Leads to Spielberg Offer : Student Film Starts a Hollywood Career

The publicity machine behind the television series “Amazing Stories” tries to portray Phil Joanou’s career as an amazing story in itself.

After all, the press releases ask, how many times does the showing of a student movie lead to an almost immediate offer from Steven Spielberg to direct the Christmas segment of his first television series? How often does someone fresh out of USC film school wind up with a cushy office at the Disney Studios, three projects in the works there and studio executives singing his praises to newspaper reporters?

But, a skeptic might grumble out loud, isn’t this the age of the Brat Pack, when children of stars become stars themselves at age 18? When entire studios are being handed over to kids who were in the mail room two years ago? When anything that smacks of youth seems to be valued above all else?

Yes, that’s true. However, even the cynic might look at Joanou’s past 14 months and quietly say under his breath: “That’s an amazing story.”

La Canada Native

Joanou, a fast-talking La Canada Flintridge native just turned 24, laughs when asked whether his life is actually an amazing story.

“I have serious doubts,” he said. “There are probably a trillion more amazing stories in the world than mine. But I’m not complaining. If someone had said to me a year ago that I’d be in an office at Disney and that I would be directing for Steven Spielberg, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, that’s nice and you’re Leonid Brezhnev.’ ”

Now, he’s on first name basis with Spielberg and on Dec. 15, NBC is scheduled to air the “Santa ‘85,” segment of “Amazing Stories.” Story by Spielberg, directed by Joanou.

With the hyperenergy of someone equipped for Hollywood deal making, Joanou discussed his career recently at his office on the Disney lot in Burbank. Dark, slim and compact, he was dressed in the best Baby Mogul fashion: jeans and sneakers topped off by a nicely cut jacket, shirt and tie. The room’s walls were lined with framed posters of rock heroes Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello and a print of a moody Edward Hopper painting; his desk was piled with copies of plays and screenplays, some already famous, some not yet produced.

Dream Come True

It seemed clear that, despite his modest protestations, Joanou is living a particular dream come true, complete with a soon-to-be-added secretary. But that dream, like most others, did not materialize without a combination of talent, luck and fierce ambition. And not without breaking some of the rules.

He spent his movie-mad high school days in La Canada making Super 8 home films and worshipping Spielberg. He nagged his parents--his father is an advertising executive, his mother a homemaker--to take him to see Spielberg’s “Jaws” five times. He even tried to make his own sequel until his shark, made of wood and plastic bags, fell apart in the backyard pool.

“ ‘Jaws’ was really the film that got me excited about movies,” he recalled. “It made me see the potential power of films.”

After graduation from La Canada High School, he enrolled in the drama program at UCLA but kept rethinking plays in cinematic images. So, he transferred to USC and got into its film school, celebrated as a Hollywood breeding ground. There, in his last semester, his comedic screenplay about a painful high school romance was among a handful chosen by the faculty for a full production.

Broke Rules

But Joanou and the faculty clashed over the length of the movie, called “The Last Chance Dance.” School rules required student movies to be no longer than 20 minutes; Joanou insisted his story needed 33 minutes. He prepared a shorter version for faculty review but later re-edited in the missing 13 minutes for a version to be shown to the industry. That provoked some well-remembered controversy at the school.

“Phil Joanou is persona non grata around here,” said one professor, who asked not to be identified. “The films are the property of the university, and he took it upon himself to lengthen it for his own purposes. Yes, he is a talented kid, and his movie was clever. And yes, the kid went out and got a job out of this thing. But he flaunted the rules of the game, and some people took a dim view of that.”

However, some students regard Joanou as a hero because he saw his movie more as a ticket to a career than as an academic exercise. “Everyone here wants to be Phil Joanou,” one student said.

Joanou concedes he broke rules. But he stressed, “the longer version worked much better.” And, what he now recalls as a “tempest in a teapot” paid off.

‘Last Chance Dance’

On Oct. 25, 1984, the full cut of “The Last Chance Dance” was shown, along with other USC student films, to a high-powered industry audience at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The next day, Joanou’s phone began to ring with calls from agents and producers. One call was from Spielberg, who had been given a videocassette of the movie and, coincidentally, had watched it the night before on a Warner Brothers jet en route to New York.

“It really blew my mind,” Joanou said. “Here I was talking to my hero.” Joanou, then only 22, soon met Spielberg: “He asked me all kinds of questions about my film and treated me like a fellow director, not like, ‘Hey, kid, let me tell you a few things.’ That was so impressive to see in someone who obviously has so much power.”

A week after the meeting, six months out of USC, Joanou received the offer to direct “Santa ’85.” He was in heady company. Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood also accepted offers to direct episodes of the new series.

Anyone connected with “Amazing Stories” is sworn to silence about its plots. Joanou would only describe his segment as being about a little boy helping Santa Claus through some of the problems of life in 1985. After six weeks of pre-production, the 30-minute episode, starring Pat Hingle, was shot during two weeks of very hot July weather on the Universal back lot. The biggest problem, Joanou said, was getting the reindeer to run in the blazing heat and fake snow.

Staff of 100

There was also the adjustment of heading a staff of about 100 at Universal after a crew of eight at USC. Joanou said he closely watched Spielberg direct an earlier episode but received no help from Spielberg during the shooting or the editing because the famous producer-director was on location in North Carolina for “The Color Purple.”

“I’m sure somebody will say that this or that looks like a Spielberg shot, but I don’t care,” Joanou said. “The whole world can think he directed it. I just want to make movies.”

Stephen Semel, an associate producer of “Amazing Stories,” described Joanou as by far the youngest director on the series, but thoroughly prepared and professional.

“It’s not as if he came in and kind of figured out his craft while doing it,” Semel said. “If Phil didn’t know the answer to something, he relied on other people’s expertise. But no one came to save him. This was one of the more elaborate of our stories, and he brought it in on time and on budget.” The budget was reportedly close to $1 million, extremely high for a half-hour show.

Age No Hurdle

Deborah Jelin, director of development at Spielberg’s production house, Amblin Entertainment, agreed that Joanou’s age was no hurdle. “Phil’s energy was contagious,” she said. “He is really adorable but still emanates maturity.”

Joanou has another powerful patron in Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney’s 35-year-old chairman of movies and television and a Wunderkind in his own right. Katzenberg saw a tape of “The Last Chance Dance” and thought it showed, he said in a recent interview, “a lot of skill and real spark.” He offered Joanou an office and gave him seed money to write three screenplays: A love story, an African adventure and a New York comedy. The option contracts stipulate that Joanou will also direct if Disney produces any of them.

Joanou has another option from Spielberg for “a rock-and-roll fantasy” screenplay.

It was Katzenberg, Joanou said, who taught him the business aspects of Hollywood: “How development works, who makes decisions, what makes this business tick. Film school focuses on making films and not on how to get them made. It shouldn’t. But it is definitely not easy to get movies made. I used to make Super 8 movies for $50. Now I’m talking about $10 million to $20 million of corporate funds. You’ve got to convince investors your project is worthwhile.”

Budget Flights

Joanou, not surprisingly, would not discuss how much money he has earned from all his projects. (According to the Director’s Guild, minimum fee for directing a half-hour television show on film is $9,964, with pro rated extra after a week’s work.)

But he said he’s still far from Beverly Hills. He has enough money to share a Pasadena apartment with one of his three sisters and for budget flights to New York every month or so to visit his girlfriend, actress Helen Slater, star of “Supergirl.” He said he drives the same old car with 130,000 miles on it and still eats a lot at fast-food joints.

Joanou seems very aware that the money and all the perks of Hollywood could dry up as quickly as they blossomed.

“I was writing at the La Canada library, eating at Del Taco and living with my parents last year. I can do that again. They can take away my office and everything else. I know that can happen. But I’ll keep going. As long as I have an opportunity to tell my stories, even if only to my Mom, that’s what’s important to me.”