From signonsandiego.com, Nov 02, 2003

By Norma Meyer

TRAINING DAY - THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE, A 'JUILLIARD FOR FILMAKERS,' IS BOOT CAMP FOR BUDDING ARTISTS

COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--It's film school lore. As an American Film Institute student in the early 1970s, David Lynch was so obsessed with his thesis film that he locked himself in the stables-turned-soundstage and editing room on the Beverly Hills campus with the historic mansion and didn't emerge for five years. The result was the eerie cult classic, " Eraserhead."

"He may still be in there," laughs Sam Grogg, dean of the prestigious American Film Institute Conservatory.

These days, the AFI may be more known for its televised countdowns, such as "100 Years . . . 100 Movies" and "100 Years . . . 100 Heroes and Villains" (our governor-elect, as the Terminator, took dual honors in the latter contest, behind Lassie and the Wicked Witch). But besides the prime-time fun, the 35-year-old nonprofit that was created by President Johnson continues to train young filmmakers at an intense hands-on academy where they eat-sleep-and-breathe movies in a curriculum set up like a studio system.

Lynch went on to direct "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive," and the conservatory – which offers "fellows" a two-year master's degree program for nearly $54,000 – moved from the Greystone Mansion estate to the vacant Immaculate Heart College on eight wooded acres in the Hollywood Hills. Where the nuns lived is now the grip house.

Dustin Hoffman and Martin Scorsese recently lectured at this motion picture monastery. So did Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, whose photos, along with other recipients of AFI's telecast Life Achievement Award (Meryl Streep is this year's honoree) line walls that students pass each day. All of the 300 fellows live off-campus, but if they're not shooting somewhere, a few may straggle from an editing bay late at night and doze on the worn couch of a set that a production design class made to look like a trailer-trash home.

"You don't have a life. You're just into doing films. You get crazy," says Sonya Chi, 32, a Florida native who recently graduated from the producer's program.

Chi's "Shui Hen" is one of 13 alumni-made works that will screen at the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival, which runs Thursday through Nov. 16 at the ArcLight Hollywood, home of the Cinerama Dome. The lineup of 134 films from 42 countries includes 26 world premieres, such as the Norman Jewison political thriller "The Statement" starring Michael Caine.

Chi's film is about a Chinese woman reuniting in Cuba with the family that left her behind; to make it authentic, Chi had the English-language script translated into Cantonese and hired an on-set dialogue coach. Cano's "American Made" is the story of an Indian-American family whose SUV breaks down in the desert, leaving them stranded with a teenage son who accuses his turban-clad father of looking like a terrorist.

"American Made" came about after Cano's thesis team, which included writer-director Sharat Raju, was en route to Boron in the desert to research a football squad that might make a good subject and saw a car stranded on the roadside. The driver wasn't Indian-American but Raju is, and it got him thinking.

Cano, a San Pasqual High School grad who went to Utah's Brigham Young University and worked as a "Dateline" production assistant, hopes the AFI Fest is a door-opener. Like it was for alum Patty Jenkins: After screening her 18-minute thesis film at the 2001 AFI Fest, Jenkins went on to get a deal directing and writing the feature-length "Monster." The biopic, starring Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos, has its world premiere at this AFI expo.

"We hope someone will see our film and be interested enough to have us do their next feature project," Cano says.

In the meantime, Cano is starting up an online casting service to provide extras for TV and film companies.

Director Todd Field ("In the Bedroom") and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski ("Saving Private Ryan") were once wannabes walking the AFI's movie poster-lined hallways of the 1917 Warner Bros. Building and studying in the Louis B. Mayer Library, where on this day an audition notice is up for a student short, "Uncle Raul."

In a nearby classroom, a handful of second-year fellows go over details of their thesis film about a middle-aged man, Peter, who lost his family and tries to re-create it with a teenager living in a transient hotel. The students collaborate based on their specialty – producer, screenwriter, director, cinematographer, production designer and editor.

This team has a thick binder with location scout photos of a Hollywood street they want to shoot, paint chips of colors that can be used to redo the interior of a house they are renting as Peter's home, and head-shots of actors they cast.

But the budget is tight, so the group debates whether they should go with a sedan they can rent for $50 or spend more for a station wagon Peter would drive.

"I really feel that it needs to be a family car," says instructor Robert Boyle, noting the vehicle will establish the character's background.

It may seem like a minor point, but Boyle knows his stuff. A nimble 93, he's the four-time Oscar-nominated art director whose credits include " The Birds," "North By Northwest" and "Fiddler on the Roof."

Other notable film schools – such as USC and UCLA – also have distinguished professionals as teachers, but the AFI considers itself a conservatory with fellows because there's only one focus on campus, says Jean Picker Firstenberg, who has headed the organization for 23 years.

"Think of Juilliard for filmmakers," she says. "At a conservatory, you practice and you keep practicing."

It sounds heady, but the AFI, which also has a well-known film preservation program at the Library of Congress, has been called "the Smithsonian for the moving image." That's because it's mission has always been "to preserve the heritage of American film and prepare the next generation of storytellers," Firstenberg says.

Originally funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Ford Foundation, the AFI now relies on private and public monies to support numerous ventures, including a K-12 pilot project that uses movies to aid reading in schools. The AFI board of trustees is composed of Tinseltown titans; Howard Stringer, CEO of the Sony Corp., is the chair. (The Sony Video Center on campus houses post-production facilities.)

"It is a cultural force, rather than just a training course for filmmakers," says Tamar Hoffs, who in the early 1980s attended another AFI program, the Directing Workshop for Women. Hoffs has one of those great Hollywood stories – she got into the business as an artist after befriending another parent, Leonard Nimoy, at her son's preschool. Her first job was painting Nimoy's chest tattoo for the 1967 indie " Deathwatch."

At the AFI Fest, director-writer Hoffs' "Red Roses and Petrol," about an Irish clan and starring Malcolm McDowell, gets its world premiere. It's a family affair – her daughter, former '80s pop singer Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles, executive-produced; Susanna's 8-year-old son, Jackson, is in it.

"I'll probably be watching the audience more than the movie," an excited Tamar Hoffs says.

Conservatory reps say they don't keep stats on how many of their 3,000 graduates – some fellows come from as far away as Greece and Malaysia – went on to successful filmmaking careers. They do point to a list of alumni that includes directors Darren Aronofsky ("Requiem for a Dream"), Mimi Leder ("Pay It Forward") and Donald Petrie ("How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"); screenwriter Scott Frank ("Minority Report"); and Ed Zwick, who directs, and also co-wrote and co-produced with AFI classmate Marshall Herskovitz, the upcoming Tom Cruise movie, "The Last Samurai."

But anyone familiar with showbiz knows it's a snake pit, regardless of talent or training.

"It's important to walk out of here with the bloom off the rose, so to speak," says Lawrence Paull, a production design instructor whose credits include "Blade Runner" and "Back to the Future."

Gregg Daniel, a 1984 AFI grad who earlier studied film at Cal State Northridge, says the first real-life lesson he mastered at the conservatory was how to schmooze to get the best crew. He gave away a lot of McDonalds gift certificates.

"It's kind of combat training. The teachers at AFI are like studio executives. They can build you up or they can chew you down," says Daniel, 44. Right after AFI, he became an assistant to the director on the Glenn Close movie "Maxie."

Daniel's new feature, "The Big Empty," which he co-produced with AFI classmate Keith Resnick, is on the festival bill and was already picked up by Artisan Entertainment for a Nov. 14 theatrical release. The dark comedy stars Jon Favreau as an out-of-work actor asked to deliver a mysterious suitcase.

It's been two decades since he walked into class and Bette Davis gave a lecture. But if there's one thing that Daniel, who has his own production company, learned in those years, it's about the bloom on that rose.

"The industry," he says, "can be brutally difficult."