Bradbury Story Inspired Student Film Maker in S.D.

Ray Bradbury says former San Diego State University student Mark Lawrence has “great taste” for choosing to make a film of one of Bradbury’s short stories, “The Inspired Chicken Motel.” A touching autobiographical tale of an incident that occurred during his family’s journey west through Texas, searching for work and hope in the midst of the Great Depression, it is one of Bradbury’s favorites.

A few days after Bradbury’s agent turned down Lawrence’s request to use “The Inspired Chicken Motel,” the author called to give him permission.

“Everyone else has ignored it,” Bradbury said. “It’s a very personal story for me.”

For Lawrence, the call from Bradbury set him loose on a project that would consume almost every element of his life for three years.

It started off as his senior project at SDSU, a chance to go beyond the basic requirements of the assignment and produce a real film. Three years and $10,000 later, it culminated in Lawrence and co-producer Peter Shushtari winning a prestigious FOCUS award a few weeks ago, the national prize given annually to the top student film makers in the country.

It is the first time a San Diego State student has won a FOCUS award. The 14-minute film was also a runner-up in a recent short-story competition sponsored by the Arts and Entertainment cable network, which will probably air the film next spring.

Wednesday night “The Inspired Chicken Motel” will be shown at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, after a 7:30 p.m. screening of “Le Doulos (The Finger Man).”

Lawrence’s work, filmed on a lonely road in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and a ranch in Ramona, conveys the dusty loneliness and isolation of Texas circa 1932, as well as the mystery and boyhood wonderment that often permeates Bradbury’s stories.

“For a student film, it has a lot of quality,” the author said. “It’s kind of nice to find a young man who can read a story and do it well.”

To film an adaptation--and a period piece at that--is an unusually ambitious undertaking for a student film. But Lawrence wants to be a director. And directors are usually employed to adapt other people’s work. A completed film, Lawrence believed, was the only way to differentiate himself from the crowd of film students looking for work.

Bradbury’s story, with only five characters and relatively easy locations, seemed to be a logistically easy one to produce. And it captured Lawrence’s imagination.

The westbound family stops at a chicken ranch, where the mysterious owner shows them an egg miraculously inscribed with a phrase of hope, “Rest in peace/prosperity is near.”

“It left you with something to think about--a nice, subtle story,” said Lawrence, 25. “It felt right.”

His professors had already noticed his unusual flair for storytelling, his ability to give mundane assignments a Bradbury-esque tone.

“He has a fresh and original way of looking at things,” said SDSU film professor Roy Madsen. “All his projects had a special ambience, a mystery to them.”

Lawrence received Bradbury’s permission to use the short story in February, 1986. He finished classes in May, 1986, but didn’t actually graduate until last December because of the time devoted to the film.

The initial filming took only six days. But, long before that, Lawrence and Shushtari spent weekends driving all over Southern California looking for suitable locations. It wasn’t easy to find a deserted stretch of straight road with no noticeable signs of modern civilization, nor was it a simple matter to find a usable ranch.

Then there was the problem of the chickens. A movie called “The Inspired Chicken Motel” wouldn’t ring true without them. Lots of them.

Lawrence and Shushtari found a chicken transporter--a man who took chickens from ranch to slaughterhouse--and he agreed to rent them 500 of the birds for a day for $50.

However, on the day of the shoot, chicken disaster struck. Distressed by the heat and new surroundings, they began dying off.

“In between each shot, we had to send in the chicken death squad,” Lawrence said. “We had big Hefty bags on the side of the set. Everybody knew what was in them.”

Filming in the desert in excruciating heat was only slightly easier on the humans. After overcoming the logistical obstacles, Lawrence found his work was just beginning.

“We co-produced, but it’s his movie,” Shushtari said. “He devoted his life to it.”

Lawrence became famous, and slightly infamous, among SDSU faculty for dominating editing time, wangling equipment at every opportunity. He worked as a waiter, driver and for an air-freight company to feed himself and finance the project.

Acknowledging that some people call him “meticulous,” Lawrence for seven months spent most nights and weekends editing. He wasn’t satisfied with the first version and ended up redoing most of the film, including shooting additional footage long after the initial shoot.

“I knew I had to be finished with this before I could go on with my life,” he said.

More than one person told Lawrence he should let it be, that it was time to pronounce the film finished. He ignored them.

“Editing is like a marriage,” he said. “‘You constantly live with it, and, as you make these compromises, there’s a feeling that something good will come of it.”

He used Shushtari as a sounding board, the trusting voice to tell him whether he was hitting or missing the mark.

Finally, after two years of battling for equipment and editing time, a voice inside told him the film was done. Even now, however, he’s not completely satisfied.

“A billion things could have been changed,” he said. “I’m always thinking of ways to improve every shot, every piece of dialogue. I cringe every time I watch it.”

Others have found it more difficult to find flaws in “The Inspired Chicken Motel.”

Greg Kahn, film curator of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, said the film’s FOCUS award is high praise, adding that the honor “usually goes to USC and UCLA graduate students.”

The award, which included a $1,000 cash prize, allowed Lawrence and Shushtari to be wined and dined in Hollywood. They schmoozed with Sally Kirkland, Dyan Cannon and Mary Steenburgen at a special awards dinner at the Director’s Guild Theater. In addition to getting to sit in on seminars featuring top Hollywood agents, producers and directors, they were honored guests at a polo match and at dinner at producer Tony Bill’s restaurant.

The accolades will almost certainly help Lawrence in his next goal: applying for graduate film school. (Shushtari is already a student in the UCLA graduate film program.)

“I can see him producing films like ‘The Abyss’ and ‘Alien’ that call for a special feeling of mystery and strangeness,” said Madsen. “I’m looking forward to seeing what he does next.”