Film School (20 page)

“I think you're just jealous,” she says over a glass of wine. I pause. “Yes, I probably am,” I answer.

“Have you ever thought of going back to USC?” she asks.

I pause again. My mouth flaps a bit. “I can't imagine they'd ever . . . I mean, why would they let me back in? It would never happen. I quit, remember?”

Julie just shrugs. Soon she goes to bed. I walk down into the basement. I push aside a big pile of the latest
GeezerJock
magazines by my desk. The kids are older. I
do
wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in the program. I miss the filmmaking. I miss the faculty—Casper, Brown, Holman . . . even FTC. I sometimes even miss the other students. I wonder what would happen if I were to have another go at it.

I look up Pablo's email at USC and write him, asking what it would take for me to be readmitted.

S
ix months later, I am driving our 2002 Suburban, the Boman Family Truckster, to California. I am going back to film school at USC. I'm going to restart 508.

This time, in the back of the truck I've got my bicycle, books, a huge box of beef jerky, cans of Spam, a portable DVD monitor, gallons of water for when The Big One hits, tools for set building (even my sawzall), clothes, shoes, video camera, potato chips, and a cooler of soda. Compared to my first attempt at 508, when I arrived a few hours before classes in a rental car and carrying only a suitcase of clothing, this time I'm loaded for bear. And this time I've left the apple juice behind.

Two years earlier, I had a heavy heart flying to Los Angeles. Now, I'm excited. Nervous, yes, but ready. It's a so much better time for my family. Sophia, our youngest, is going into kindergarten. Lara is old enough to babysit. Julie loves her new job. She's healthy. No cancer for five years.

When I started film school, it was out of desperation. Julie was recovering from three hard surgeries. We were broke. Our kids were young. We were a long way from any family support. I needed and wanted everything to happen
now
! No wonder I was impatient with other students.

This time it's different. I feel more relaxed. Now I'm going to school for the long haul, not a short-term fix. I've thought a lot about my successes and failures in my first go-round. I figure I've got a better vision of what it takes to succeed.

I've spent the past two years writing a full-length feature script with the assistance of a writing instructor I had met at USC. It's a story about how a tough-as-nails but dying retired navy man tries to reconnect with his estranged and pacifist son by leading him on a wild goose chase over the beaches of South Florida. I'd also helped turn
GeezerJock
into a nationwide publication, and now the investors had sold out to a larger publisher. It was a perfect time to say
Adios
,
GeezerJock
.

The bottom line: Desperate Steve is history. Yes, now I'm
really
old, but that doesn't bother me. I'm feeling comfortable in my skin.

I've also got a new 508 partner. He's a honey-voiced Tennessean, almost half my age, and he's taking another whack at 508 because his partner quit on him partway through the previous term. He says she had a nervous breakdown. His name is Dan—I call him Dan the Man—and I'd flown out to Los Angeles to meet him during the 508 mating dance, and we hit it off. Under his sometimes-mellow exterior, I find Dan to be intense and focused. He seems to have a good reputation as a real filmmaker. Plus, he gets my jokes, I think. I get his. It's a very different relationship than my first 508 partner, ol' big-rump zombie dancer.

We're not two peas in the pod, that's for certain. Dan is half my age and looks about half my weight. If he were a boxer, he'd be a super featherweight. I'm at the very least a light heavyweight, maybe a cruiserweight, and by physical activity levels we're yin and yang. But we have started off well, and we hope it continues.

The only thing that causes me a bit of unease is my living arrangement. Carl and Irene again have offered a place in their house. It's an amazing deal—a studio apartment near USC goes for more than $800 a month—and I've got an entire wing of the house to myself. I park in a shady gravel turnabout. There's a hot tub. A big-screen TV. And Irene loves to cook. And she loves that I like to eat.

Still, I feel like I'm intruding on their lives. For my own pride, I tell them I'll do various chores around their house in exchange for rent. I know it probably barely covers the hot water I use, but still, it is something.

I drive west into the setting sun. I'm moving fast, driving out to Los Angeles in a bit more than two days. The Suburban, with its thirty-one-gallon gas tank, will go nearly five hundred miles on a fill, and I eat up mile after mile in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. At seventy-five miles per hour, I go five hours between stops or as long as my bladder will last.

I finally arrive in Los Angeles and, two years after I quit USC, move my gear back into my old bedroom. I plan to meet Dan for a couple of beers the night before classes start. It's our first extended face-to-face conversation since we agreed to become film partners, and we know we've got an adventure ahead of us.

We both know that among people who have gone through it, 508 elicits a knowing nod, a secret understanding of shared hardship. A little like World War II marines saying, “Iwo Jima.” Or McDonald's employees whispering, “Oprah ate here.”

A
few hours before sunrise, I wake up feeling like crap. My head hurts. I feel woozy and vaguely hung over, but because I'd only had two cans of watery Bud Light with Dan the night before, I know I'm not suffering from bottle fever. I get up and shuffle to the bathroom.

Today is 508 orientation, and I'm not going to miss it even if it kills me. I shake out a couple of tabs of ibuprofen by moonlight, swallow them, and go back to bed.

At about 6
A.M.
, I get up. It's getting light outside. I shuffle into the bathroom, still feeling really crappy. From the corner of my eye, a mirror over the bathroom sink seems to shift quickly from side to side.
Weird.

I think back to the day before. For much of the day, I had been at USC, getting my student ID, clearing up registration paperwork, standing in line after line. It felt very strange to be walking around the gorgeous USC campus again, yet I was exhilarated to have returned.

I think back to the evening before. I had spent my first extended time with Dan. We had a good time. We grabbed a dinner, then plotted our semester over those few Bud Lights. Dan is slight and very blond, and I learn when he laughs hard he has a high-pitched
bwaaaawaaaahaaahaaaa!
that sounds like a cackle a comic-book supervillain might make before immolating a major city. Dan and I know we will be outsiders. Some of our classmates apparently know a bit about Dan . . . they had heard stories of “that guy a semester ahead whose partner went nuts,” but I am a completely unknown entity. I am just
That New Old Guy.
I am landing in the middle of a group of students like a parachutist at the Super Bowl. Dan and I find that, despite our differences, we share some core beliefs: we like the same kinds of films, we agree on our politics, and we both value hard work.

Dan graduated from Vanderbilt before coming to film school and he'd turned down a full-ride scholarship to go to another well-known film school for a chance to attend USC. He is much more mature than he appears. And he is smart as a whip.

And last evening, Dan and I had dinner at a diner on Sunset Boulevard—a greasy spoon populated by druggies and out-of-town tourists, a place where you can get pancakes and eggs for dinner. Later we went to Dan's apartment and talked.

My mind goes back to the restaurant. Our waitress was covered with tattoos and disappeared for long stretches during our meal. With my head aching, I wonder if I got slipped something. Did my waitress drop some acid into my drink? PCP in my eggs? I'm not a drug user, so I have nothing to compare it to. I try to dismiss the thought. It seems too paranoid. But . . . still, something feels very wrong with my head.

A little before 7
A.M.
, I pad into the kitchen and something is definitely not right. Carl looks up from his breakfast cereal and gives me a nod. I try to say, “Good morning,” but the words don't come out. What comes out of my mouth instead is nonsense. It sounds like “flip tlock.” Carl stops chewing. I focus my mind, hard. My mouth seems not to want to move. I finally get some noises out, but they are not words, just sounds. I need to get some fresh air.

I give Carl a quick wave and walk outside. There's my Suburban, parked next to Carl's Mercedes. I stare at the tires of my truck. The thick off-road tires have raised white letters. I had recently replaced the tires. My brain knows there should be a word—BRIDGESTONE—spelled out in blocky letters. My brain remembers that I paid $220 per tire. My brain recalls what the tire salesman said to me about these tires. But when I try to read the letters, they seem to spell out RCTSMSSNOP. For long seconds I stand over the tires, trying to make sense of the lettering. I know the tires don't say RCTSMSSMOP! No one sells that brand! They should say something else, I'm positive, but I can't remember
what
they should say.

I walk quickly down the street. My head hurts. I don't notice the pebbles under my bare feet. I walk a block, then another. I'm in a panic, but I want to keep moving and stay calm. I walk back to my truck and try to read the letters on the tailgate. I stand in the morning light, squinting at CHEVROLET.

I try saying it aloud.
CHEBFLP
.

I look at Carl's car. I try saying the lettering on it:
MURCTA
BAA
. I sound like an idiot. Now my heart is pounding hard. I quickly walk down the block again. I need to clear my system of whatever toxin I have in it.

Halfway down the block an older man is out for a morning walk with his dog. As he passes, he says, “Hello.” I answer back, unconsciously, “Hello!” I sound perfect! I try to say it again. Nothing comes out.

I look at the No Parking signs along the curb. They are gibberish. I don't understand anything they say. Street signs. Address numbers. Stop signs. Nothing makes sense. I'm in a foreign country where nothing written is remotely close to English. I walk quickly back into Carl and Irene's kitchen. Carl is now concerned. “Are you okay?” he asks. I understand him. I can comprehend verbal English just fine. But I can't make sense of written words, and I can't talk. If I do force out words, they're mumbo-jumbo.

I nod and try to look as if everything is just dandy. I don't try to say anything. I just walk to the counter and get a banana. I point at it, smile, and nod like a bad mime. I figure some food will do me good. I give Carl an overencouraging thumbs-up and head back outside, leaving him clearly confused. I haven't seen him for two years, and now I come into his house and act like some misanthropic mumbling freak. Irene is still sleeping.

I take another power walk, my adrenaline surging, my heart pumping, my eyes not making sense of words. I feel I am living through a nightmare. I want to wake up. I am dizzy and scared.

After what must be about a half hour of walking through La Cañada, my brain slowly starts feeling a little more . . . normal. When I finally return to the house, Irene is waiting at the door in her bathrobe. She's frightened. “Are you okay, Steve? We're worried about you!”

This time, when I open my mouth, some words come out. I focus on every word. It is like lifting boulders. “I. Didn't. Feel. Good,” I explain.

Irene has a big medical dictionary on the kitchen table. The book is open to a chapter titled “Stroke.” She tells me I need to call my doctor, pronto. I shake my head. I don't need my doctor. I obviously have only a bad case of the nerves. I only need more bananas, a couple of big glasses of cranberry juice, and a little exercise to clear the cobwebs out of my head. I am going to jog it off. Then I lace up my running shoes and head out into the warming Southern California morning.

L
ater that day, I am flat on my back and being inserted into a massive MRI machine at UCLA Medical Center. I have driven myself to the Emergency Department at UCLA and explained to the triage nurse that I had briefly lost my ability to talk and read that morning. I act very casual when I tell the nurse this. I lean on the counter, suppressing a yawn. I figure if I'm not excited, she'll send me home and everything will be okay.

I did indeed make it to orientation that day. I drove myself to USC, sat through the same speeches as a few years earlier. I sat next to Dan. A woman asked me if I was a father. I took it she meant
Dan's
father. “I'm a father,” I told her, “but not in the way you're thinking.” That's about all I remember. My head was foggy, that's for certain. After orientation, my middle brother, an internal medicine doctor, caught wind of what was happening and ordered me to an emergency room. This put a fright into me, and I headed for UCLA. I got lost going there, even though I am very familiar with the area. At one point I pulled over to gather my wits, and after I wandered through Westwood I finally located the hospital.

Unfortunately, I didn't spend long in the waiting room. It's a bad sign when you're whisked ahead of the two dozen other people wanting to see a doctor.

Not long after I am put in an exam room, a nurse comes to see me. He's a muscle-bound black ex-marine, and he soon has a soft spot for me. We're the same age, we both have kids, and he's studying for his PhD in nursing. He is impressed I'm enrolled at USC. He knows what the doctors are looking for in my brain, and he promises me he'll watch over me. Before he leaves, he tells me his dad died of a stroke when he was just fifty-two.

The minutes tick slowly. I'm alone, waiting for the MRI results. Then the muscle-bound nurse comes in. He clasps my hand. “I saw the results. I wanted to be the first to tell you. You had a stroke.” Tears well up in his eyes. We hold hands for a long time. I am terrified. A stroke?
Really?
It seemed unbelievable, inconceivable. I could understand getting cancer, or getting hit by a bus, or maybe being eaten by a shark . . . but a stroke? Gimme a break! I am healthy as a mule! Strokes are for old people, really old people, right? My dear grandmother had a stroke when she was in her late eighties and her arms were flabby and soft as pillows! I just spent a summer waterskiing at 5:30
A.M.
and jack-hammering out a wall in my basement. I am fit as a freakin' fiddle!