Film Memorial

When Steve Kang graduated from UC Berkeley, he joined a rock band.

“He always said, ‘The best way to get your parents to support you in going to film school is to play in a rock and roll band for three years,’ ” Kang’s friend Kuros Charney recalled.

At USC’s film school, Charney, 22, and Kang, 28, became inseparable. They were partners on student film projects and jogged on the beach in Santa Monica. They hit the town at night, landing in the early morning at coffee shops where they talked about women they had met and their dreams of directing films.

“It was basically like no friendship I had before,” Charney said. “In a way he was a big brother. But he treated me with respect, and I didn’t feel like a sidekick.”

Charney and Kang were scheduled to meet April 2. Charney repeatedly called Kang’s apartment. No answer. Eventually a call to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center uncovered devastating news.

Kang had been killed in an early morning auto accident.

Charney and his film school classmates were left reeling. They decided they could best honor Kang by finishing the film he was working on when he died--a humorous black-and-white piece about a man whose dreams are influenced by what he eats.

They were determined that Kang would not be reduced to the impersonal report that ran in a weekly newspaper under the headline: “Fatal Accident.”

A two vehicle collision at an intersection in the Miracle Mile area early last Thursday killed one motorist and left two other people with minor injuries, police said. The crash occurred at 1:30 a.m. at Wilshire Boulevard and Ogden Drive. . . .

That anonymity bothered Charney.

“I know that’s how it is because I read those articles all the time.” he said. “But they made him out to be just someone.”

To Charney and other classmates, Kang was so much more.

Kang had begun film school only seven months before he was killed driving home from a friend’s house. But in those seven months, he had attracted an admiring circle of friends.

They gathered last week--students and faculty--to share their memories at a service for Kang at the United University Church at USC.

Todd Baker called Kang a “humble genius” with a quirky sense of humor who “taught me to stop downplaying myself.”

Another film student, Amy Collins, encountered Kang’s quirkiness first hand when she picked up a prop last week to help finish his film.

“I had to go to Sony yesterday to pick up this 7-foot corn on the cob,” Collins said between tears and laughter. “I was loading this huge corn in my car, and I couldn’t help but laugh because of Steve.”

Other friends remembered Kang’s eloquence and a confidence that commanded respect. But they were just as taken by his lighter side--the lanky dreamer who wore maroon suede and green cords.

Kang might read Friedrich Nietzsche before sitting down to watch an afternoon rerun of “Beverly Hills 90210,” they said.

He grew up in a Chicago suburb and attended an elite New England prep school. There, he told friends, he felt as out of place as J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield in “Catcher in the Rye.”

He studied biology at Berkeley, following in the footsteps of his father, a physician. Still, he yearned to follow his artistic impulses.

Kang’s oldest sister, Mary, said her parents didn’t always understand him and wanted him to pursue a traditional profession.

“I was like, ‘Leave him alone, let him do what he wants,’ ” she said. “It took him a while to find himself, but he was so happy to be here.”

Charney, Kang’s closest friend at USC, wrestles with the tragedy, trying to make sense of the senseless.

Kang was a particularly cautious driver, he said. One of the cars ran a red light, police said. But because there were no witnesses, investigators do not know which one.

“There’s a tendency for us to try to figure out what happened in the accident--if there was something that was his fault,” Charney said. “But it was bad luck.”

At Kang’s memorial service, film school professor Jean-Pierre Gevens urged students to find motivation in Kang’s life.

“Make him part of your life,” Gevens said. “When you’re willing to compromise and are willing to relax on your film, think of Steve sitting here saying: ‘Is that the best you can do?’ ”