One night in the late 1960s, while I was in the Peace Corps, a friend and I were inventing ways to expose someone’s cover if they were a spy. The classic test: ask them, “Who won the 1959 World

Series?” If they couldn’t answer, the theory went, they weren’t real Americans. I always thought thatwas a terrible metric – I couldn’t name two baseball players then or now. By that logic, I’d have been a prime suspect.

We started tossing around our own versions of “spy tests,” joking and brainstorming – until I looked down at my plate and saw it. A better test. A visual one. A small moment hiding in plain sight: an Oreo cookie.

Years later, living in Berkeley while eager to teach myself filmmaking, I came back to that idea.

I decided to make a short film in the form of a TV commercial.

There were no film schools yet. No mentors that I knew. Just a borrowed camera, a quiet idea, and the feeling that maybe this was what I was meant to do.

And then it somehow actually happened.

I found an abandoned building near the Bay to serve as our set. It was half condemned, filled with creaks and shadows. Armed with a borrowed Bolex camera with three interchangeable lenses, a group of willing friends, and a few props, we set out.

I shot far too many scenes that day – enough for a short film and then some. But I learned more in that one day than I might’ve learned in a year of film school.

The truth is, I had no real idea of what I was doing. But something felt electric about holding that camera and embracing the challenges. I loved how my friends showed up and played along. Even our location seemed to join in, offering its nooks and crannies and the way light just happened to fall – as if it wanted to be part of the story too.

Here, is the script, reversed engineered after the fact. Images are lifted from the finished 16mm film.