Film School

by Steve Boman

We watched our money drain from our savings. An earlier last-ditch effort to rescue GeezerJock fell short when a story Callahan and I had been asked to write by The New York Times Sunday Magazine was killed in the post-9/11 chaos, ending our hopes that the Times publicity would be enough to bring GeezerJock back to life. Our story was about a fifty-six-year-old grandmother who was banned from international sporting competitions for doping. It was a good story, and we were reduced to dumping it on Salon.com for a few hundred bucks. Google it if you like.

  Julie still had to go through radiation treatment. She kept losing weight.

  These were supposed to be the good years.

  C

  asper’s film history class continues where it left off. I had hoped that Casper would have forgotten my name after the first week, but such was not the case. At the beginning of each class, he calls me out for special attention and often calls on me during lectures.

  And then I decide to wear glasses to class, a first for me in grad school. Normally I wear contacts—but the lenses irritate my eyes when I’m spending long hours in front of a computer, which I’m doing every day. My glasses are horn-rimmed jobs, very studious looking. When I enter the auditorium and take a seat, Casper spots me in the crowd. He puts his hands to his mouth in mock shock. Students are still filing into the large hall, and it’s several minutes before class begins.

  Casper loves being the center of attention. He approaches me. “Look at this. Look at this!” he says. “Steve, you look lovely.” He’s playing to the crowd, of course, and nearby students are laughing. I’m his straight man, and he’s the comic. He’s wearing a wireless microphone, so his voice is projected through the auditorium’s loudspeakers.

  He takes my glasses off my face and puts them on his. He strikes a pose like a Milan runway model. I don’t think he can see a thing—my eyes are really terrible and the glasses have lenses powerful enough for the Hubble telescope—but he doesn’t seem to care.

  “What do you think? I think they’re lovely. Wonderful. You should wear them more,” he says.

  He takes them off and hands them back to me. Then he turns to the one hundred-plus other students in the class. “Did you know Steve wore glasses?”

  It’s a rhetorical question, of course. Most of the students in the class have no idea who I am, other than I’m that older guy Casper likes to pick on. Casper turns to me. He appraises me with mock seriousness. “No, I take it back. You have blue eyes. You definitely should not wear glasses.”

  I notice that in this whole exchange I’ve never had a chance to say a single word. It’s all Casper, and it’s extremely entertaining. I’ve never experienced anything like this in an academic setting or in any setting. Casper is the most interesting lecturer I’ve ever heard. He is intense, for sure, but he puts himself into his lectures in a way that is fascinating, and it’s often more one-man performance art than academic lecture. If ever there is a Church of the Blessed Angel Doris Day, Casper will be the lead acolyte. It doesn’t take much of a spark for him to praise her honors and all-around wonderfulness. And if there is a figure that represents for him the inner circle of hell, it’s Barbra Streisand. If Doris Day is heaven-sent, Barbra Streisand shares a smoke with Lucifer. Casper will stand onstage and belt out a few bars of Streisand’s signature tunes, singing loud and woefully off-key and waving his arms like a drowning swimmer. Then he’ll spend a few moments discussing her awfulness before returning to the lecture at hand. He’s funny, opinionated, and erudite—so erudite that many of his comments go flying over the heads of his younger students.

  His comic interludes are little breaks to cleanse one’s palate before he launches again into his lectures. His talks are so intense that if anyone tries to slip out to go to the bathroom, he’ll demand to know why they’re leaving. During one lecture, Casper called out a student who tried to sneak up the aisle and chided him for not being able to “hold his water.” Some lectures go on for two hours, without a break. I quickly learn not to drink too much water or coffee before a Casper lecture. I later discover a website called Rate My Professors that has more than one hundred comments about Casper. One student posted: “If you like eccentric entertainment while learning at the same time, Casper is for you! But don’t raise your hand unless you’re ready to be grilled.”

  Later on the same day as the glasses performance, Casper is discussing the post–World War II involvement of the U.S. government in the film business. In the 1930s, the Federal Trade Commission had been investigating Hollywood. The Feds were concerned about the movie industry’s vertical integration. That is, the studios made the films and also owned many of the theaters where they’d be shown, thus guaranteeing an outlet for their product. After the war, nearly half of ticket sales came from studio-owned theaters. The Feds under President Roosevelt thought this was monopolistic and sought to bust it up. In 1945, the Feds sued the studios, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1948, a court that had been shaped by the heavy hand of FDR ruled that the studios had to sell their movie theater chains. The case was titled United States vs. Paramount Pictures Inc. et al. The ruling marked the beginning of the end of the Golden Age of movie studios.

  Casper jots notes on a blackboard. He writes “Paramount et al” and, without missing a beat, asks why Paramount was named the defendant, when there were seven other studios also in the government’s lawsuit.

  He asks Susan.

  Susan silently shakes her head. She doesn’t know. Casper asks a nerdish loudmouth who sits in the front row, a guy who always wears a fedora in class. The loudmouth wants to say something, anything, but before he can formulate an answer, Casper points to me. Steve, tell them why Paramount is named.

  It isn’t a question; it is a command. I hadn’t read about the specifics of the case, but I had spent more than a year in Philadelphia with the Inquirer going through every single court case, criminal and civil, filed in the Bucks County Courthouse. I am familiar with lawsuits.

  I answer firmly and loud: “Paramount was named because they were the biggest, most powerful studio.”

  I don’t know if it is the right answer. It is a guess, but I need to act like I know it’s right. With Casper, sounding like you’re guessing and having a rising inflection at the end of a sentence is the same as being wrong. Therefore, I answer as if I’m 100 percent sure.

  I’m right. Casper smiles. “We need everyone to see how smart Steve looks with his glasses. Don’t they look wonderful? Yes! Paramount was the largest studio and thus was named the lead defendant.”

  And so it goes, another lecture from Drew Casper in film school.

  After class, I do a little research into Dr. Casper. I know he teaches several classes, and he’s got a nice sideline business doing commentary for DVD releases of classic films (more than twenty at last count). He’s close to members of the Alfred Hitchcock family, and he’s holder of the Alma and Alfred Hitchcock chair at USC. He’s literally written the book about this era of American film (Postwar Hollywood, 1946–1962). Early in the semester, Casper tells us he’ll be teaching a course on Hitchcock the following semester. He warns us to sign up early because the class fills up quickly. I look around the cavernous 341-seat Eileen Norris Cinema auditorium. I do a little math. The Hitchcock class is four credits. At nearly $6,000 a student, the amount of tuition paid to USC for a semester of one Drew Casper course is more than $2 million. Two million dollars in box office for just one class! He teaches other courses, too. Casper’s classes raise an astounding amount of money for the university, and it is all the more noteworthy because it’s based on meritocracy. Very few of Casper’s students are required to take any of his courses. His Hitchcock class is an elective for nearly everyone who enrolls in it. Even the survey courses—such as the one I’m in, American PostWar Film—are taught by other critical studies professors as well as Casper. If Casper stunk, students could avoid him. And Casper’s popularity isn’t because he’s an easy A. The same online grading site gives Casper low marks for “easin
ess.” Casper is popular because he’s good, because he’s entertaining, because at the end of a lecture given at machine-gun speed, you feel a connection to the topic you didn’t feel before.

  That week I take Casper up on an offer he made to us in class. Our grade will be based on a single term paper. The paper will focus on one film, which we can choose from a long list he hands out. He offers to meet with us individually and give us advice on which film to pick. I meet him at his office, and we engage in ten minutes of small talk about Philadelphia, about my background, about his Jesuit education. Then we switch to the topic at hand, which is picking a film for my research paper. He snaps his fingers. “Clark Gable and Doris Day. TEACHER’S PET. He’s a newspaper editor who goes back to night school, and she’s the instructor. They fall in love. I think it will be a perfect film for you.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. TEACHER’S PET it is.

  F

  or a short, sweet time after J.’s virtuoso display and FTC’s tongue-lashing of him, our class is cohesive.

  And then it starts to unravel. We’re a dozen-and-a-half people with different backgrounds and different temperaments. We work together closely all week long. We begin to get sick of each other. I start hearing complaints. Did you know so-and-so really screwed you-know-who? Did you know that he did that? The comments in critique sessions become edgy at times, cutting and personal.

  It’s all understandable. There’s simply not enough time in the day to do everything. The first semester of film school is a constant time-management struggle. Because everyone is rushed, everyone at one time or another becomes irritable.

  For me, the biggest blot on my schedule is acting class. We have a good instructor. He’s a very empathetic guy, very knowledgeable. But the workload is immense and way out of proportion to other courses. During the semester, we only meet once a week, but the three projects we are assigned are killers. In one project, I’ll direct. In the other two, I’ll act. We rehearse scenes from famous films to be performed onstage, with lighting, props, costumes.

  My first assignment is to play a scene from SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE. It’s a fight scene, and I’m cast by the director (a student I’ll call H.) as the guy who gets beat up. Another student, P., is cast as the guy who beats me up.

  H. has us rehearse for several hours every week. P. is a nice guy, but he’s pretty stout, and we ad-lib our fighting scene. It starts innocently enough, but H. wants more drama, more action. He wants us to wrestle. We shrug and follow his direction. It’s how we’re playing the game. The director is in charge. We’re acting as he directs us. Because I’m playing the part of a guy who is passive, I let myself get wrestled to the ground, thrown around a room, kicked in the back. P. is about my weight—close to two hundred pounds—and I feel every pound when he lands on me as I cower on the ground. I really play the passive guy to the hilt. I try to keep myself from getting hurt.

  H. seems to get satisfaction out of watching us fight. He has us repeat the scene over and over. A couple of his films have a sadomasochistic bent, and he never expresses any worries or concerns as P. and I crash to the ground in a rehearsal room.

  The acting takes its toll. After several weeks of rehearsals, I have a large, oozing, open wound on my elbow, and my knees are skinned enough that I’ve begun wearing rollerblading kneepads under my pants during rehearsals.

  I’m not hating the rehearsals, however. I used to love wrestling as a kid. Our fighting rehearsals are like intense aerobics, which I rather enjoy. However, as P. tosses me onto a carpeted floor, my elbows dragging, I realize I’m paying USC hundreds of dollars to wrestle like I did with my pals in seventh grade. And I am realizing that H. really likes to watch us wrestle.

  When the day comes to present our scene in the theater, P. tosses me to the floor and starts his beat-down. The instructor is aghast. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” he yells. “Let’s stop that right now.” We’re sprawled on the ground, panting. He asks us if we had any instruction in stage fighting. We say, no, just real fighting. He shakes his head. I’ve got a big bandage on my elbow, and my knees are battered. The instructor gently gives the class a tutorial on how to fake a punch and how to push someone against a wall without any impact. “It’s all in selling the move,” he says. It’s all so simple, of course, and I feel foolish that I’ve been playing a rag doll for weeks.

  The instructor then pauses a moment and asks us to reverse roles.

  I take a few seconds to compose myself. Then, following the script, I bang on the stage door, and as soon as P. opens it, I burst through and grab his shirt in my fists and lift him a half-foot off the ground. P. is now suspended in the air with my face pushed next to his, and I’m snarling out my lines like I am pissed. He looks genuinely frightened (maybe it’s just good acting). For several weeks, he’s been the aggressor and I’ve been the wet noodle. Now that the roles are switched, I’m playing the aggressor with everything I’ve got. The class lets out a nervous gasp.

  Our instructor applauds and tells us to “Cut!” I let P. down.

  The instructor then lectures us on the importance of learning stage fighting and the greater importance of casting correctly. The instructor pats me on the back, chuckles a bit, and sends P. and H. and me back to our seats.

  A

  s I start planning my third film, I fret again about having enough time. I feel the familiar squeeze of anxiety. It feels like some unseen force is very slowly kneeing me in the balls. I see why I put up with weeks of getting beat up by P. It certainly took my mind off my own films. I find the only way to keep the anxiety at bay is to work, and to check off some of the tasks that fill my schedule. I get up every day at 6 A.M. and work until 10 P.M. or later, at which point I have a snack or a beer and then read. I try to get some exercise every day, but some days there’s simply not enough time.

  My schedule is completely different from that of most of my classmates. I get up hours before they do and go to bed just as they’re getting into their groove. I like getting up early because my commute to USC is bearable if I leave before 7 A.M. If I leave after that, I double my commute time. On bad days, the seventeen-mile commute from La Cañada can take an hour. I also get up early because I’m used to it. My kids never sleep in.

  With the increasing pressure, I find I’m dwelling on school late at night … and getting insomnia. Then one evening, I pick up a copy of Hot Rod magazine at the grocery store. I recall reading old copies in my sparsely stocked junior high library. I flip through the pages and find an odd comfort in the discussions of cam durations for Chevy big-blocks, so I buy a copy. In bed that night, I pore over the magazine and lose myself in an article that has nothing to do with film school. I sleep like a baby.

  The next morning I size up my next obstacle. I’ve got a film to shoot, less than three weeks to do it, and I don’t want to repeat the near-debacle of my previous film, where I didn’t have an actor lined up until the eleventh hour. So this time I tap my easiest source: my mother-in-law. She quit her job at a nursing home back in Minnesota and moved in with us in Camarillo while I go to school. I tell her she’s going to act in my movie. She has no choice. She’s reluctant but agrees.

  I’d rather use a real actress, but I don’t want to film in Los Angeles. I’m going to film in Camarillo, fifty-five miles away, and from what I’ve learned, it’s hard to convince actors to travel all that distance and work a long weekend for no pay for a USC 507 project.

  Thus, my mother-in-law. She’s in her sixties, so she’ll provide a decent bit of the all-important diversity. Most 507 films feature friends and roommates of the students. Thus, almost every actor is young. My lead is a grandmother. She’s available for forty-eight hours of shooting, and, best of all, I won’t need a studio teacher.

  I don’t have a story yet. I begin thinking like an old-time studio honcho who has a star under contract and needs to find a film for him or her. What would my mother-in-law do well?

  My brain seems remarkably dense. It is hard to explain this to
someone who hasn’t gone through film school, but here is the reality for me: prior to coming to USC, I could shoot out good story ideas as easily as breathing. In a newsroom, I’d rattle off what seemed an endless supply of decent script ideas. I was always good at finding and pitching stories. Now, however, in the pressure of school, with a deadline approaching and class assignments filling my schedule, I can’t think of a thing. My brain seems to be as responsive as a car out of gas. I turn the key and … nothing.

  A major drawback to creativity in 507 is the lack of partnerships. We are all flying solo. I don’t know anyone well enough in my class to spitball ideas with … and even if I did, everyone seems too busy running around to be of much help. I like working in partnerships and bouncing ideas off of other people. I feel alone at USC. I call some of my former newspapering friends and we talk, but they, too, are not accustomed to having to think of stories without words. They are as flummoxed as I am.

  With the clock ticking, I devise a story that has echoes, unfortunately, of my previous two stories. I will cast my mother-in-law as a Dumpster-diving homeless woman who is shunned by everyone she meets. Then, she finds a lottery ticket in a Dumpster. She looks in the newspaper and sees it is a winner. She’s rich. Jumping up and down, she imagines the future: social acceptance, a nice house, sobriety. We see her sweet future along with her. But when she goes to reclaim the ticket and collect her riches, the clerk at the convenience store tells her sorry, she had the wrong day’s paper. Her ticket is worthless. She trudges back to the Dumpster, and the film fades to black.

  This is my one-sentence project, and the sentence is uttered by the clerk who breaks the bad news to her.

  It doesn’t take much dime-store psychology to realize I might be projecting just a wee bit in these films. A character facing financial hardship dreams of finding a better life through some magical act? Shocking.