Emergency-Room Physician Focuses on a Film Career

“You just don’t sleep. It’s the secret to having two careers,” said USC film student Dr. Lance Gentile, who just finished a 24-hour shift in the emergency room at Century City Hospital. Gentile, 40, works in the emergency room weekends and nights to support himself while attending USC. Last week he was awarded the top documentary award at the Nissan FOCUS (Films of College and University Students) Awards.

“Stat,” his “autobiographical look at the tragic and comedic experiences of an emergency-room doctor,” also won awards for sound and editing.

“It is about the emotional cost of working in trauma care,” Gentile said. Increasingly, Los Angeles hospitals have been closing their emergency rooms and trauma care centers because growing numbers of patients have no medical insurance and cannot pay for their care.

“Originally the film was going to be about the failing of the trauma care system on a personal level, not with statistics or experts. I wanted to show what happens when a doctor can’t help a patient because the system fails,” he said. “We have set up these trauma care units, but no one seems to want to take the financial responsibility. At the hospitals I work at we don’t turn people away.

“But the story evolved into my personal feelings about the profession--the emotional distance you must possess to work in the emergency room and how not to go home in a state of despair. It isn’t what you see on ‘Marcus Welby,’ ” Gentile said.

“I do like the work, though. I did a brief stint in private practice and found that I missed the adrenaline and excitement of the emergency room,” he said.

The story of “Stat” changed for practical purposes. When the crew was ready to shoot at the San Dimas Community Hospital, there were no relevant cases. “We only had the spring semester (1988) to produce the film and we had no cases. The film then asked the question, ‘Will the doctor’s emotional armor become so perfect that he will no longer be affected as a human being to the death and tragedy around him?’ ”

Having graduated from New York Medical College in 1975, Gentile enrolled at USC Film School in 1986. “I have always been interested in the arts and moved to L.A. to pursue film making, as crazy as it was,” he said.

Gentile expects to graduate from USC Film School in December. He says the FOCUS award is recognition of his work and validation for a potential career change into film making. He hopes to direct feature films, “projects like those of Rob Reiner and Jon Sayles. At this point after 12 years of medicine, the prospect of film directing is appealing and maybe a little less stressful,” he said.

“As an emergency-room doctor I have learned to manage crisis after crisis, which is similar to a director’s role on the movie set. I have seen how people act, and I have seen a lot of life. My experience will lend itself to film making,” he said.