Class, Come to Order

Three years after graduating, they meet again. They had been master of fine arts students in my class, a few months out of school and mostly out of work, when The Times first ran a feature on them. Since then, six other classes have gone through my course in writing episodic television drama at the USC School of Cinema-Television, each with its own angst and triumphs.

Now seven of them--my class of ‘97--meet in my backyard on a sunny afternoon to talk about what happens when Variety (the entertainment trade daily) names you one of “The Ten Writers to Watch,” and exactly how much unemployment pays; how exhilarated you feel rising to co-producer of a TV series, and how you find out your show is canceled; how to avoid letting producers know you’re pregnant, or the flip side, being single with no time to date; how a chance meeting can luck into a break, and yet old friends are what keeps you going.

While they were in school, I predicted that any of them who wanted a TV writing career enough, who didn’t give up, would have it within a few years. Now, let’s see.

Brian Peterson went home to Montana after graduating, then returned to a job in the dean’s office by day, while sending out his scripts by night. The next fall, director Jaime Babbit, who had an idea for a movie, “But I’m a Cheerleader,” made an offer. Some offer: Write a screenplay for no pay.

But Peterson sparked to the subject: “a cheerleader whose parents send her off to rehab because they suspect she’s a lesbian, but she discovers she really is gay, and at rehab she falls in love.”

Peterson says, “I spent a whole year rewriting it for nothing, and then it finally got shot. It was the kind of thing you dream about: You see these hot-pink signs that say ‘Cheerleader’ and you say, ‘Oh my God, that’s mine.’ ”

While the film was screening at festivals, Variety named Peterson one of the “Ten Writers to Watch.” Despite that, “Every time Variety mentioned ‘Cheerleader,’ they said Jaime wrote and directed it. People who don’t know better have this love affair with writer-directors.”

Peterson concluded, “After that experience, Kelly and I started pitching pilots for TV.”

That’s Kelly Souders, whose thesis script, “My Slut Mom,” was optioned by a producer soon after we last met. But Souders asserts, “Every meeting I had on it was about toning it down. I’m not going to tone it down.”

For about a year she co-wrote another feature with an actress, but that hasn’t been produced either. So she was also looking toward TV, when she and Peterson remembered an idea they’d had at USC.

“Everybody we’ve met in television has been fantastic, 180 degrees from features,” Souders says. The team sold its pilot, an untitled comedy, to Maysville Productions and Warner Bros. Television. It’s currently in development and “we’d love to be in the situation to hire everybody at the table,” Souders offers, to a round of cheers.

Protecting One’s Self-Image

In the time from their 20s to pushing 30, from being outsiders to working in the industry, Souders says, “You start getting protective of what kind of work you want to do. It’s easier on your self-image.”

To which, Peterson quips, “But not always on your checkbook.”

Everyone groans with understanding, even Wendy West, who was the first to make it onto a staff--a “Mod Squad”-styled series, “Three.” West laughs that she was also first to discover that unemployment pays $230 per week, when that series was canceled. But a producer she’d met there invited her onto yet another show . . . which didn’t make it on the air either.

“The way we found out was we opened up the paper and it said we were being suspended. Meanwhile, our sets were being built. In fact, there was a delivery of lumber that day.”

But she had formed more relationships. So, when one of the producers moved on to the “Law & Order” spinoff, NBC’s “Special Victims Unit,” he brought West along. As the show moves into its second season this fall, she will be a co-producer.

West: “It’s wonderful, exciting, fantastic. [Executive producer] Dick Wolf’s notes catch exactly the little things you know don’t really work, but you tell yourself, ‘Well, nobody will pick up on this.’ Then he sticks his finger in it, and you say, ‘All right, all right.’ ”

West looks over at Andrew Landis and Julia Rosen. “Last year Drew and Julia were on the lot, so it was more fun because we could get lunch.”

Landis and Rosen teamed up before they left school, and, armed with sample scripts for five series, they garnered an agent before anyone else, and they won contests. Rosen observes, “Producers need something that says other people think you’re good.”

They nabbed their first real job on the syndicated series “Hercules,” “by going in and pitching something outrageous,” Rosen says. Landis adds, “They have people on staff who are going to write the show, so you can only bring something that’s yours.”

Between “Hercules” and being on the staff of the short-lived series “D.C.,” Rosen married Andrew Swift, a producer on “True Hollywood Stories,” and became pregnant.

Everyone Has Worked as a Temp at Some Point

The only one of the group who is not single, Rosen says, “I hid my pregnancy while we were working on ‘D.C.’ People think if you have a newborn you’re not going to work, and that’s not true for me. In order to be a good mother I have to be a happy mother.” As it happened, “D.C.” was canceled before the baby was born, and the team found itself out of work anyway.

Everyone at the table has done temp work while waiting for the next writing job, but Peterson warns, “People don’t see you as a sexy writer if you have a day job.”

Michelle Takahashi admits she works for a construction company. Then she smiles, “Next month everybody is getting laid off.” While she was in school she thought about a feature set in Japan, and at her job, she says, “I think about it almost every day.” She saved her money and now she’ll finally have time to write the script, she says. Takahashi’s three years are typical of hopeful writers, if such a thing as “typical” exists in a volatile industry.

On the other extreme, Eric Trueheart, far from his Harvard literature degree, is writing an animated feature, “Guy Futomaki: Ninja Temp,” which he sold to Fox. “It’s the story of a trained ninja. His clan has been destroyed and he’s forced to come to America, where he can only survive by doing temp work.”

Trueheart’s route to the sale was “Hollywood,” in the worst sense. “I had a so-called agent who wouldn’t sign me, but he mentioned ‘Guy’ to a studio executive. So we go over, and there’s this 24-year-old development guy in an expensive shirt. I told him, ‘You know, it’s animated.’ He said, ‘We’re thinking live action.’ I said, we’re thinking like ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Beavis and Butt-head.’ He didn’t get it, but he started pitching it around town without us, when he didn’t have any rights to it.”

‘It’s Not That These Guys Are Evil’

Trueheart shakes his head, “It was classic Hollywood. It’s not that these guys are evil. They’re just driven and oblivious.”

Ultimately, Trueheart made his deal with Fox, but his success began on the Hollywood fringe, doing Web work at the company run by Steve Oedekerk (writer of mainstream comedies like “Nutty Professor 2”). There, Trueheart made a friend who occasionally asked him to write for Internet shows. Trueheart worked on “Thumb Wars” and “Thumbtanic,” in which he also appeared as a thumb.

With an edgy reputation growing, he landed a staff writing job on Nickelodeon’s new animated series “Invader Zim,” which Trueheart describes as “torqued,” while “Guy” is developed.

“It’s the first time getting a steady paycheck for writing. It’s a weird experience.”

Now immersed in Hollywood, they speak of staying in touch with what’s real. Landis and Peterson are training to run in the Chicago Marathon to benefit AIDS Project L.A. And Landis, who was brought to the U.S. from South Korea during the Amerasian adoptions of the ‘70s, wishes he saw more faces on television that look like the friends everyone here has, people of diverse backgrounds.

So, it turns out, three years after graduating, my prediction came true: Those who went for it succeeded in beginning their careers. Now they ask: What will they do with their newfound status; what really matters?