In memory - Niki Lexa

Niki Lexa was a fellow student at the London International Film School.

He passed away on June 7th. I found out on Wednesday. His funeral is in San Francisco, today.

Niki's death was completely unexpected and tragic. There are still a lot of questions as to what happened. My need to translate into narrative can't quite grasp this. Niki was neither self destructive or hedonistic. He was very kind and sweet and good natured. We are still waiting for an autopsy report but it must've been something completely from the ether.

I can't recall the first time I met Niki, but I remember we became friends when it came time to figure out how to make someone appear to get shot on film. Pyrotechnics and guns aren't so easily available in the UK. So after some coaching from Niki (who to this day I still don't know if he had completely come up with this solution himself or he'd just read it and was really smart) we constructed a nail trigger board and our squibs with condoms and micro detonators. That I bought, seriously, in the back of a car for cash money on the outskirts of London after a two hour train ride. Niki showed me how to put it all together. We bonded over wushu films and the Hong Kong cinema of the 90's, a neverending discussion of "did you see this completely over the top and brutal, beautiful shot"? His editing room in school had a gigantic Bruce Lee poster. Niki was the real deal; he didn't have a trace of irony or detatchment. He loved things earnestly. He was not into these things for kitsch - he could appreciate a good laugh over the silliness of something (like the way in Ringo Lam's "City on Fire" the police sketch artist draws a man in a ski mask and the cop is told to memorize the face) but he didn't fetishize or feel superior. This is, too, a school that was teeming with all sorts of delusional pretension the likes of which I've never come across. Only in other film student's experiences at their own.

We ended up collaborating a lot as the film school's go to guys for getting shot. I can't really relate this understandably, but at some point Niki put together an entire action movie in our school. I wish I had a copy to put online. It's ten minutes of ridiculous mayhem. He had full on machine guns in the school, people getting blasted through doors on pulleys, a model miniature exploding, an actual kung fu fight... Me getting blasted with a shotgun to the chest wearing a pink shirt...

It was the best time I ever had in film school. It was so over the top ridiculous and Niki wandered through it with ease, quietly smiling and directing without ever raising his voice.

I have a lot of great memories of him. I talked to our fellow classmate and friend Hideki today. Hideki got really sick last year and had a brush with mortality. Even though I had to break awful news to him, I could hear that Hideki was doing much better and had gotten a lot of strength back.

To Niki Lexa: we miss you.