University of Southern California. School of Cinematic Arts - Film school: the true story of a midwestern family man who went to the worlds most famous film school, fell flat

All of the events described in this book happened as related; some time frames were altered slightly and many names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

Copyright 2011 by Steve Boman

Foreword 2011 by David Howard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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ISBN 978-1-936661-05-3

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What use is it to speak of inspiration?

To the hesitant it never appears.

If you would be a poet,

Then take command of poetry.

You know what we require,

We want to down strong brew;

So get on with it!

J OHANN W OLFGANG VON G OETHE , from Faust

One of the basic tenets of good storytelling is that an author must make life very difficult for his characters. The closer to the impossible those challenges are made, the stronger the dramatic tension and the deeper the audiences connection with the characters in the story will be. By thisor anymeasure, Steve Boman tells a whopping good story in FILM SCHOOL. Its made all the more harrowing and compelling by being fact, not fiction. Steve, his family, friends, and classmates suffered a great deal to give us an exciting and unpredictable story. They did so with moments of both anxiety and grace, plus humor, perseverance, and ever-present doubt on their relentless march through calamity, triumph, epiphany, and more than anyones share of medical hurdles.

Many of the conflicts and obstacles dramatically depicted in this book had already been faced, for better and worse, by the time I first met Steve. In fact it was his last semester as a graduate student at USC when he enrolled in my advanced scene writing course, a small and intense seminar taken primarily by film students who harbor serious aspirations as screenwriters. When we first met, none of those trialsor their scarswas evident in Steve. He just seemed like a good-natured guy from my home state. We bonded over Minnesota lore: Ya, you-betcha. Weve both had the fabled, and mostly apocryphal, accent surgically removed.

Film schools didnt even exist a century ago, and they only came into their own as a means of entering and excelling in film and television when a handful of film school alumni in the 1970s surged to the top of the entertainment industry. Their names are now universally known, and several of those grace the buildings that form USCs School of Cinematic Arts. As a result of those early successes and an ever-growing stream of talented and ambitious film school graduates, going to film school has come to be a crucial step on the trajectory to success behind the camera.

Like many before him and more yet to come, Steve set his sights high and chose the most efficient path available to those of us without connections and easy opportunity: a few years of intense study, trials, errors, failures, disasters, learning, networking, alliance building, goal setting, and endurance testing. He chose film school and was accepted by the oldest and best of the growing array of choices: USC.

What followed would far exceed the typical experience of film school, but at the same time, in the hands of a talented storyteller, Steves journey focuses the readers attention and compassion in unexpectedly intimate ways. His approach is reminiscent of the Harvard student who became an able-bodied seaman in the 1830s and sailed in a tall ship around Cape Horn to write the classic of experiential journalism, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST. Richard Henry Dana grants his readers the real experience along with the insights of a trained observer. In FILM SCHOOL, Steve Boman does the same: You will learn what film school really means, how it unfolds, how it impacts the dreamers and drivers who find themselves there, and how it gets the better of everyone at some point. You will become part of a family as it faces incredible challenges, you will discover how some friends rise to some occasions and others fall by the wayside, and you will explore the deadly serious business of learning how to entertain.

Like a good film or a good TV program, FILM SCHOOL will give you an experience well worth having. Enjoy it.

David Howard

Founding Director of the Graduate Screenwriting Program

School of Cinematic Arts

University of Southern California

When I was accepted to the film production program at the University of Southern California, I was in my late thirties. One of my brothers was a bit skeptical. He asked me what actually happens in film school.

I dunno, I told him. Ill find out when I get there.

I wasnt being snarky. I really didnt know.

Before I applied to USC, I tried to find out as much as I could about film schoolany film school. But there wasnt much of any depth either on the web or at bookstores. Going to USCs School of Cinematic Arts as a graduate student in film production meant I was going on a three-year journey, and I wanted to know what I was facing on that journey. Sure, universities put out glossy brochures and feature websites that make the whole enterprise look just wonderful, like the worlds most exciting cruise ship adventure, full of smiling students and attentive instructors. But they made me skeptical. I wanted to see a photo of, say, a student sitting in the rain, a broken camera at his feet, with another student yelling at him. That would have seemed more realistic.

I also didnt know anyone who had gone to film school, anyone who could give me the inside dope. As an adult, I had worked as a reporter in the Midwest and on the East Coast for both newspapers and radio. I had covered thousands of stories, but the film business wasnt on my beat. I do have a couple of close college chums who are successful actors in Los Angeles, and although they are a great help, they hadnt gone to film school either.

So I was mostly in the dark about what I was facing. When I got to USC, I found many of my classmates were in my same position. We were like travelers without guidebooks or even a decent map. I found the journey was much different than what I expected. From the time I was admitted I planned to write a book about my experiences. What youre holding is the result.

This is a personal book about my time at USC. I graduated from USC in 2009 with a master of fine arts degree in film production. This book explains what happened to me and some of the people I met in film school and in Hollywood. Im not providing an encyclopedic overviewjust one persons story.