Film School (42 page)

I'm supposed to fly back to Minnesota the day after Julie flies back. As I drive her to LAX, we simultaneously bring up the notion of me driving back instead of flying. We have only one car back home, and the break is a month. Plus, I'm absolutely exhausted. I've been directing a documentary crew, shooting a television show for USC, feeding information to Barbee and Gold. I've been constantly surrounded by people for four straight months. Every single day I'm surrounded. I need a break.

I cancel my air ticket and load a suitcase of dirty clothes into the Pontiac. There's a major winter storm bearing down from the Pacific Northwest when I leave Carl and Irene's house. It's supposed to rain that night, and snow in the mountains. Carl and Irene don't like me driving; they cluck like parents, but I need some space.

The drive is wonderful. The roads are empty. It's mid-December, and no one is out. I haul ass, knowing the storm is coming in fast behind me. The sun sets and I'm just hitting Arizona. I drive through the night on roads lined with snow banks with light flurries falling. Every hour I stop and do jumping jacks, then get back in the Pontiac and let it rip. I make it nearly to Texas before I pull over to rest at a cheap motel. The next day I do it again. The silence, the empty highways, the feeling of being away from Los Angeles all recharge me. I'm staying just a few hundred miles ahead of a snowstorm that seems to be chasing me across the country. At one point in West Texas, flurries fall again. I push the gas pedal down to stay ahead of the storm. I'm cruising at 100 miles per hour, then 110. I get ahead of the flurries. On empty stretches, I push it to 120 and faster. The Pontiac rumbles along the highway with plenty in reserve. The road is flat and straight and empty. All the while, I'm just listening to music, relaxing, watching for police and mule deer, and monitoring the oil pressure gauge on my dashboard. I've survived another semester.

The last four hundred miles is through a hard snow. The roads are covered with ice. I can hardly see a thing. I arrive at our home forty-seven hours after leaving Los Angeles. The Pontiac is covered with so much ice and road salt it's hard to know what color it is.

On the kitchen table, there's a check waiting from CBS. It's for the option extension. I deposit half and take half out in cash. I carry a thick wad of fifties in my pocket, and every cent we spend over Christmas comes from CBS.

When I drive back to
Los Angeles in early January, I'm feeling absolutely recharged. Film school is intense, not because you learn a lot (you do), but in part because it's such a social environment. Filming is always a group activity. I'm an extrovert, and it says a lot that I got tired of the constant contact with other people. After spending nearly a month with just my kids and Julie, I'm ready for one more round.

And this time, the weather driving to Los Angeles is simply spectacular. It's unseasonably warm, and I drive in bright sunshine the entire way. Not a cloud in the sky from Minneapolis to Los Angeles via Oklahoma City.

As I'm driving through Arizona, Ted calls. Good news: CBS is talking about casting some roles for our television show. Nothing is set yet, but it's a good sign, he says.

Over the break, I've read Carol Barbee's script and it's fantastic. It's tight and emotional. I understand why Gold and Hanson and Fenelon wanted Barbee aboard. I'm humbled, too. The script is so darn true to the vision I pitched it gives me goose bumps. Julie reads it and she's also excited.

Barbee has added a character not in my pitch: he's a radio reporter turned transplant coordinator. He's a young, geeky, Midwestern hayseed who, it turns out, is smarter than he seems. During the call, Ted tells me they're looking at an actor to play the role. “How cool is that? They're looking at a guy to play
you
!” When he says that, I almost veer into a ditch.

Barbee has changed the name to THREE RIVERS. It's set in Pittsburgh, not Chicago as I had pitched it. I like the name—it's meaningful, in that every transplant is an interweaving of three different stories: the donor, the recipient, and the doctors. But . . . I do like more on-the-nose titles. I named this book
Film School
. As a pup, I loved Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. I am named Steve. I like simple names and simple titles. ER. GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. SEINFELD.

Leave it to the French to name their films LE CHARME DISCRET DE LA BOURGEOISIE. Americans like GUNSMOKE. But the title THREE RIVERS? It's less direct than I'd like. It's not my first choice . . . but I can live with it.

Yet the one thing I simply don't like is the location. I love Chicago as a character, and it's a big, dynamic, massively corrupt city that people recognize. I've never spent any time in Pittsburgh and, Steelers aside, I don't know much about it.

This is a minor quibble, though. In real life, Pittsburgh is home to the largest transplant center in the United States, and Ted tells me Curtis loves the city. Besides, he says diplomatically, Chicago has been home to enough big medical dramas already with ER and CHICAGO HOPE. I see his point, and I cross my fingers.

T
his semester is simple. Just three classes. A scene-writing class. A really outstanding class on understanding visual relations in film. A film history class. Only six credits. When I finish, I'm done. I'll get my degree.

The word around campus has accelerated about my role with CBS. Classmates start asking me if I can get them a job on the show if it becomes a reality.

I gently explain that that's a long way from happening. Our next hurdle is to be approved for a pilot. Ted, my personal tour guide to all things in network television, explains it's a matter of constant winnowing down by the network. The network will hear thousands of pitches every year. The network might then order a hundred or so scripts. Of those scripts, they'll approve maybe ten pilots in a good year. And of those pilots, all shot for millions of dollars each, they'll maybe order three or four or five series. Of those series, maybe one or two will last several years. Of those, a very rare one will be a hit, making the owners of the show rich and famous. We have a lot of hurdles left.

We're at the level where a script has been written. We're one of a hundred.

But we know we're in the top tier. We have a sought-after show-runner in Barbee. Executive producers Hanson and Fenelon and Gold are all top players. Krause calls to tell me he hears lots of good gossip about the show. I'm hoping we'll be in the running to get a pilot shot. If CBS orders it, I'll have achieved something remarkable. I'll have taken a grad school class project all the way to the pilot level. It's unheard of at USC.

As the semester moves forward, I'm locked into the gossip on Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood website. She's the ultimate insider in TV land, and I constantly log onto her site, looking for news about the upcoming pilot orders.

Then I hear bad news: Jerry Bruckheimer also has a medical show in development at CBS. Jerry Bruckheimer is to television what Arnold Schwarzenegger is to bodybuilding. He's a legend. He's already got megahits like the CSI franchises at CBS and WITHOUT A TRACE and COLD CASE, and he's a producer of a bazillion big-budget movies. He's arguably the most powerful producer in television. CBS doesn't need two medical shows, just one. The gossip seems to be it's a horse race between THREE RIVERS and Bruckheimer's show, an action-filled drama about trauma surgeons based in Miami called MIAMI MEDICAL (speaking of naming it on the nose!).

When I hear this, my heart sinks. Suddenly, our crew seems like a little engine compared to the massive freight train that is Bruckheimer. I tell Gold we'll just have to be the Little Engine that Could. Suddenly, the platinum-plated names on our team don't look so luminous.

The pilot season comes closer. The week when we're supposed to hear is a cold and rainy one. It's midwinter in L.A., and I never cease to be amazed how much it actually rains in Los Angeles. It rains every single day. I can't focus on my class work at all. I can tell Ted and Carol Barbee are also on pins and needles. It's agonizing to wait. The decision is made by the networks, and it seems like we're waiting for white smoke to rise from a Vatican chimney.

On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the other networks announce their pilot orders. I watch the announcements via my BlackBerry. CBS is going to be the last. On Friday of Hollywood's informal “let's announce the pilots” week, I can't stand it. I've hardly slept.

I go to USC and find myself unable to do anything but pace. Today, we'll find out if we make it to the next step. If my idea becomes a reality on film, I'll get enough to pay a semester of tuition. This entire semester I'm working as an assistant for a professor for ten measly bucks an hour, plus a thousand bucks off my tuition bill. Now I'm waiting to hear if I'll get a nice fat check that will make that assistantship seem like chump change. To relieve my nervousness, I finally take shelter in the film school library. It's Friday afternoon, and no word yet. I check out THE WAGES OF FEAR, the classic 1953 French film about a group of men on a suicide mission who drive trucks filled with nitroglycerine up a treacherous mountain road. The tension and bleakness of the film help calm my nerves.

At 5
P.M.
, the library closes. I walk through the rain, not wanting to check my BlackBerry. Finally, at 6
P.M.
, I can't help myself. I have to know. I look up Nikki Finke online and . . . there it is: Bruckheimer's MIAMI MEDICAL, our competition, has been picked to shoot a pilot. We've lost.

I feel so bummed out I can't describe it. I just feel the energy drain from my body. For an hour I sit on a couch, not moving. I call Julie and tell her the bad news. She only says, “Oh, I'm sorry.” I know she's bummed, too. She's cut back on her hours this semester to be home more with the kids, and money is tight. We could use the cash.

Finally, I walk toward my car. It's pouring outside. I get in and start the slow slog toward Carl and Irene's house. The seventeen miles will take more than an hour in the rain. Traffic is a mess.

My parents call, and I hardly have the energy to tell them the transplant show is dead. I hang up and drive, watching my windshield wipers go back and forth.

Now what will I do? I'm just a regular old grad student again. The ride is over all too quickly.

I'm working my way up Highway 2 in stop-and-go traffic when I notice the message light blinking on my BlackBerry. I pick it up and look at the text message. It's from Ted.

IT'S A GO!!!

I call Ted. He's freaked. CBS announced very late in the day they're ordering a pilot of THREE RIVERS. I start screaming in the car. Truly screaming. I call Julie. I'm screaming. She can't hear me. She finally understands. I start to cry. I call my parents. I scream to them. It's been a complete and total reversal in two short hours. I've never experienced such a swing of emotions.

When I get to La Cañada, it's still pouring. I park in a lot by my favorite bar and leave messages for my brothers and some close friends. I'm still screaming. I walk into the bar—it's a classy steak joint, less than a mile from Carl and Irene's—and climb onto a stool. I tell the bartender to give me a drink of single malt scotch. I order the biggest steak they have. I order drinks for the guy on my right and the couple on my left. When they ask me what the reason is, I tell them: “I just sold a television show to CBS.”

I
n March, I'm checking into a room at the grandest hotel in Pittsburgh. THREE RIVERS is starting its pilot shoot. We're the biggest story in town. It's late—my plane through Philadelphia was delayed by bad weather—so everyone else is already asleep. Shooting begins in the morning. I try to sleep, but it doesn't come.

In the morning, I meet with Carol Barbee and Curtis Hanson and Carol Fenelon and Ted Gold. More than 120 cast and crew members are on the set. The excitement in the air is tremendous. I spend the day sitting in those nice director's chairs reserved for big shots. I'm an executive here, and I'm a little weirded out by how deferential some of the crew are. They treat me like royalty. I can't get over the contrast. At USC, I'm still coiling my own cables, doing dirty work, and here I'm being asked if I would like another cup of coffee while I sit and watch the monitors in the director's video village.

Sometimes I feel the same lightheadedness I felt after I was released from the UCLA hospital. I know I'm fine this time. I can't believe my luck. I'm sitting shoulder to shoulder with Curtis Hanson. I tell him I very much appreciate the scene in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL where a stunned Det. Jack Vincennes is shot in the chest by his boss, Capt. Dudley Smith.

Carol Fenelon is warm and gracious to me. She explains the good luck Curtis Hanson (her ex-husband) has had with USC. “His first big film was THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, and that was written by a USC grad student! Isn't it fitting that his first foray into television is also from USC?” I nod my head like an idiot. “Yes,” I blather, “it's a very good thing.”

The money being spent is incredible. We have a forty-eight-foot semitruck holding electric gear. Another semi holding grip equipment. A five-ton prop truck. A semi carrying cameras and sound equipment. A sound effects truck. A set decorating truck. A twenty-two-foot construction truck. A twenty-four-foot construction truck. A fuel truck. A generator truck. A forty-eight-foot wardrobe truck. Five trailers for talent. A freight truck. Four shuttle buses. And one
honey wagon
—Hollywood talk for a rolling toilet.

A comparatively small amount of money is going to me, but I'll be making more than I made in my entire first year working for Minnesota Public Radio. I'm beginning to like television very much.

Visiting the pilot shoot is a gas, pure and simple. I meet our lead, Alex O'Loughlin, and another lead, Kate Moennig. I tell both of them my kids' college funds are depending upon their acting. O'Loughlin is a teaser, always quick with a joke. Both of them came from previous shows that had zealous fans (O'Loughlin from MOONLIGHT, Moennig from THE L WORD). They're simultaneously intense and fun.