Film School

by Steve Boman

  The presentations drive home the point about how serious these 508 partnerships are. Three students from an earlier 508 class are forced to beg to find new partnerships, all because their original partners failed to make the journey all the way through the semester. Wow. We understand USC isn’t joking about this joined-at-the-hip thing.

  I’m glad I’ve got my partnership set up. I’m also pleased with my progress on my fourth film. I’m going to get around the language barrier by using animals as actors and having human voice-overs. I’m going to create a doggy detective film, shot as a noir film. I’ll have a dog-napping with a Sam Spade-like dog detective on the case. I intend to shoot it in black and white. I spend hours day after day on the phone, calling dozens of animal trainers in the area. L.A. has a lot of animal trainers who provide cats and dogs and mice and elephants and bears to the moving picture industry. Think of it the next time you see a cute little kitty in a commercial or a bear in a movie. Someone in L.A. is training that animal, and transporting it, and hoping it acts on command. I cold-call these places and pitch my idea. I tell them I want to use their animals, for free. I finally find a dog trainer who is willing to play along. She has several younger dogs she’s training for Hollywood roles, she says, and they could use the practice. She doesn’t have a lot of dogs, just three that would work. I’m ecstatic. This will be an awesome film.

  This is what happens to people in the middle of 507. They think absolutely terrible ideas are brilliant. At least this is what happens to me. I’ve got my shooting weekend coming up and I’m swamped with work and I’m going to make a film using dogs. What a knucklehead I am! There’s a long-running joke in Hollywood: never work with kids or animals. My first little film was with my kids. Now I’m planning to work with animals.

  My schedule is just jammed. I’m rehearsing a long scene from THE PLAYER for my acting class. I’m doing a recording exercise for sound class and catching up on class reading. I’m writing fifteen pages for Ross Brown’s screenwriting class. In Casper’s class, I have the class term paper due at the end of the semester, and I’m setting aside time to do research at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ film archives museum on Vine Street. My paper on TEACHER’S PET needs to include the production history, social impact, historical setting, and critical reaction to the film.

  Spring break is fast approaching, and I’m going to be taking part of it to drive to Arizona to meet up with my brothers and parents. We’re gathering on the first anniversary of Annette’s death.

  The stress is getting to me. One morning as I drive to USC, I think about Annette. I’m lost in thought when I arrive in University Park, but I see I need gas, so I pull into a service station near USC. It’s about 7 A.M., and as I push a nozzle into the Oldsmobile, I see a good-sized guy in shabby clothes approaching other people filling their cars. He sneaks up on people as they pump their gas and corners them against their cars. He’s an extremely aggressive panhandler, and I watch him receive several dollars from a smaller woman who seems frightened. From where I’m standing, the situation is on the razor’s edge of robbery.

  The panhandler is maybe thirty, handsome, and amazingly strong-looking for a junkie hitting up people at a Shell station. As I watch him, I feel a flash of anger. How come this guy is still alive? My sister got a horrible form of leukemia and died. She spent her life helping people. She had her own research lab and, in the irony of all ironies, had just gotten a nearly one-million-dollar grant to do research into the type of cancer that killed her. She didn’t extort money from people at dawn at a gas station near USC.

  As the guy walks toward me, I step toward him. I want to fight. I feel rage and sorrow well up in my chest. I want him to absorb the unfairness that was dealt my little sister. I get in front of him and unleash a stream of colorful and insulting profanities.

  He stops in his tracks. I don’t think he’s used to this from USC faculty. He’s about my size, and we stand just a few feet apart. I want him to try to hit me. I’m just itching for him to make the first move. I know the gas station has the parking lot videotaped, and I want him to give me a justified reason to kick his ass. I insult him, tell him he’s pathetic. I know if he moves toward me, I’m going to hit him hard, right in the ribs, and I know he’ll drop like a stone.

  A little voice in my head is aghast. I’m not a guy who picks fights. But part of me—a big part—now wants to battle with something tangible, and I want to fight this douchebag who’s putting the lean on fifty-year-old women refueling their Civics.

  He’s surprised, and he starts backing up. He shakes his head and calls me crazy. I follow him out of the parking lot, calling him a litany of colorful and profane names. I am crazy.

  Later, when I park on campus, I take a few minutes to compose myself. I realize picking fights at gas stations with druggies at 7 A.M. is not good behavior.

  Meanwhile, others in 507 seem to be losing it, too. One of the women in class goes to the hospital for an extended stay because of a kidney infection. She blames it on overwork and her nonstop consumption of Red Bull Sugarfree. One of the men suffers from a bad bout of food poisoning. He says his immune system is down. Everyone looks tired. When we do short assignments in class, Fee Fee says she just wants to sleep. The dynamic in 507 is becoming more confrontational. My elbow still oozes blood from the “acting” I did under H., so I can’t look at him without questioning his judgment. The fundamental fact is we are tired of each other. We are in class together seemingly all the time. Ideally, we could be gelling as a group, but we’re not. At least, I’m not gelling with the group.

  On Wednesday, I get a call from the animal trainer. She says “something came up” and has to postpone. I tell her I don’t have any flexibility in my shooting schedule. I consider pleading with her, but that same little voice in my head says: It’s a really stupid idea anyway, Steve.

  So, on Wednesday afternoon, just before Casper’s lecture, I shift gears. I’m going to shoot a documentary instead. It’s the only thing I feel I can do in the short time I have. Casper, as usual, calls me out in class—thanking me with great sarcasm for showing up—and then ignores me. He goes so far as to stroll between the rows of seats, asking questions, and then pauses in front of my seat, glancing past me as if I’m not there.

  In 507, I notify FTC I’m changing my plans. I’m going to shoot a documentary about the hard-core sport-bikers who use a public highway in the foothills above Los Angeles as their personal racetrack. He’s fine with that. Perhaps surprisingly, our relationship has warmed considerably. I’ve gotten to the point of joking with him, and he’s gotten to the point of laughing at my jokes, at least a bit. It’s a far cry from the icy reception I got in the first weeks of the semester.

  After class, I’m feeling better, and I talk to S. about sealing the deal for our 508 partnership. We need to submit some paperwork in the coming days. He stops and tells me he’s going to partner with someone else.

  “What?” I feel like I’ve been kicked in the privates.

  S. says he’s going to work with the Goth girl in our screenwriting class. She’s a smart student and a hard worker, so she would make a good partner. She’s funny, too. Her most recent 507 film was a massive undertaking, and she pulled it off. Then S. reluctantly volunteers that he really likes the Goth girl, in that boy-likes-girl way. I understand it now.

  I’m stunned, however. And upset. I ask him why he didn’t tell me earlier. He says he just didn’t want to break the bad news to me. He looks like he feels bad. I’m angry at him, not for choosing someone else but for waiting so long to break the news. I’m angry at myself for assuming we had a partnership, and the definition of “assume” pops into my head: an ass out of u and me. I know most people have sealed a partnership deal already. I shake my head, take a deep breath, and wish him luck.

  Over the next twenty-four hours, I approach a handful of my classmates. They’ve already partnered up, as I suspected. One classmate bemoans my timing. “I just made an agreeme
nt,” he says, and adds that he’d rather work with me. I take the last comment with a grain of salt. It’s the kind of thing you tell someone to let him or her down easy.

  I feel awful. It’s embarrassing. I strike out again and again. Everyone I could imagine working with is paired up. Because the hour is late, I approach people with the subtlety of a used-car salesman. I tell myself it’ll be okay, that I’ll find a good partner, any partner, but S.’s decision and my fruitless search make me feel like crap.

  On Friday, I approach one of my classmates in Ross Brown’s class. She’s in her thirties, a lesbian, and pleasant, straightforward. I ask her outside of class. “That’s so nice, Steve. I’d really love to, but … ”

  I dread the “but.” She has a partner already. I make a list of people who might be available. It’s a very short list. A couple of my classmates assure me that people aren’t shunning me because of my abilities, which makes me feel a little better. It’s clear, however, that I’m not a desirable product. I’m gone a lot on weekends. I’m older. My films have been ho-hum. I think Che is an asshat.

  Even Casper has been ignoring me.

  After Ross’ class, I stand on the sidewalk with several students. They give me a pep talk, tell me that everything will be okay. I’ve heard these optimistic speeches before. I heard a lot of them at Annette’s bedside, just before she died.

  That night should be a celebration. Spring break has started. Classes are off for a week. And I feel absolutely miserable. The more I look at it, the more I feel bad about the long term to come. Whoever I eventually partner with—if I can find a partner—is likely to be a less-than-ideal fit. I’ll be spending four months with that person. It makes my entire film school future look bleak.

  That night I drive to Carl and Irene’s home. I’m planning to interview motorcyclists in the morning for my documentary. I’m working into spring break because my talking-dog fiasco put me behind schedule. I call Julie and she tries to cheer me up, but I’ll have none of it. I avoid Carl and Irene. I don’t want to waste their time bitching about what feels like being shunned for the high school prom. I sit up that night drinking bourbon by myself, a Friday-night lonely loser.

  Later, I hardly sleep. I realize the hole I’m in. I ponder my options. No 508 partnership = no going forward. Bad 508 partnership = bad experience and mediocre films. The reality sinks in. Nearly three months in film school and I realize where I stand in our classes’ pecking order. I’m that chimp on the outside.

  O

  n the day of my documentary screening I am pensive. I don’t know how it will be received. I had hours of interviews and B-roll, and condensing it into an eight-minute film with a coherent message took dozens of hours. For the entire week after spring break, I lived in the editing lab.

  I named my film WHEN GOLF IS TOO SLOW after one of the riders, who explained that he had no taste for sedate sports like golf. He liked going 170 miles per hour on a motorcycle instead.

  I chose the topic because I felt a kinship with these riders. When I was a teenager, I traveled by motorcycle. I loved motorcycles, and I rode them fast. I read everything I could find about them. I subscribed to four motorcycle magazines and memorized bike statistics the way other kids memorized baseball trivia. My brothers owned bikes, I owned several, even my dad bought a little Honda sport bike and commuted to work on it.

  When my friend Scott and I traveled to California as eighteen-year-olds, we were both on motorcycles. At the time, I had heard about the Angeles Crest Highway. It was described in motorcycle magazines as some sort of spiritual place, offering riders a glimpse of either heaven or hell. One day, I rode my Kawasaki on the Crest, and it scared me. It’s an unforgiving, narrow road with blind corners and rock slides and sheer drop-offs. It’s also a hugely popular road with motorcyclists, who see it as a test of their skill and daring. Every year, many are injured on the road and several die.

  I want to find out what attracts these riders to the Crest. When I edit my little documentary, I want to be able to explain the attraction to outsiders. I’ll attempt to tell the story from an insider’s perspective. I have no narrator’s voice-over, just the words of the riders. Even though I haven’t written a word in this film, it feels very personal.

  When the screening gets done, there is a moment of quiet from the class. It is a reaction that normally comes after a really bad film, when everyone waits for someone else to clap first.

  This isn’t the case. A split second later the class breaks into loud applause—very loud applause. The class loves it. The reviews are a love-fest. There are some comments about doing a better job lighting some of the subjects and adding more and better B-roll, but everyone seems to feel connected to the film.

  Especially FTC. “Wow! That was excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Interesting topic, well presented,” he wrote on his comment sheet. “More visuals would have been nice but taken longer to shoot it too, so this will do. Excellent film. Well done!”

  I leave the screening walking on air. This is only the second documentary in our class so far, and it is by far the best. I have my mojo back.

  T

  rue to form in my first semester of film school, the highs and lows quickly are swapped. It’s an amusement-park ride, a veritable manic-depressive’s paradise. Everything went great for WHEN GOLF IS TOO SLOW. Now, in acting class, I’m feeling at the bottom of the curve.

  In my rotation as a director in acting class, I’m in charge of doing a scene featuring J. and one of the women in our class, a very polite and soft-spoken novelist. J. is, simply, a pain in the ass to direct. He’s extremely nervous, which I find odd because he seems to have no lack of confidence when he’s behind a camera. He is constantly, always late—a common film student malady. On this day I’ve had enough. The novelist and I have been waiting for forty minutes when J. shows. He hasn’t gotten his lines down. I’m upset with him and tell him. I’m also upset for reasons other than J.—it’s the weekend, and I’m on campus instead of home in Camarillo because of this rehearsal. I miss my family, and I’m feeling a pang of what the hell am I doing here? We start to argue. He yells at me, I yell at him. We jawbone at each other for a few moments, then we both calm down. We continue our rehearsal. Not only is he chronically late, he’s jumpy about acting. The nervousness I can deal with. I can’t deal with the inability to budget time.

  Student film shoots are notorious for tardiness, you see. The issue stems mainly from the notion held by many students that artists don’t watch the clock because they don’t need to watch the clock. Apparently, they think creativity can’t be forced. Thus, the notion goes, only conformists who don’t “get” creativity pay attention to time. What it means in film school is that a great many students are perpetually late. And when they show up, they ignore deadlines. Thus, a student-led event scheduled to run from, say, 4 P.M. to 8 P.M. will actually get going at about 4:40 and run ’til 9:30.

  It drives me bonkers. I know I’m different from the other students in this regard, and it’s not an obsessive-compulsive thing. It’s just that I’ve been watching the clock my entire career. Radio news is every hour, on the hour. Stories are written and produced to the second. Organ transplants are a life-or-death operation where every second counts. In newspapering, the presses run like clockwork. When a paper goes to press, there’s not much that is going to hold it back. (Yelling “Stop the press!” is a romantic notion, however.) And I’ve got three children who follow a pretty basic schedule of mealtimes, bedtime, wake-up time.

  Of all the aspects that define me in film school—age, race, sexual orientation, cinematic taste, world outlook, etc.—my punctuality sets me most apart from my classmates. I show up on time for all my classes, and rehearsals, and shoots, and meetings. I get impatient when classes or rehearsals or shoots or meetings run long. I don’t mind spending more time on an important project—if it really warrants the time—but most projects in school don’t.

  I think another underlying reason many student
s are late is because they’ve never had to be punctual. They’re mostly single. Many have never had a boss tapping a watch or an editor demanding a story or a hungry child waiting for lunch.

  The issue of timeliness is not just a bugaboo of mine. Our instructors constantly chide students for being tardy, and they explain that it simply won’t fly in the working world. They repeat over and over: “On a movie set, if you’re on time, you’re late.” I always feel patronized when hearing this. I think, “Well, duh!”

  This is the issue between J. and me. J. is late, and I’m upset. We discuss, and agree to do things differently in the future.

  By the next class, however, the gossip mill has turned our argument into a full-blown fistfight. “Did you and J. start hitting each other?” my classmate Rebecca whispers to me.

  I roll my eyes. No, I explain, we did not punch each other. We both yelled a bit, that was all. Rebecca doesn’t quite believe me.

  During this time, I also find a 508 partner. She is a fat and quiet woman who took the stage during Sound class to explain her predicament. We met, and we instantly agreed to be partners after a short conversation over coffee. We are both 507 survivors floating in the ocean, and we both feel lucky to have found someone, anyone, to partner up with. We are an odd couple, and I know next to nothing about her. We agree it should be an entertaining ride.

  M

  y fifth and final 507 film is fast approaching. I’m learning from my mistakes. My great friend Tom wants to act for me, and he’s willing to fly out to Los Angeles to do so. He was my best man, I was his, and through the years of our friendship, he would occasionally lament that he was not pursuing his artistic side. Tom went to law school, practiced overseas, and works as an executive coach but had no acting experience. I now give him his chance. I write a script about a lawyer who has a drug problem and eventually kills himself. Tom doesn’t do drugs and so far he hasn’t committed suicide, so it’s only partially casting to type.