Film School
All of the events described in this book happened as related; some time frames were altered slightly and many names and identifying characteristics have been changed.
Copyright © 2011 by Steve Boman
Foreword © 2011 by David Howard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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What use is it to speak of inspiration?
To the hesitant it never appears.
If you would be a poet,
Then take command of poetry.
You know what we require,
We want to down strong brew;
So get on with it!
— JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, from Faust
Contents
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
TAKE 1
1. Standing Up, Standing Out
2. A Class Act
3. The Backstory
4. Superbabe, GeezerJock, and Steve All Fall Down
5. Annette
TAKE 2
6. Surprise!
7. Nice to Meet You, Donald Sutherland
8. BMOC, WTF
9. Limes Regiones Rerum
10. Trey, the Pitch Master
11. Right Time, Right Place
12. It Keeps Getting Better
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Foreword
One of the basic tenets of good storytelling is that an author must make life very difficult for his characters. The closer to the impossible those challenges are made, the stronger the dramatic tension and the deeper the audience’s connection with the characters in the story will be. By this—or any—measure, Steve Boman tells a whopping good story in FILM SCHOOL. It’s made all the more harrowing and compelling by being fact, not fiction. Steve, his family, friends, and classmates suffered a great deal to give us an exciting and unpredictable story. They did so with moments of both anxiety and grace, plus humor, perseverance, and ever-present doubt on their relentless march through calamity, triumph, epiphany, and more than anyone’s share of medical hurdles.
Many of the conflicts and obstacles dramatically depicted in this book had already been faced, for better and worse, by the time I first met Steve. In fact it was his last semester as a graduate student at USC when he enrolled in my advanced scene writing course, a small and intense seminar taken primarily by film students who harbor serious aspirations as screenwriters. When we first met, none of those trials—or their scars—was evident in Steve. He just seemed like a good-natured guy from my home state. We bonded over Minnesota lore: “Ya, you-betcha.” We’ve both had the fabled, and mostly apocryphal, accent surgically removed.
Film schools didn’t even exist a century ago, and they only came into their own as a means of entering and excelling in film and television when a handful of film school alumni in the 1970s surged to the top of the entertainment industry. Their names are now universally known, and several of those grace the buildings that form USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. As a result of those early successes and an ever-growing stream of talented and ambitious film school graduates, “going to film school” has come to be a crucial step on the trajectory to success behind the camera.
Like many before him and more yet to come, Steve set his sights high and chose the most efficient path available to those of us without connections and easy opportunity: a few years of intense study, trials, errors, failures, disasters, learning, networking, alliance building, goal setting, and endurance testing. He chose film school and was accepted by the oldest and best of the growing array of choices: USC.
What followed would far exceed the typical experience of film school, but at the same time, in the hands of a talented storyteller, Steve’s journey focuses the reader’s attention and compassion in unexpectedly intimate ways. His approach is reminiscent of the Harvard student who became an able-bodied seaman in the 1830s and sailed in a tall ship around Cape Horn to write the classic of experiential journalism, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST. Richard Henry Dana grants his readers the real experience along with the insights of a trained observer. In FILM SCHOOL, Steve Boman does the same: You will learn what film school really means, how it unfolds, how it impacts the dreamers and drivers who find themselves there, and how it gets the better of everyone at some point. You will become part of a family as it faces incredible challenges, you will discover how some friends rise to some occasions and others fall by the wayside, and you will explore the deadly serious business of learning how to entertain.
Like a good film or a good TV program, FILM SCHOOL will give you an experience well worth having. Enjoy it.
David Howard
Founding Director of the Graduate Screenwriting Program
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
Introduction
When I was accepted to the film production program at the University of Southern California, I was in my late thirties. One of my brothers was a bit skeptical. He asked me what actually happens in film school.
“I dunno,” I told him. “I’ll find out when I get there.”
I wasn’t being snarky. I really didn’t know.
Before I applied to USC, I tried to find out as much as I could about film school—any film school. But there wasn’t much of any depth either on the web or at bookstores. Going to USC’s School of Cinematic Arts as a graduate student in film production meant I was going on a three-year journey, and I wanted to know what I was facing on that journey. Sure, universities put out glossy brochures and feature websites that make the whole enterprise look just wonderful, like the world’s most exciting cruise ship adventure, full of smiling students and attentive instructors. But they made me skeptical. I wanted to see a photo of, say, a student sitting in the rain, a broken camera at his feet, with another student yelling at him. That would have seemed more realistic.
I also didn’t know anyone who had gone to film school, anyone who could give me the inside dope. As an adult, I had worked as a reporter in the Midwest and on the East Coast for both newspapers and radio. I had covered thousands of stories, but the film business wasn’t on my beat. I do have a couple of close college chums who are successful actors in Los Angeles, and although they are a great help, they hadn’t gone to film school either.
So I was mostly in the dark about what I was facing. When I got to USC, I found many of my classmates were in my same position. We were like travelers without guidebooks or even a decent map. I found the journey was much different t
han what I expected. From the time I was admitted I planned to write a book about my experiences. What you’re holding is the result.
This is a personal book about my time at USC. I graduated from USC in 2009 with a master of fine arts degree in film production. This book explains what happened to me and some of the people I met in film school and in Hollywood. I’m not providing an encyclopedic overview—just one person’s story.
There are obvious shortcomings to this method. Like the fable of the blind men describing an elephant, whose descriptions depend on which part they touch (It’s as thick and immovable as a wall! … No, it’s thin and flexible like a whip! … No, it’s a sharp spear!), my observations are incomplete. I went to one specific film school to study film production. Hopefully, others will write of their observations so the entire elephant can be fleshed out.
Now, most retellings of the parable of the blind men and the elephant are high-minded. They don’t include a blind guy who yells: That elephant is nothing but a huge pile of manure! And I stepped in it! When I went to USC, I stepped in plenty of manure. You’ll hear about it in the book. I don’t intend to run for office. I just aim to tell a true story.
I wish I had read something like this before I went to USC. I would have been better prepared, quicker to focus on what is important at film school, and quicker to brush off the unimportant stuff.
A key part of going to film school is learning to hustle yourself and your ideas shamelessly—something that doesn’t come naturally to me, a somewhat self-deprecating Midwesterner. So I’ll merely say this book is completely and unbelievably awesome! It’s a perfect companion for anyone who wants to know what it’s like to have a second chance at a new career, or who dreams of selling a television show to a major network, or who wants to know what it’s like to navigate Hollywood as an outsider. Or for those who want to know what it’s like to keep moving forward after bad medical news. I write about all of these subjects because I experienced them.
By the time I finished my first semester at USC, I knew I had a pretty good story on my hands. Film school is an inherently interesting subject. In school, we make short films and TV episodes and write scripts, and these activities clearly fascinate lots of people. When I mentioned I was going to film school at USC, it seemed everyone wanted in on the action. Other soccer dads said they wanted to visit me in Los Angeles. Friends wanted to act in my films. I was offered scripts by neighbors. A coworker ruefully told me, “I’d trade my left nut to go to film school.”
I knew I was on to something. I was going to an institution that prepped students to work in that big, glamorous world of moving pictures, and that’s interesting to plenty of people. Film school is to Hollywood as baseball’s minor leagues are to Major League Baseball—but with a lot more smoking.
This book is greatly aided by the fact that students and staff at USC are exceedingly colorful. And I witnessed plenty of conflict. I was sure I had a good story to tell. Little did I know how good it would be. By the time I finished at USC, I:
Made some very good films.
Had a stroke.
Sold a television show to CBS.
Killed a wild mountain lion with my bare hands.
Scratch #4. That’s a lie.
The other three did happen. I really did make some good films, I really did have a stroke, and, not long after that, I dreamed up a TV show, one that aired on Sunday evenings on CBS. It was called THREE RIVERS.
There is one more piece to this story. I went to film school as a middle-aged guy not because I was seeking personal enlightenment or having the kind of midlife crisis that is usually treated by getting a divorce or a new sports car. I went because my career had skidded into the ditch and my wife had cancer and I felt I was running out of options.
A
ttending film school at USC was a great privilege, and I thank my large extended family and many friends from the bottom of my heart for supporting me. I would never have been able to do any of this without them.
My wife, Julie, first suggested going to film school. She thought it was a perfect place for me. She also raised our three daughters as a de facto single parent for the long months when I was away from home. It was very hard for her, and my heart goes out to anyone trying to raise children as a single parent.
My parents, Tom and Mary Boman, didn’t blanch when I told them my desire to go to film school, even with three young kids (one still in diapers). They always gave an encouraging word and a sympathetic ear. My father-in-law, Stan Schwantes, spent hundreds of hours babysitting our kids while I was at school and Julie was at work. My mother-in-law, Jean Schwantes, went so far as to quit her job at a nursing home and move two thousand miles to help take care of our kids for four months so I could start school. Unfortunately, she died of lung cancer before I could graduate from USC. I wish she could have been there to see me get my degree.
And it went beyond family. Carl and Irene Christensen, a retired couple living just outside Los Angeles, allowed me to live in gracious splendor in their house while I attended USC. And what an intriguing couple they are. Carl is a rocket scientist retired from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Irene spent a year of her childhood in a Japanese internment camp and became an elementary school teacher. I first met them when I was eighteen and traveling by motorcycle; I did landscaping for them for a time. I call them my “Los Angeles parents.” Irene cooked many meals for me while I was at USC, and both of them served as the first filters for this book.
Finally, I would also like to thank whoever green-lighted my application at USC. Early on, I often felt I was admitted by mistake or because of a clerical error, and that somewhere a talented young guy also named Steve Boman was denied the chance to attend USC.
Oh well. His loss, my gain.
L
et me say a few words about the process of researching and writing this book. Everything in this book happened. I only write about what I witnessed.
None of my classmates or instructors or people at CBS knew I was planning to write a book about my experiences. During my time at USC, I took notes and kept a journal. I did it all quietly. I changed the names of some of my classmates and instructors to protect their privacy. I used some people’s real names (such as Drew Casper, Ted Gold, Curtis Hanson, Donald Sutherland, Peter Krause, Alex O’Loughlin, and more) because they are well known and there is no reason to disguise their identity or because they are such unique characters they deserve to be recognized. Some of my classmates and instructors may recognize themselves in this book despite the pseudonyms. I know several of them will be famous in the future simply because of their talent and drive. Looking back, what I should have told my brother is this: film school is, quite simply, a great and unpredictable adventure.
Enjoy the adventure; enjoy the book.
TAKE 1
1
Standing Up, Standing Out
January 2004: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts
We file into the screening room, forty-eight of us. The room is warm and it smells like nervous sweat and cheap deodorant. We are the incoming class of spring semester graduate students at the University of Southern California’s vaunted School of Cinematic Arts’ production program. We are going to learn to be directors and writers and producers at the world’s oldest and most prestigious film school. It is our orientation day.
Every year, USC admits roughly one hundred students into its graduate production program. Half start in late August, half in January. I’m in the spring semester class. More than two thousand people went through the lengthy application process. I am one of the lucky few admitted to the program.
I catch my reflection in a window. There’s no hiding the fact I’m an old man among the group. Most of the other students are in their twenties. Some look like they’re straight out of college; a few are in their late twenties. My hair is going gray, and I’m a year away from hitting forty.
The other film students generally look very cool and hip and very … L.A. Most wear a si
milar uniform: a faded T-shirt, ripped jeans, and flip-flops. Sunglasses are the norm. I don’t see many guys who’ve shaved in the past three days. Long hair is in, but a few guys have shaved heads. A lot of students snub out a cigarette before entering the building, and plenty look as if the last physical workout they got was running to beat closing time at Taco Bell.
I look like a middle-age contractor here to fix the air-conditioning system. My graying hair is cut short, and I shaved that morning. In addition to a golf shirt I bought from Sears, I’m wearing crisp new Levis and a pair of Red Wing construction boots. My posture is military straight. I don’t smoke. I wonder if I should slouch, just to look cool.
I don’t. It just doesn’t feel right. I’m not going to try to fake it. I’m not a trendy young artiste. I’m a middle-class, middle-of-the-road, middle-aged Midwestern suburban dad with a wife and three kids who’s going to the most famous film school in the world for a three-year program that will give him a chance to write and direct and produce films and television episodes. I’m excited as hell, but I feel a weight settle in my stomach. I knew I would be a fish out of water, but Jiminy Cricket, I didn’t think it would be this obvious.
I ignore the window reflection, make my way into the screening room, settle into a seat, and survey the other students. It’s clear most of us don’t know anyone else. We all keep an empty seat next to us. I nod to a guy in the row behind me. He looks thin, about twenty-five. He’s wearing a black T-shirt, flip-flops.
I attempt a conversation. “It feels good finally to get started, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose,” he admits. “Are you on the faculty here?”
I smile. It‘s a question I will get used to answering. Are you faculty? Are you on staff? Are you a coach?
“No. I’m here as a student,” I answer. He forces a smile but has nothing else to say. He looks at his phone and finds something important on it.
Then, in the back of the room, two women see each other and let out a yelp. I hear snippets of their excited conversation.