tapped into the power of creativity and ideas.
Get in touch with that, and all the rest (including the big business elements of a Hollywood movie) will follow.
In "Living Life," 17-year-old Jason Miller (played by Benjamin P. Garman in what looks to be a breakout role) learns he has contracted a very serious form of abdominal cancer. His grandfather, movingly portrayed by veteran film actor Dick Arnold, has been estranged from the family for many years. Yet, because of his grandson's grave illness, the man insists on spending time with him.
In a beautiful scene in which grandfather and grandson ride a rowboat in Green Lake, Jason asks his grandfather: "Have you ever wanted to do something really great for a person - something wonderful that actually affects their lives?"
This is the theme underscoring the entire movie. Harris admits that at film festivals and test screenings, "people tell me, like in their 20s and 30s, that it (the movie) changed the way they think. People are relating to loss, to family, to what this all means for them personally. I'm not like a religious person. And the film does not come off as preachy. But all of a sudden the message just hits."
And people are deeply moved. "I want people thinking about it, talking about it," Harris says. And people tell him that, in thinking about encountering crisis in their lives, "they learned how to react, and what they would do based on the movie."
Watching this movie is a deeply spiritual experience that underscores the value in opening up to love - in the capacity to love and be loved. This theme, in a major motion picture made by a Seattle teenager, provides ample signs we have found our next "greatest generation."
The decision on whether to give Living Life a wide national release will be based in no small part on how many of us see the movie over the next two weeks at Seattle's Landmark Metro Cinemas (visit www.landmarktheaters.com for times). What better way to show our support than getting behind a special film by an important new director?
See you at the movies.
P. Scott Cummins is a freelance writer living in Magnolia.[[In-content Ad]]
