CLASS (RELUCTANTLY) DISMISSED

I have mixed emotions at this time of year, because my spring semester comes to an end at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. I’m glad to have a break from teaching, but I’ve just begun to bond with some of my students (not easy to do in a class of 360). By the end of August, when the fall semester begins, I’m rarin’ to go again.

2008 marks my tenth year of teaching the class known around campus as “466,” its course number, because its official name (Theatrical Film Symposium) is so dull. But from the time it was founded in 1960 by film critic Arthur Knight through its long tenure with Charles Champlin in charge (when George Lucas was a student there), this weekly gathering has brought hundreds of filmmakers to USC to share their experiences.

I love this class because every week I learn so much—from our guests, of course, but also from my students. Being in tune with a diverse group of 20-somethings is enlightening, to say the least. And only a portion of them are film majors: I have athletes and students majoring in dentistry, English, math, business, international relations and journalism, just for starters.

Several years ago I decided to spice up our Thursday evening by showing an old short-subject from my 16mm film collection: from cartoons to newsreels, comedies, and musicals, we’ve run the gamut. In the process, I’ve exposed the class to everyone from Robert Benchley to Ruth Etting. This year I took up my wife’s dare to show a complete twelve-chapter serial, unveiling the installments weekly, just as audiences would have seen it when it was new.

At first, the kids were dumbfounded as to why I was screening Republic Pictures’ Zorro’s Fighting Legion (1939). I explained that it was to teach them about clarity of storytelling—which a lot of today’s writers and directors could stand to learn—and the sheer craft of filmmaking. Week by week, I watched indifference turn to curiosity, and then actual enthusiasm. They were hooked, and I think they found a way to meet this simple piece of entertainment on its own terms. (One night, when they found a patch of dialogue especially funny—because it was—I pointed out that I’d just seen Al Pacino’s new movie 88 Minutes and heard much dumber dialogue than anything uttered in this vintage serial!)

Marion Cotillard remained after class
to meet some of her new admirers.

The spring semester actually begins in January, which is the worst possible time of year to try to book worthwhile movies, let alone guests. The USC staffer who administers my class, Alex Ago, scored points this year for finding unusual and interesting selections, and I scored a couple of coups myself.

When luck is on our side, we manage to corral some of the actors and filmmakers who are in Los Angeles during January and early February for awards season. This time, I set my sights on Marion Cotillard, who was “working” the town on behalf of Picturehouse and her film La Vie en Rose. I reckoned (correctly, as it turns out) that most of my students wouldn’t have seen the film, even though it had been in release since early last summer. I knew it wouldn’t be a slam-dunk to expose a brand-new crop of kids to a foreign-language film, but I hoped that Cotillard’s brilliant performance would win them over. Fortunately, it did.

When she appeared with me on stage immediately following the film she received the longest ovation I’ve ever heard in that auditorium. She was also a charming and well-spoken guest, explaining how she built her performance—and then had to face the challenge of filming out of sequence, so that one day she’d be young Piaf and the next day a woman on the verge of death. Once she had played each Piaf once she relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the filming process.

I lucked out again when, several weeks later, I was able to show my students another French film, the provocative, highly original animated feature Persepolis, with its creator and co-director, Marjane Satrapi in person. Having met her at the Telluride Film Festival and interviewed her on my ReelzChannel show Secret’s Out, I knew she would be a great guest—and she was. Persepolis is impressive on many levels, but when you consider that neither she nor her creative partner Vincent Paronnaud had ever made a film before it’s all the more striking.

Good timing came to our rescue again when Alex attended the Sundance Film Festival and approached first-time feature writer-director Dan Barnz after a screening of Phoebe in Wonderland, asking if he’d be willing to bring the film to USC the following week. He was delighted to come, along with his film editor Robert Hoffman and his talented composer Christophe Beck. The unusual and highly emotional film, which stars Patricia Clarkson, Felicity Huffman, Bill Pullman, and an amazing 9-year-old Elle Fanning, earned one of the strongest receptions all year from my class. (This is one to watch out for when it comes to theaters, presumably later this year.)

One of my goals is to introduce the students to various participants in the filmmaking process—not just the writers, directors, and producers who receive the lion’s share of credit. Editor Hoffman was very articulate about his collaboration with first-time director Barnz, and composer Beck, who captured both the wonder and fragility of the leading character in Phoebe in Wonderland, was also well-spoken.

This semester I had two talented production designers as guests. Dan Leigh, who’s worked several times with director Michel Gondry, created the unique storefront set (inside and out) for Be Kind Rewind, as well as the settings for the hapless movie heroes’ restaging of famous films on a shoestring budget. His background in theater gives him an interesting perspective on his current film assignments. David Wasco, who works in partnership with his wife, set decorator Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, came with David Mamet’s Redbelt, and spoke about their longtime relationships not only with Mamet but Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, which began with their first feature films. (Why on earth do so few people pay attention to production design when it’s integral to the look and feel of a movie?)

For Redbelt I welcomed another unsung-hero type of guest, casting director Sharon Bialy (who works in partnership with Sherry Thomas). Here is another aspect of filmmaking that’s little understood. Did you know, for instance, that most casting directors not only recommend actors to their clients but also negotiate their deals? Sharon told us that at first David Mamet wasn’t interested in even seeing Tim Allen for the role of an insecure movie star, but she learned that he was interested in working with Mamet and got the two of them together (once she’d determined that he, like every other actor in the film, would be willing to work for union scale).

We had several documentaries this term, which provided interesting screenings while avoiding the dregs of Hollywood’s early-2008 output: Chicago 10, with director Brett Morgan, Academy Award nominee Operation Homecoming:Writing the Wartime Experience with director Richard Robbins, and Bigger Stronger Faster, with writer-director Chris Bell and his producers Alex Buono and Tamsin Rawady.

We screened a variety of other movies, both indie and mainstream, including Charlie Bartlett (with first-time director Jon Poll and writer Gustin Nash, both of whom are USC Cinema grads) and Stop-Loss (with director Kimberly Peirce, her co-writer Mark Richard, and actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Victor Rasuk, and Mamie Gummer). Our final evening, courtesy of USC grad Judd Apatow, was an early screening of his summer comedy Pineapple Express with two of its stars, James Franco and Craig Robinson.

Ron Howard looks more and more like his father, actor Rance Howard, who like brother Clint has a role in every Howard movie.

But the highlight of the semester, without question, was the appearance of onetime USC student Ron Howard with a sneak preview of his latest film, Frost/Nixon, which won’t be released until later this year—closer to award season.

I’d met Howard before and knew him to be a straight-shooting kind of guy, but I hadn’t ever interviewed him at length until that evening—and I was impressed. Having spent fifty of his fifty-four years working in the film and television business, I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows what he’s doing, but he spoke with tremendous passion about the process he knows so well... and admitted to weaknesses, too. He feels that as an actor, he can be guilty of falling in love with performances; that’s why he leans on his cinematographers and editors to help bring visual energy to his films.

He also surprised the class by discussing two scenes in Frost/Nixon which were filmed in different ways, because he wasn’t certain how they would play and wanted to protect himself.

Without meaning to, he gave my students the best possible summary of what I hope they learn from this class—that moviemaking is not a science, but at its best it is an art form.People come together, and with luck, they work in harmony toward a common goal; even then, a movie may fall short of its goal. It’s seldom for lack of effort.

As I often remind them, you can learn as much from listening to a guest who’s made a bad movie as you can from someone who’s just presented a good one. We don’t seek out turkeys for our class, but now and then we get them... and believe it or not, they do provide yet another learning experience, for me and my students.