Film School (36 page)

We launch into our long pitches. Twenty minutes is a long time to hold court. There are absolutely no surprises anymore. I've heard Caraballo's pitch over and over and over now in ever-expanding detail. I've heard everyone's pitch multiple times. Somehow, Callaway keeps his spirits up. He sits for hours, his hands under his chin, focused. Nodding slightly. And then giving feedback with his red-clay/L.A. accent.

There are no major breakthroughs, just steady work by us in class. We all have to sit in the hot seat, and there's a great deal of empathy for students who freeze or flub their pitches. There's a lack of one-upmanship, perhaps because we realize we're not competing against each other. How we do
in
class
doesn't matter. How we do
in the real world
does. I enjoy getting to know some of the writers. I rarely intersect with them in film school, and they're in a position I very much could be in. I debated applying to the writing division, and it's the place where I feel most at home. The writing division students, however, view me and Caraballo as odd ducks. We're production students, the guys always carrying cameras and lugging cases of lights. Yes, I'm taking advanced screenwriting classes, but those classes are only for the handful of production students who want to be scribes as well. So far, I've not crossed paths with students from the writing division—until now.

During class breaks, I get questions from the writing students about the production program—they're curious about what we do. They sometimes seem a bit envious. We get to
make
what we write—at least in school. They also suspect that production students have a better shot at getting paid in the near future as editors or sound people or camera assistants. That's precisely why I went into the production division. I also find my production experience has sharpened my writing skills greatly. Writers can envision anything they want. Before I came to USC, I read a scriptwriting book that urged writers not to be constrained by physical reality, to write anything they can imagine.

It's a liberating idea, but I've since learned as a production student the reality of making imagination into a film. When I write now, I think of locations. And I think of actors and casting. How would I shoot this scene in CRAZYHOUSE? I also write scenes with a budget in mind.

Thus, a character can enter a bar and:

• Work his way through a crowd of people and ask the bartender a question.
  
• Enter a mostly empty place and ask the bartender a question.
  

The empty place requires fifty fewer extras, which is a whole lot cheaper. If the size of the crowd in the bar doesn't affect the story line, then a big crowd is something that a producer would love to cut. Many of the writing students are pitching films that are very large in scope. If they were made, they'd be $150 million spectaculars. As a production student, I'm focused on how to write a $4 million film—heavy on character and acting, light on special effects. One woman in class is pitching a story about an underworld fantasy world. Very LORD OF THE RINGS-like, and one that sounds delightful, but when she pitches it, I think, “Lord, that would be expensive.”

I remind myself that MAD MAX was made for $400,000 (Australian) back in 1979 and was edited in a family bedroom. They had so few cars at their disposal the filmmakers repainted some of them and put them in different scenes. For stuntmen, they relied on Aussie biker gangs. All low budget. All successful.

So I pitch CRAZYHOUSE, and I imagine the scene: a small run-down resort in Wisconsin. A half-dozen major characters. Some of the stunts and skiing would be done by local talent. In my script, I have a broken-down professional water-skier show up at a Wisconsin resort to take a summer job running a low-budget water- ski show. In the Midwest and in parts of the East, water-ski shows are an odd and endearing summertime tradition. The skiers create human pyramids, do tricks, jump off ramps. They wear spangled, revealing outfits, and it's as silly and visually compelling as ballroom dancing. It's more cornball though, and comic. In decades past, it was a much bigger deal. Many theme parks—Cypress Gardens and Sea World among them—featured ski show spectaculars. In recent years, the number of shows has dwindled to a few holdouts in the Midwest and Florida. When I conceived my idea, I was motivated by the success of STRICTLY BALLROOM, director Baz Luhrmann's 1992 ballroom dancing drama. At the time, ballroom dancing was a dying art form, performed mostly by aging Arthur Murray instructors. My own mom had dated an Arthur Murray instructor before she met my father and was an excellent dancer. While growing up, my siblings and I thought ballroom was for squares and fuddy-duddies. Then STRICTLY BALLROOM reignited interest in the art form. Now ballroom dancing is a prime-time television staple. I'm convinced water-ski shows—funny, quirky, sexy, campy, athletic—have the same potential, at least in a film.

In my pitch in Callaway's class, I explain the corollaries. Most of the students nod politely. They don't know what a water-ski show is. Without a visual aide, it's hard to explain what I mean when I say
human pyramids
—a boat tows nine skiers. Five keep their skis on, four kick off theirs and clamber onto the shoulders of the five skiers to build a human pyramid. In my pitch, I can look sideways and see some of the students' eyes start to glaze over. It's hard to explain without seeing it, and as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography, “I know it when I see it.”

My final CRAZYHOUSE pitch goes well enough. I've got the entire pitch memorized, and for my ramp I use the latest ratings for DANCING WITH THE STARS, and segue into Luhrmann's film, then use it to launch into my film, which I call “the next great water-ski comedy.”

Callaway laughs at the line. He's one of the few to laugh. He's old enough to get the joke. There never has been a great water-ski comedy, of course, unless you count the corny 1973 Disney flop SUPERDAD, which features a brief scene with Bob Crane on water skis. I go through my characters and detail how the lead character saves the resort and wins the big end-of-summer water-ski competition using a handful of quirky residents from the local half-way house . . . and redeems himself along the way.

I'm satisfied. I'm looking forward to pitching CRAZYHOUSE to the industry panel in two months.

There's still two months, however, and I've got to come up with a television show to pitch for the rest of the class.

M
y documentary class has become a pitch class in its own right. The final exam for this class will be pitching a documentary project to a faculty panel. This pitch will be mostly a video, with a short verbal section. In the first few weeks, I sifted through other ideas presented in class. Rene and Manny are also in the class. Rene's documentary pitch will be about a type of upper-class traditional Mexican wedding that involves horses, guns, and lots of liquor. Manny is going to pitch a story about creating underwater reefs by sinking old ships. They're both good ideas, but very difficult to do as a film student based in Los Angeles. I want to do something very L.A.-centric, something with some visual pop, and something no more than a few miles from USC. After tossing out some serious ideas (a day in the life of an overworked medical resident, obese kids, a doc about Drew Casper), I settle on having fun. I tell the instructor I want to do a documentary about Los Angeles' drag-racing culture. L.A. was the birthplace of the National Hot Rod Association and the home of early drag racing. Now there's only a handful of drag-racing tracks left, but the city is still a hotbed of racing—it takes place illegally, on the street.

I like my idea, but the size is daunting. I'm busy with Casper's class, cinematography, Callaway's class, screenwriting . . . and finding more than a day or two per week for this project is impossible. So I fall back to an idea I'd done before. I'll pitch a documentary about the same twisty road and the same daredevil motorcyclists I chronicled in 507. That was an eight-minute documentary. Now I've got to pitch a project that, if made, would be twenty-six minutes. I've got to shoot new footage.

Spring break is coming. A few nights before I plan to fly home, I invite my nephew Mikey to dinner to make sure he eats something. He's nineteen and seems to live on ramen and water on his sailboat. We eat at a Sizzler steakhouse across the street from campus. Our steaks are tough as a saddle, but Mikey downs a huge piece of meat and several side dishes. He never seems to fill up.

The next morning my gut aches. It's centered on my right side. I blame the steak, but by the next day my stomach is not getting any better. It feels like I've got a burning lump under my right rib cage. I'm feeling pretty crappy all around, too. I call Mikey and ask him how he feels. He's great. That afternoon I'm in the USC locker room. I'm gonna try to work out, even though I've now got what feels like a baseball covered with glass shards under my ribs. I'm hunched over on a bench when an older guy getting dressed down the aisle asks me if I'm okay. I say I am, but I don't look all that good in the mirror.

When I fly back to Minneapolis for spring break, I'm a bit better. But I'm holding my side, and it hurts to breathe deeply. I keep waiting for whatever it is to go away, but it doesn't. At the end of the break, I finally call Dr. Flaata. He gets me in immediately. When I see him, he pushes his fingers under my rib cage. I flinch badly. It hurts. He suspects I may have a gallstone. “If you do, we'll have it out in no time and you'll be fine,” he says. But some of my symptoms are unusual for gallstone. He orders up a CAT scan and a bunch of lab tests. He says I might have to have a camera-equipped tube shoved down my throat to investigate, and I shudder. The test results won't be ready until the next day, the day I'm supposed to be back at USC, so I delay my flight.

I ask him what the heck is going on with my body. I'd been impervious for decades, and now this, too? “Sometimes stuff just happens, Steve. It's the way medicine goes. I wouldn't read too much into it,” he says. Of course, I have read too much into it. I've read lots and lots on the web, and by the time I'm heading to my CAT scan on Monday morning, I'm convinced they're going to find liver cancer. Or pancreatic cancer. Just like I did when I had my stroke, I wonder what underlying issue is causing this weird breakdown.

Worrying makes the symptoms worse, and by the time I'm lying on the CAT scan table, I'm freaked out. I know the lab technicians aren't supposed to make diagnoses, but I can't help myself. “So, how does it look?” I ask. “That's up to the doctor to discuss with you,” the tech says.

I drive home, waiting for the phone to ring. A radiologist is supposed to read my CAT scan and report back. All afternoon, I pounce on the phone every time it rings. Will I need surgery? Do I have pancreatic cancer? What the hell is going on? I'm amazed how many phone calls our house receives in an afternoon—almost all of them telemarketers. Everyone who calls is surprised I'm answering within a tenth of a second of the first ring.

Finally at 4:30
P.M.
, I can't take it anymore. I call Dr. Flaata's office. Thirty minutes later, right at five, his nurse calls me. She apologizes, says the CAT scan wasn't read by a radiologist until late in the day. And she says everything looks normal. No gallstone. No anything.

I ask her, “So, they look for, you know, things like cancer, right?” She chuckles at my naiveté. “Yes, of course. They don't see anything abnormal in your entire abdominal cavity.” I sit down and breathe a huge sigh of relief. This medical roller coaster is too much for me.

Later that evening, Dr. Flaata calls me on his cell. He says some of my lab results were elevated. It appears I have a mild case of pancreatitis. “Caused by what?” I ask. “Hard to say,” he says. The bottom line is that I need to eat mild food, stay away from fats, and, he adds, go back to grad school. He's a big supporter of my journey.

That night, I'm eating noodles and saltines for dinner. It helps a bit, and I schedule my return flight to Los Angeles for late that week. By the time I get back, I've missed a week of most of my classes.

Besides catching up with missed class work, my coming weekend has three items on my to-do list: tweak my CRAZYHOUSE script yet again, shoot video footage for my documentary class, come up with a television show for Callaway's pitch class. During break, I'd thought a lot about what I'd do for the TV project. I settled on doing a drama based on my experiences as a transplant coordinator. Just as I'm getting settled into my routine again, I get a call from my pal Tom. He'd like to visit, on very short notice. As in right now. The Minnesota winter has gotten to him and he wants to visit Southern California.

I groan a bit. I love seeing friends, but my schedule is so booked, I'm always working, and now I'm behind because of missing some classes yet again. I don't have much time to be a tour guide. I tell Tom he's welcome to come, but he'll have to accept the fact that I'll be busy much of the time. He books his flight.

I pick Tom up at LAX. He's white as a ghost. He's got that Minnesota winter tan. I tell him my schedule, and he shrugs. He's cool by it. He just wants to be in the warmth for a few days.

The weekend is all good. On Saturday, I recruit Mikey to hold a microphone boom, and the three of us drive up the Angeles Crest and interview motorcyclists for my doc class. At the top of the mountain, there's deep snow lining the side of the road, so we engage in a long snowball-throwing contest that lasts until our arms are shot. On Sunday afternoon, Tom and I play tourists. He wants to see Beverly Hills, so we park just off Beverly Hills Drive and go for a long walk through the heart of zip code 90210. It's a cool, foggy afternoon.

Tom thinks it's interesting . . . and then we walk past a stately home and see an AAA wrecker truck parked in a driveway. Next to the wrecker is a new black Mercedes with a flat tire. The driver of the wrecker is in the process of changing the tire, while the owner of the car (a healthy guy our age) watches, along with his two young kids. Tom and I silently walk by, taking in this Beverly Hills moment. We both can't believe it. Who would call a wrecker just to change a tire in his own perfectly flat driveway on a Sunday afternoon? It's not raining or snowing. We're both small-town Midwestern boys at heart. Changing a tire, especially in front of your kids, is an honored rite of manhood, something to be excited about, like Ralphie's Old Man in A CHRISTMAS STORY. What is this rich guy teaching his kids?