Film School

by Steve Boman

  I turn to Sophia: “I’m going to help. Do not get out of your seat. Do you understand?”

  She nods her head solemnly. Yes. She is strapped into her car seat.

  I dash across the three southbound lanes and jump the low concrete dividing wall. The car is a mess. It’s an older Chevrolet Cavalier coupe. Smoke and steam pour out of the engine.

  I go to the passenger-side window and get down on my knees, expecting the worst. There is a small gap between the roof and the doorsill. I wince as I peer in.

  There is one person in the car and, amazingly, she is alive. She is a tiny Vietnamese woman, about sixty. She is suspended upside down in her seat belt, still behind the steering wheel. She is crying softly.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  No answer. Just constant sobbing.

  A big-bellied black guy in coveralls and steel-toed boots arrives at the scene. He is breathing hard. Lots of people are watching from the sidelines, but he and I are the only ones next to the car.

  “She looks okay. I wanna turn the ignition off,” I say to him. “I think I can get through this window.”

  “I’ll hold your legs,” he answers. “If you need to get out in a hurry, I’ll get you out.”

  I get down on my belly. The driver is still weeping. I wiggle into the overturned car through the broken passenger-side window.

  “Hey, there. My name is Steve. I’m going to be turning off your car, okay?”

  The woman keeps sobbing.

  I search for the ignition. Being in a crushed upside-down car is disorienting. Finally, I find the keys and turn off the ignition. I take a closer look at the sobbing driver. One leg is clearly broken—it makes an impossible kink below the knee—but she isn’t bleeding from her head or torso. All the safety gear worked.

  I don’t smell any gasoline. I take her hand. It’s tiny. “You’re going to be okay, okay? I can get you out of here in about one second flat if we need to. Okay?”

  I’m talking to reassure myself as much as her. Her seat belt release is a few inches away from my head, and with me and Steel-Toed Boots jacked up on adrenaline, removing her in a hurry won’t be a problem. I’m struck by something ironic: when I do military presses, my weightlifting pals and I call them the “pushing-up-the-roof-of-the-collapsed-car presses.” Now I’m in that collapsed car. But I’m not doing any pushing. Just talking.

  I still smell no gasoline. Given that I’m a guy who doesn’t like being in small elevators, the fact that I’m not claustrophobic in this small space proves adrenaline is powerful stuff. I tell the driver I am going to leave her in her seat belt until rescue crews arrive. I don’t want to unfasten her belt and have her fall to the roof on her head.

  The lady doesn’t answer. She just keeps whimpering, sobbing in little tiny breaths. She must be in shock.

  I call out to Steel-Toed Boots: “I’m going to stay in here for a little bit.”

  I start chatting to the driver again. “Wow, that was sure a pretty amazing accident. You’re going to do great. You look in great shape.”

  Without a risk of fire, I think it best to wait. “Do you understand English?” She doesn’t answer. I give her the same optimistic pitter-patter I use on the sidelines of a soccer fields when I coach kids. Oh, yeah, you’re looking good. Doing awesome. Really, you’re gonna do fine.

  I have no idea if she understands me. The thought passes my mind that maybe she’s weirded out by this strange man who keeps yammering on and doesn’t do anything. After a few minutes of more chattering, I finally hear sirens. “Hey, they’re almost here,” I tell her. “They’ll get you out and you’ll be home in no time.” More gentle moaning from her.

  Suddenly, I remember: Sophia!

  I feel my heart jump into my throat. I yell to Steel-Toed Boots that I want to come out. With him pulling, I wiggle out in a jiffy. The police have to inch their way through gridlocked traffic to get to the accident scene, but they are close. Suddenly, I don’t care about some groaning woman suspended in her Cavalier. I stand up and look across the freeway to my Suburban.

  There, framed in the back window, is Sophia, her little moon-shaped face looking out with very big eyes. I realize if she unclasps herself from her car seat and opens the door she will almost certainly be hit by a car. I have been out of sight for long minutes. She couldn’t see anything that was happening behind the concrete median barrier. She can hardly see the overturned car.

  My heart, which felt so calm in the overturned Cavalier, suddenly feels like it is going through my chest. I put my hands up and motion to Sophia: stay put! I vault the concrete wall and run to the truck through the southbound traffic. I get to our Suburban. As soon as the door is shut, I turn to Sophia. “You did a great job, honey. A great job. You were such a good listener.” I can hardly catch my breath.

  Sophia asks where I have been for such a long time. She couldn’t see me, and I had never left her in the car alone before. I tell her I was helping a woman hurt in the car accident. She is satisfied with the answer. I ask her if she was scared being alone. A little, she says. She is very quiet.

  Ten minutes later we pull into our driveway. My hands are shaking. I notice I have blood on my forearms and elbows from glass cuts. The cuts don’t hurt, but I feel awful. My head aches. I can’t believe I had left Sophia alone in a vehicle on the shoulder of a busy freeway so I could run toward an accident scene. What kind of a knuckleheaded moron am I?

  Yes, Sophia is extremely well behaved, and she does a terrific job of following instructions. But still … what if she had gotten out of the car? What if some distracted driver had plowed into our parked Suburban? What if I had been blown up by the smoldering Cavalier? She would have been stranded in a truck parked on the shoulder of a busy highway. Eventually, she would have succumbed to curiosity or fear. And then … ?

  With a sick feeling in my stomach, I realize I had let my desire for action overshadow my primary responsibility, which is to get my four-year-old home safely from preschool. In ten short minutes, I have exposed a genetic failure in myself. I had done the equivalent of leaving my offspring unprotected in a cave while I charged out of the entrance with a club in my hairy paw, like some Neanderthalic idiot.

  Julie never would have done such a thing. A hired nanny probably never would have done such a thing. But I did, and I did it because I am hardwired to seek out more challenges than simply playing Candy Land and washing endless numbers of tiny dresses and listening to stories about a boy who was hogging swings at playtime. And writing touching stories about elderly athletes.

  A few nights later, I am complaining to Julie about a young film director I had read about.

  “I think you’re just jealous,” she says over a glass of wine. I pause. “Yes, I probably am,” I answer.

  “Have you ever thought of going back to USC?” she asks.

  I pause again. My mouth flaps a bit. “I can’t imagine they’d ever … I mean, why would they let me back in? It would never happen. I quit, remember?”

  Julie just shrugs. Soon she goes to bed. I walk down into the basement. I push aside a big pile of the latest GeezerJock magazines by my desk. The kids are older. I do wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in the program. I miss the filmmaking. I miss the faculty—Casper, Brown, Holman … even FTC. I sometimes even miss the other students. I wonder what would happen if I were to have another go at it.

  I look up Pablo’s email at USC and write him, asking what it would take for me to be readmitted.

  S

  ix months later, I am driving our 2002 Suburban, the Boman Family Truckster, to California. I am going back to film school at USC. I’m going to restart 508.

  This time, in the back of the truck I’ve got my bicycle, books, a huge box of beef jerky, cans of Spam, a portable DVD monitor, gallons of water for when The Big One hits, tools for set building (even my sawzall), clothes, shoes, video camera, potato chips, and a cooler of soda. Compared to my first attempt at 508, when I arrived a few hours before
classes in a rental car and carrying only a suitcase of clothing, this time I’m loaded for bear. And this time I’ve left the apple juice behind.

  Two years earlier, I had a heavy heart flying to Los Angeles. Now, I’m excited. Nervous, yes, but ready. It’s a so much better time for my family. Sophia, our youngest, is going into kindergarten. Lara is old enough to babysit. Julie loves her new job. She’s healthy. No cancer for five years.

  When I started film school, it was out of desperation. Julie was recovering from three hard surgeries. We were broke. Our kids were young. We were a long way from any family support. I needed and wanted everything to happen now! No wonder I was impatient with other students.

  This time it’s different. I feel more relaxed. Now I’m going to school for the long haul, not a short-term fix. I’ve thought a lot about my successes and failures in my first go-round. I figure I’ve got a better vision of what it takes to succeed.

  I’ve spent the past two years writing a full-length feature script with the assistance of a writing instructor I had met at USC. It’s a story about how a tough-as-nails but dying retired navy man tries to reconnect with his estranged and pacifist son by leading him on a wild goose chase over the beaches of South Florida. I’d also helped turn GeezerJock into a nationwide publication, and now the investors had sold out to a larger publisher. It was a perfect time to say Adios, GeezerJock.

  The bottom line: Desperate Steve is history. Yes, now I’m really old, but that doesn’t bother me. I’m feeling comfortable in my skin.

  I’ve also got a new 508 partner. He’s a honey-voiced Tennessean, almost half my age, and he’s taking another whack at 508 because his partner quit on him partway through the previous term. He says she had a nervous breakdown. His name is Dan—I call him Dan the Man—and I’d flown out to Los Angeles to meet him during the 508 mating dance, and we hit it off. Under his sometimes-mellow exterior, I find Dan to be intense and focused. He seems to have a good reputation as a real filmmaker. Plus, he gets my jokes, I think. I get his. It’s a very different relationship than my first 508 partner, ol’ big-rump zombie dancer.

  We’re not two peas in the pod, that’s for certain. Dan is half my age and looks about half my weight. If he were a boxer, he’d be a super featherweight. I’m at the very least a light heavyweight, maybe a cruiserweight, and by physical activity levels we’re yin and yang. But we have started off well, and we hope it continues.

  The only thing that causes me a bit of unease is my living arrangement. Carl and Irene again have offered a place in their house. It’s an amazing deal—a studio apartment near USC goes for more than $800 a month—and I’ve got an entire wing of the house to myself. I park in a shady gravel turnabout. There’s a hot tub. A big-screen TV. And Irene loves to cook. And she loves that I like to eat.

  Still, I feel like I’m intruding on their lives. For my own pride, I tell them I’ll do various chores around their house in exchange for rent. I know it probably barely covers the hot water I use, but still, it is something.

  I drive west into the setting sun. I’m moving fast, driving out to Los Angeles in a bit more than two days. The Suburban, with its thirty-one-gallon gas tank, will go nearly five hundred miles on a fill, and I eat up mile after mile in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. At seventy-five miles per hour, I go five hours between stops or as long as my bladder will last.

  I finally arrive in Los Angeles and, two years after I quit USC, move my gear back into my old bedroom. I plan to meet Dan for a couple of beers the night before classes start. It’s our first extended face-to-face conversation since we agreed to become film partners, and we know we’ve got an adventure ahead of us.

  We both know that among people who have gone through it, 508 elicits a knowing nod, a secret understanding of shared hardship. A little like World War II marines saying, “Iwo Jima.” Or McDonald’s employees whispering, “Oprah ate here.”

  A

  few hours before sunrise, I wake up feeling like crap. My head hurts. I feel woozy and vaguely hung over, but because I’d only had two cans of watery Bud Light with Dan the night before, I know I’m not suffering from bottle fever. I get up and shuffle to the bathroom.

  Today is 508 orientation, and I’m not going to miss it even if it kills me. I shake out a couple of tabs of ibuprofen by moonlight, swallow them, and go back to bed.

  At about 6 A.M., I get up. It’s getting light outside. I shuffle into the bathroom, still feeling really crappy. From the corner of my eye, a mirror over the bathroom sink seems to shift quickly from side to side. Weird.

  I think back to the day before. For much of the day, I had been at USC, getting my student ID, clearing up registration paperwork, standing in line after line. It felt very strange to be walking around the gorgeous USC campus again, yet I was exhilarated to have returned.

  I think back to the evening before. I had spent my first extended time with Dan. We had a good time. We grabbed a dinner, then plotted our semester over those few Bud Lights. Dan is slight and very blond, and I learn when he laughs hard he has a high-pitched bwaaaawaaaahaaahaaaa! that sounds like a cackle a comic-book supervillain might make before immolating a major city. Dan and I know we will be outsiders. Some of our classmates apparently know a bit about Dan … they had heard stories of “that guy a semester ahead whose partner went nuts,” but I am a completely unknown entity. I am just That New Old Guy. I am landing in the middle of a group of students like a parachutist at the Super Bowl. Dan and I find that, despite our differences, we share some core beliefs: we like the same kinds of films, we agree on our politics, and we both value hard work.

  Dan graduated from Vanderbilt before coming to film school and he’d turned down a full-ride scholarship to go to another well-known film school for a chance to attend USC. He is much more mature than he appears. And he is smart as a whip.

  And last evening, Dan and I had dinner at a diner on Sunset Boulevard—a greasy spoon populated by druggies and out-of-town tourists, a place where you can get pancakes and eggs for dinner. Later we went to Dan’s apartment and talked.

  My mind goes back to the restaurant. Our waitress was covered with tattoos and disappeared for long stretches during our meal. With my head aching, I wonder if I got slipped something. Did my waitress drop some acid into my drink? PCP in my eggs? I’m not a drug user, so I have nothing to compare it to. I try to dismiss the thought. It seems too paranoid. But … still, something feels very wrong with my head.

  A little before 7 A.M., I pad into the kitchen and something is definitely not right. Carl looks up from his breakfast cereal and gives me a nod. I try to say, “Good morning,” but the words don’t come out. What comes out of my mouth instead is nonsense. It sounds like “flip tlock.” Carl stops chewing. I focus my mind, hard. My mouth seems not to want to move. I finally get some noises out, but they are not words, just sounds. I need to get some fresh air.

  I give Carl a quick wave and walk outside. There’s my Suburban, parked next to Carl’s Mercedes. I stare at the tires of my truck. The thick off-road tires have raised white letters. I had recently replaced the tires. My brain knows there should be a word—BRIDGESTONE—spelled out in blocky letters. My brain remembers that I paid $220 per tire. My brain recalls what the tire salesman said to me about these tires. But when I try to read the letters, they seem to spell out RCTSMSSNOP. For long seconds I stand over the tires, trying to make sense of the lettering. I know the tires don’t say RCTSMSSMOP! No one sells that brand! They should say something else, I’m positive, but I can’t remember what they should say.

  I walk quickly down the street. My head hurts. I don’t notice the pebbles under my bare feet. I walk a block, then another. I’m in a panic, but I want to keep moving and stay calm. I walk back to my truck and try to read the letters on the tailgate. I stand in the morning light, squinting at CHEVROLET.

  I try saying it aloud. CHEBFLP.

  I look at Carl’s car. I try saying the
lettering on it: MURCTA BAA. I sound like an idiot. Now my heart is pounding hard. I quickly walk down the block again. I need to clear my system of whatever toxin I have in it.

  Halfway down the block an older man is out for a morning walk with his dog. As he passes, he says, “Hello.” I answer back, unconsciously, “Hello!” I sound perfect! I try to say it again. Nothing comes out.

  I look at the No Parking signs along the curb. They are gibberish. I don’t understand anything they say. Street signs. Address numbers. Stop signs. Nothing makes sense. I’m in a foreign country where nothing written is remotely close to English. I walk quickly back into Carl and Irene’s kitchen. Carl is now concerned. “Are you okay?” he asks. I understand him. I can comprehend verbal English just fine. But I can’t make sense of written words, and I can’t talk. If I do force out words, they’re mumbo-jumbo.

  I nod and try to look as if everything is just dandy. I don’t try to say anything. I just walk to the counter and get a banana. I point at it, smile, and nod like a bad mime. I figure some food will do me good. I give Carl an overencouraging thumbs-up and head back outside, leaving him clearly confused. I haven’t seen him for two years, and now I come into his house and act like some misanthropic mumbling freak. Irene is still sleeping.

  I take another power walk, my adrenaline surging, my heart pumping, my eyes not making sense of words. I feel I am living through a nightmare. I want to wake up. I am dizzy and scared.

  After what must be about a half hour of walking through La Cañada, my brain slowly starts feeling a little more … normal. When I finally return to the house, Irene is waiting at the door in her bathrobe. She’s frightened. “Are you okay, Steve? We’re worried about you!”