Cutting In

For nearly 20 years, Fred Heinrich ran a big film editing company. A year after he sold it, it dawned on him that no minorities had ever come to the door looking for work.

Today, Heinrich runs a one-man shop and his life is centered on getting young men and women from the inner city the chance to work behind the scenes in the movie industry.

He has succeeded often.

Heinrich has opened the gates to the business through a summer program he runs at USC called Inner-City Filmmakers. It’s a road many youths from the inner city simply assumed was closed to them.

“If it wasn’t for Fred, I would probably be flipping burgers somewhere on Hoover Street,” said Claudine Guerrero, 19, who completed the program in September and is continuing her studies at Cal State Long Beach. “I never thought I had a chance to work on films, but now I know it’s just a matter of time before I get a job working on a movie.”

Started in 1993, Inner-City Filmmakers is a five-week, 30-hour program designed to teach youths skills in cinematography, lighting and editing. Funded primarily with Heinrich’s money, the program has trained 85 youths since 1993.

Heinrich, 55, the son of German immigrants who made his first film at 12 (“I had my friends act as soldiers and storm the beaches along the South Jersey shore”), says the seeds for his project were developed subconsciously during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

“From my home up near the top of Los Feliz, it looked like the whole city was burning,” he said. A year later he came up with an idea he thought might make a small difference.

“If people had better jobs, they wouldn’t be burning down the town. And all of a sudden, it hit me that no minority had ever come looking for work at my business.”

To date, 31 people have landed some kind of behind-the-scenes job in the film industry after going through his program, Heinrich says.

Damien Williams, 22, is one.

1994 was the worst period of Williams’ life. The South-Central Los Angeles native had moved to Pittsburgh to attend an art design school when his father suffered a brain aneurysm. Williams rushed back home. Unable to return to Pittsburgh because of financial hardship, he lost his belongings back East.

“I had no job, I was so, so down,” Williams said. “I needed some kind of help.”

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Williams found help on a Westwood street when he bumped into a teacher from his alma mater, Crenshaw High School, who told him about Heinrich’s program.

“I went to his program and sat up front and asked all the dumb questions. I was that oddball that I used to make fun of at school, but I felt this was my last chance,” Williams said.

Through connections forged by Heinrich, Williams got a paid internship and recently worked as an assistant film editor on the Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Eraser.”

“You have to know people in this business and Fred provided the connections,” Williams says. “He taught me about perseverance. Call, call, call.”

When Heinrich started the program, he was unsure where to find interested students. That problem was solved when he learned that many high schools had video production classes. He contacted teachers who told interested students about the program. The first year, there were 25 applicants, and 12 were selected.

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Heinrich’s experience consists primarily of editing commercials. To help him teach the class, he turned to friends in the theatrical end of the business. Among the people that have lectured are Robert Wise, who edited “Citizen Kane” and directed “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music,” and John Toll, the Academy Award-winning cinematographer of “Braveheart.”

“What’s in it for him?” asks Williams, now on the road to a successful film industry career. “Nothing.”

Not quite.

Last Friday, after being honored by Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter at a City Council meeting, Heinrich and his wife, Stephania, took five former students to lunch. Seated in the patio of Patinette restaurant downtown, Stephania looked proudly at the young men and women, now all working in “the biz.”

“Look at those faces, look at those smiles,” she said. “That’s why he does it. That’s what is in it for him.”