Hollywood War Stories

LIFE LESSONS AREN'T LEARNED IN SCHOOL; LIFE LESSONS ARE LEARNED BY LIVING

I attended the University of Southern California because, when I watched them play in the Rose Bowl on television, in the middle of a freezing Cheyenne winter, all I saw in the stands were blond babes and guys in short sleeves, enjoying the sun. I had no idea that USC was the top cinema school in the country. 

Even though I didn’t go to film school, the most important thing I gained at USC was a class called “Monday Night at the Movies.” This class got me hooked when I saw Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, a satirical farce about the nuclear threat, that set me on a course of wanting to be in the world of cinematic satire.

Years later,  I sat across a conference table from Joe Roth, president of Disney Studios. He’d read my script for Spy Hard,a James Bond spoof. Roth said, knowingly, “So basically you’re talking MAD Magazine filmmaking here.” He got it!  My version of satiric, cinematic imagery. 

 The masters of cinema pack their frames with cinematic imagery. Fellini did this in Satyricon.David Leandid it in Lawrence of Arabia.Sergio Leone did it in Once Upon a Time in America.Terry Gilliam did it in Brazil. Coppola did it in The Godfather. Ridley Scott did it in Blade Runner and Chris Nolan did it in The Dark Knight.  2014’s Academy-Award winning foreign film, The Great Beauty, is a visceral example of cinematic imagery.

 If you have relatives that own oils wells or office buildings or if you want to go into debt for student loans for the next Millenium, you might be able to buy your way into one of the major film or dramatic arts schools. But you can audit a class in almost anything at almost any community college, trade school, performing arts department.  You also must travel, read, learn a foreign language, talk to people—force yourself to do something. And by doing so, you will have a lot more  ideas that come from life experience.

 You can also apply for a non-paid internship at many studios and production companies.  If you see an old film, with Kevin Spacey, called Swimming with Sharks, which was based upon a very famous producer, you’ll see the kind of crow you must eat as an intern. But guess what—you’ll learn! Irrespective of the treatment you receive and the demeaning tasks you might be assigned, interning can be one of the best ways to learn technical, artistic and political practices from those that practice them.   It’s my contention that, if you are around long enough and watch intently enough, you can learn in four weeks working on a movie what you learn in four years of film school.