When Senior Class President Joey Gatto takes the podium at Thursday’s graduation ceremony, he will speak with the confidence of a guy who already has made his first million.
Okay, so we’re talking hits, not dollars.
But 1.1 million views of a YouTube video are nothing to sneeze at. In fact, if you’re an administrator at Morristown High School, that number may fill you with shock and awe… because the video in question is titled Sh*t Teachers Want to Say.
What will Joey say to the sheepskin crowd at Mennen Arena? He insists his whole speech has been thoroughly vetted by Principal Linda Murphy.
Don’t be surprised if Joey throws in a few surprises, however. This beat-boxer is never at a loss for words, as a quick perusal of his website makes clear.
“I was more nervous cutting my hair off,” Joey said this week, referring to his graduation trim. “It was time for a change.”
A natural performer, Joey was equally at ease doing a solo beat-boxing routine at Morristown’s Got Talent! last year and playing piano with a band this year, before another sold-out house at the Mayo Performing Arts Center. His charisma landed him an agent, and auditions for movies and ads, as a high school junior.
Joey is generous with praise for teachers and mentors. Classmates elected him as their president for all four years at MHS, and his popularity helped seal his Best Picture selection at last summer’s MorristownGreen.com Film Festival–even though Joey insists he is a loner at heart who prefers the solace of a production room.
“I want to be a film editor when I grow up,” said Joey, who will attend the School of Visual Arts in New York this fall.
His high school broadcasting adviser, Michael Butler, worked in television for years and thinks Joey could become a successful special effects editor–or star in front of the camera as the next Ryan Seacrest.
“He has a wonderful sense of humor, and is not afraid of performing in front of an audience,” Mike said. “To me Joey is an ‘old soul,’ living in the digital age. He equally enjoys listening to Sinatra and The Temptations as well as Wiz Khalifa or Eminem.”
The teacher’s one piece of advice: Slow down.
“He currently is of the mindset that quicker is better,” said Mike, a former senior director at Court TV. “Joey likes to complete projects rapidly; he must learn to take his time and his work will flourish.”
Indeed, it’s rare for any of Joey’s video projects to take more than a day to complete–from rough concepts to slick YouTube attractions. His attention is too short for movie-watching, he said; re-runs of Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond and Sports Center are more his speed. Self-taught in a slew of complex editing programs, he shoots weddings and bar mitzvahs on the side, between shifts at Friendly’s in Morris Township.
“With video there are no restrictions,” Joey said. “You can do whatever you want. It’s whatever your mind puts down on SD-cards.”
Joey Gatto at MHS. Please click icon below for captions.
He is excited about the chance to live in New York and study at a top school with “really high-end cameras, and teachers who know about me and my software, who know more than I know.”
The hard part is leaving his best friend, his mother, Barbara. Joey’s parents split when he was small and Barbara raised him while battling a series of debilitating illnesses, from Lyme disease to diabetes to lupus.
Compared with that, giving a speech before a few hundred classmates is nothing. Joey might appear cocky in his videos, but in real life he characterizes himself as optimistic.
“If that woman can sit there with a smile on her face,” he said of his mom, “what gives me the right to have a bad attitude about anything?”
