UCLA pines for film school donations
Scriptland, a column about the work and lives of professional writers, relaunches this week with an expanded focus on TV as well as film.
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As most Angelenos know, the crosstown rivalry between Bruins and Trojans isn’t limited to football. Each camp of alumni wants to help its own get ahead -- in sports, in law, even in writing. In the case of screenwriting programs where bundles of money are at stake, it has taken something of a desperate turn.
At a recent event held to honor UCLA student writers, Richard Walter, chair of the screenwriting program, observed to the audience of parents, students and friends that UCLA-trained screenwriters had worked on the films of some of the most successful graduates of that “school across town.” Among others, he cited nine films of honorary USC alum Steven Spielberg.
“I think it’s time for Steven to endow a chair here, don’t you?” he asked.
The remark laid bare the competition between two of the top three film schools in the country. (Because New York University is on the other side of the continent, that rivalry doesn’t seem as personal as it is in Los Angeles where alums stick around to climb the entertainment ladder.)
Walter, himself a USC graduate, said later that he remains loyal to USC and socializes with other alums in the industry, also known as “The Trojan Mafia.”
But he’s been frustrated that while millions of dollars have been funneling into USC’s cinematic arts program from entertainment greats Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, donations by UCLA alums tend to finance worthy projects in other fields: the David Geffen Medical School, the Streisand Chair in Cardiology, Jerry Lewis Neuromuscular Disease Research Center, the Jane and Terry Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, for instance.
UCLA is the single largest contributor to mainstream and independent films and TV, Walter contends. “It’s as if we are their human resources development arm,” he said, noting films such as 1991’s “Backdraft” and 1994’s “Forrest Gump,” among numerous others, were written by UCLA-trained students. “It’s in their own selfish interest to support us.”
What’s needed most are scholarships, he said. “We are really the poor kids’ school. USC is the rich kids’ school.”
And if Spielberg needs an honorary degree from the Bruins, Walter said, he can have one. (A spokesman for Spielberg said he was unavailable for comment.)
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Students learn to network quickly
Meanwhile this summer, newcomers to that aforementioned entertainment ladder are working the alumni to help them get a leg up. “They say the more connections you have the better. They say the earlier you get started, the better,” said Zach Salehipour, 19, a business/cinema major at USC. “I don’t know who they are, but that’s what they say.”
Salehipour met fellow Phi Delta Theta member Trevor Engelson at a Blue Chip dinner where pledges are introduced. “I found out he was in the entertainment industry and thought, ‘Sweet!’ ” he said. “Our alumni chair hooked us up.” Now Salehipour has his first internship at Engelson’s Underground Films, reading scripts, making coverage reports and pitching them to the staff. He works in a house off Wilshire Boulevard and likes it, he said, because “I’m somebody here rather than nobody.”
Across town, recent UCLA graduate Ryan Tavlin, 28, who is now taking meetings for his award-winning student TV script “Ladies of Lambry,” got an internship through writing instructor Felicia Henderson (“Fresh Prince,” “Gossip Girl.”) A friend of Henderson recommended Tavlin for his first job, as an assistant at Last Straw Productions, a small TV developer.
Tavlin said he hasn’t noticed a sense of “us versus them” between the USC and UCLA alums working in the biz. At least not yet. Still, he said when he makes it to the top, he’ll know it was the result of “more elbow grease than ka-ching ka-ching.”
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For WGA, time to return favors
Deadline passed, actors’ union negotiations continue, and writers are still thinking about Writers Guild of America West President Patric Verrone’s request that they remember how actors picketed with them during their 100-day strike earlier this year. Verrone pledged to the actors that the writers would return the favor.
In a very informal and totally random survey of a handful of writers, most indeed were willing, in theory, to support actors on any of their picket lines, should a Screen Actors Guild strike be called eventually.
But there could be a limit to solidarity. One writer said he would definitely support his brothers and sisters on the picket line, as long as he didn’t have to leave work to do it.
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A rom-com with animated robots
Andrew Stanton isn’t the sort of writer who comes up with a theme before sitting down at the keyboard. As the writer/director of Pixar’s computer-animated adventure-comedy- sci-fi summer smash “Wall-E” told a press gathering in June, he just likes to “find the natural things that seem to be firing” as he goes along. Halfway through the script, he said, he realized the robots Wall-E and Eve were trying to figure out the point of living. The answer was “irrational acts of love. . . . I said, ‘That’s it! That’s my theme: Irrational love defeats life’s programming.’ I realized that’s a perfect metaphor for real life.”
In the process, some think he came up with the best romantic comedy of the year.
According to Billy Mernit, author of “Writing the Ro- mantic Comedy,” Stanton’s “Wall-E” breaks away from what has become a narrow-minded view of the genre: the “guy and a girl on a date” formula of the last 10 years. On his blog, Living the Romantic Comedy (https://www.living romcom.typepad.com), Mernit observed that the main characters in a romantic comedy can be gun runners, golfers or robots, as long as they tell stories where “love has the transformative power to change everything.”
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Lynn Smith welcomes humor, horror stories, tips or comments at lynn.smith@ latimes.com