Noam Argov ’15 delivered a SEVEN Talk at the 2025 Alumni Forum in Chapel Hill on October 18. Noam is a writer, director, and producer with Bright Panic Pictures and an MFA candidate at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Noam Argov ’15 delivered a SEVEN Talk at the 2025 Alumni Forum in Chapel Hill on October 18. Noam is a writer, director, and producer with Bright Panic Pictures and an MFA candidate at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
About SEVEN Talks
Every class of Morehead-Cain Scholars connects with seven others: the three classes ahead, its own, and the three that follow. The idea of SEVEN is to strengthen connections across generations of Morehead-Cains.
The Alumni Forum embodies this spirit through SEVEN Talks—seven alumni and scholars on Saturday, and seven more on Sunday—each sharing seven minutes of wisdom with the Morehead-Cain community.
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Hi, everyone. I’m not going to sing. I’m so sorry, but that was incredible.
I want to tell you today about one of my favorite movies. It’s a love story about two teenagers on a cruise ship. And in screenwriting, we have this thing that’s called the A-plot and the B-plot. The A-plot is the main narrative, what the story is about—in this case, two teens: Will they? Won’t they? The B-plot in this movie is that that cruise is headed toward a giant iceberg.
Okay, everyone’s seen it. Okay, incredible. If you haven’t, I’m sorry for the spoiler. It’sTitanic.
So what’s so interesting to me aboutTitanicis that it’s named after its B-plot. It’s really a love story, but the B-plot tells us about who these characters are. B-plots always tell us more about characters—what do you do in these difficult situations when things don’t go to plan?
So in case you didn’t want to do a cinema studies class this morning, I’ll just tell you a personal story to show this.
So when I was at Carolina, I was obsessed with the Mongol Empire. I was a PWad, PoliSci double major. I was obsessed with Genghis Khan, the whole thing. Is that niche? Okay.
Luckily, there was another person who was also obsessed with this. It was my best friend, Graham Palmer, who’s also a fellow scholar. And we got the idea after graduation to do a trip across the Silk Road from Uzbekistan to China in two months. And it was one of those things when we were joking about it, but then we both realized we were both really serious about it. So we went.
So after graduation, we started in Uzbekistan. And this particular anecdote takes place in Kyrgyzstan in the middle of our trip. We’re on day one in Kyrgyzstan, and we decided to do this horse trek over multiple days. And we’re on these Kyrgyz ponies, and they’re smaller than regular horses. They’re furry. We studied about them in class. They’re incredible. We’re so excited. And we’re going on day one over all these mountain passes for two hours, and we get to this valley.
And we have this incredible local guide who’s a nomad. His family is nomadic in the area. And we get to this valley, and he’s like, “Okay, you should hop off of your horses so they can drink and take a break.” So we do.
And as soon as we hop off, the weather just turns on a dime, and it starts to hail on us. And I had never been near a horse in my life. I’d never seen one in person. They don’t like hail, okay? So our guide’s horse just takes off at breakneck pace back over the path we just came from, and he’s gone in like twenty seconds. And that would be not great anyway, but that horse has all of our stuff on it. It has our sleeping bag. We were in T-shirts. We were so unprepared. We didn’t know the weather was going to downpour. And it has our passports, our money, everything. And so we’re like, “Oh, no.”
And we look to our guide, and he’s like, “Oh, no.” We’re like, “Oh.”
So then he’s like, “Don’t worry. Sorry. I’ll just grab one of your horses, and I’ll go get this one.” And we’re like, “Okay.” So he’s gone.
So Graham and I find ourselves alone in the middle of Kyrgyzstan in T-shirts with this random other horse, and it’s hailing on us. Five minutes go by. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, forty-five. And Graham and I look at each other, and we’re like, “Oh, we know what happened. This guy’s not coming back.” He has staged this. We were panic spiraling. So we realized he has staged this to steal all of our stuff and leave us for dead in the middle of Kyrgyzstan. And we’re just in full panic mode.
And at this point, it’s getting dark. It was already evening. It’s now this mix of rain and hail. I’m so cold. I’m in short sleeves. We’re just losing it. And so we’re like, “Okay, we’re going to get on this horse, and we’re just going to ride it back over the path in the direction that we came.”
So we both get on the horse. Graham, for those of you who know him, is built like a linebacker, and I’m a former gymnast, so small but very dense. And the horse is like a glorified pony, and it’s like, “No.” And it just sits down like this. So we’re like, “Okay.”
So we get off the horse. We’re like, “This horse is useless to us.” It’s really dark. At this point, it’s totally dark. And then we remember something we learned in our history of warfare class, that the Mongols, when they would get stuck on the steppe in the winter, they would sacrifice the horse, slice its stomach open, and lie in it for warmth. And it’s one of those things you bring up that’s a joke, but then you say it out loud, and you’re both like—we’re in full panic mode. And so Graham and I are like, “Yeah, this is how we’re going to make it through the night.”
And we’re dead serious. We’re like—so this does not make me look good, but I look for a rock. I find a rock. I pick up the rock. I show the rock to Graham. Graham says, “Yeah, that’ll work.”
And then we hear a sound, and we look, and it’s right out of a movie. Our guide comes back. It’s now fully dark with flashlights, with the two horses. He’s back. And we’re like, “Oh.”
He just went back to get the horses. It took an hour.
So speaking of A-plots and B-plots, right? B-plots tell you a lot about who your characters are when things don’t go to plan. Apparently, when things don’t go to plan, I’ve become a horse murderer in an hour. So I thought about that. That was something I didn’t like about myself. I thought I was always calm, cool, and collected under pressure, see the best in everybody. And that’s not what I did at all.
And the interesting thing, however, about B-plots and side quests and this whole thing is that they don’t just tell you who your characters are. They tell you who your characters can be. They lead you, the story, to these moments of magic and serendipity. And if you’re lucky, the B-plot will connect back to your A-plot.
Because of this horse incident, Graham and I become really good friends with our guide because we told him that we thought he left us for dead, and he thinks this is hilarious. So I become friends with him over—I stay in touch with him over a couple of years, and I end up going back and forth to Kyrgyzstan a couple of times, and he ends up introducing me to my documentary subject, a subject of a documentary that I then go back and make in Kyrgyzstan with National Geographic. That documentary launched my documentary career as the reason I got into grad school and as the reason I now work in scripted film and TV today. So it’s really all because of this horse, honestly.
But I think about this moment a lot because that moment really changed things for me, where I realized I don’t want to be this person who spirals when things don’t go to plan. I want to be this person that when things deviate from the trajectory that I thought I was on, I believe in myself. I believe in humanity. I believe that I can figure it out, that we can figure it out. And I think about that a lot now when I’m on set, because when you make movies, things go wrong every day, every second. And I just trust that things will work out and that we’ll be able to problem-solve through it.
Now, back toTitanic. If it’s just the A-plot, it’s two teenagers who fall in love on a cruise. Probably they get to New York, they dock, they mutually ghost each other. The end. But if it’s the A- and the B-plot, as tragic as it is, it’s this beautiful love story about two young people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for each other. If we’re willing to go on this journey with them, we learn about who they are as characters. And if we’re really lucky and we go on this journey with them, we learn about who we are and who we can be through them.
Thank you.