Internships

When I was in high school I was given the chance to be an intern (a nice word for free labor) on the production of a United Cerebral Palsy Telethon. The broadcast was produced by Allen Hall, the producer for 25 years of Bozo’s Circus on WGN-TV. I only got the job because my dad met Al Hall at a cocktail party and quick to get his kid out of the house Dad volunteered me. (At this same cocktail party my dad had his picture taken with Cesar Romero and it made all the papers. I still have no idea what Dad and The Joker were doing together, but there they are forever together in print.)

I went to the studio that evening not really knowing what to expect. I had no skills or experience. I didn’t know anyone, BUT I was smart enough to keep my eyes open and see what I could do. For the most part I ushered clowns- Bozo, Cookie, Whizzo- back and forth between the green room and the set and took messages and food between the control room and Al at the front of the stage.

As happens in 24-hour telethons there is a lot of downtime and that is when this internship really paid off. I was just starting to think about colleges and asked Al where he thought a young guy like me should go- Syracuse, Northwestern and Boston University, I still remember his answer. I also spent a lot of time with Jose (Joe) Cornejo who was the associate producer and was a regular member of WGN’s Cub broadcast team. I asked him where he went to college and he said, “Hard Knocks.”

Thinking he said Knox College I said, “In Galesburg?”

He laughed and said, “No, the school of hard knocks.”

I still didn’t get it, then finally it dawned on me. “You didn’t go to college!” I asked as if he had two heads. Nope, and lesson learned.

I must have done something right that night because Al Hall gave me his business card (the first one I ever received) and invited me out to the station. A couple of years later he gave me a letter of recommendation for college and a year after that recommended me for an internship at an NBC affiliate. Joe Cornejo invited me to the ballpark to watch a Cubs broadcast from the booth.

This one night of experience quickly went to the top of the work experience portion of my resume- pushing aside Soda Jerk, Paper Boy and Camp Counselor. Getting in the door was the first step, but knowing how to act professionally once there was the key. Had I been bored, inattentive, less curious or fallen asleep- all very real possibilities when working all night- I would have missed out on the chance that really helped define and shape my career.

The moral of the story is obvious (it’s not become drinking buddies with Cesar Romero) take every opportunity you get and make the most of it when you can.

Lesson Learned.

PeterH

Plate Spinning

I am often asked about how I can juggle being a full-time teacher and a full-time filmmaker. Honestly, I don’t give it much thought, it is just something I do and have done for a long time. Ten years ago I did all that and went to graduate school at the same time and not only survived, but was the better for it.

Multi-tasking is something I am hardwired to do. Much to my mom’s displeasure (though I really think she likes getting my dad out of the house) my dad can’t sit still. He is busier in “retirement” than when he worked.

To me the real key is collaboration. If you work with a bunch of trusted, good people then executing the work and time management is easy. And come on it is the film business after all. It’s not as if I am juggling being a member of the bomb squad and a transplant surgeon.

Of course the main reason for doing this is that being an active filmmaker makes me a better teacher, and teaching makes me a better filmmaker. Besides, what else would I do?

PeterH

The Office

I tell students often that the hardest part of being a filmmaker is getting the job. Once you get the job you just do what you have been training to do and the work should be easy. But that’s not really true, the REAL hardest part of the job is dealing with the client.

Out favorite clients are the ones that say, “Jim, Peter we want you to go to London to shoot a couple of days and then take a day or two for yourselves.” This actually has happened, and when it did, I immediately hit the phone and got us a reservation at The River Cafe- our favorite restaurant.

Unfortunately for the dumb filmmaker and his business partner this is a rare occurrence. More commonly we get a agency producer or client who likes to micro-manage. On more than one occasion- see my Cozmic Crunch post- we have had to handhold someone through the process and make a ton of changes only to come back to our original vision.

It is a paradox I never seem to get my head around. We’ve been hired because the client has seen our work and liked it, spoken with us, agreed to a budget, and then instead of letting us do that work they get all super hands on and controlling.

I don’t get it.

When I go to a restaurant I do not barge into the kitchen and ask the chef why he is braising the osso bucco like that. I choose the dish and it is delivered to me. Then, if I have questions I ask. (A little more lemon zest perhaps, but I am finicky.) Yet, in this business you find this all too frequently.

I was recently telling a friend about a project and said we padded a budget because instinctively we knew the client was going to need managing. They will spend more money because we will have to spend time massaging the client, rather than being filmmakers. I think it goes both ways: if the client is a micro-manager then we will need to manage them more. You get what you pay for but please try to stay out of our kitchen. If you need more lemon zest, we’ll deliver

PeterH

Let’s Play Two!

With apologies to Ernie Banks, Jim and I played a doubleheader today.

At 7:00 this morning we shot one of our Teen Parents as she spoke to a group of high school students about the choices she made and how it has impacted her life. It is, I think, (Have I said this before?) the last scene we will shoot for this Teen Parent film and it was a nice finishing piece of the puzzle. This young woman comes full circle so to speak.

We wrapped that job at 8:30 and drove into the city to start the second gig. We have signed confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements so all I can say is that over the next month we and a team of cameramen are shooting locations all over Chicago. When it becomes public I can reveal more. I can add this: tomorrow we shoot across the city, ending at Wrigley Field as the Cubs/Arizona playoff game begins.

Between the two jobs we also made an equipment change. The Teen Parent film is shot in standard definition, the new job is on HD. The two experiences could not be more different- both in subject matter and technology and brain function for the dumb filmmaker.

Strange as it seems it is not the first time we have played two. A few years ago we were in Seattle shooting at Safeco Field (maybe it’s a baseball stadium thing that ties two jobs together) when we got a phone call asking if we could shoot something at the offices of that really big coffee merchant based out of Seattle- again non-disclosure prevents me saying more, but there is a half-caf, dry, grande, latte in it for you if you can figure it out. Anyway, we wrapped at Safeco at lunch, ate and started job number two. It was a nice way to pocket travel and per diem and do our client a big favor and give them something they ordinarily would not have paid for.

Being double booked has its advantages, but it sure makes me tired. The dumb filmmaker can only keep so many plates spinning at once.

PeterH

Reading Mary Beth

Today is my sister’s birthday. And in lieu of giving her anything tangible for her birthday, (cheapskate, busy) I am going to post a piece I originally wrote for Book Magazine in 2002. In the magazine they gave us the last page and it was illustrated by a drawing of Mary Beth’s and one of her journal entries which, as always, begins, “Toady, I…”

Happy Birthday Mary Beth. You are catching up to me.

PeterH

During the summer of 1972, while my mother was pregnant, my parents and I read The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine together. My father had read the book with his family thirty years earlier. Written in 1896 by Franck Stockton, it details the humorous adventures of two plainspoken, determined women who, along with their companion and narrator Mr. Craig, begin a trip from San Francisco to Japan with great expectations, only to become shipwrecked on a desert island. Ultimately their adventure turns into a better trip than the one they had intended to take.

That summer, we too had great hopes and expectations. I was nearly nine years old and convinced the kid would play second base next to my shortstop, turning the pivot on the Hawley to Hawley to Yastrzemski double play. My parents, teachers and great readers of mysteries, no doubt imagined a future doctor or lawyer or Ellery Queen. On October 4 my sister was born, and it soon became clear that she would not be any of those things. A doctor diagnosed her as retarded and suggested institutionalization.

As it turned out, Mary Beth was not institutionalized, but she would never become a doctor or lawyer or a second baseman, either. Still, like the rest of our family, she has always loved to read. She is about to turn thirty, and while not a strong reader, she is an avid one. She cozies up to the Sweet Valley Jr. High series and loves listening to the Harry Potter books on tape. And she relates to the Madeleine books because she, like Madeleine, was always dodging trouble.

Each summer when we were young, we would take our Pinto station wagon on road trips to and from Massachusetts. My sister and I would share the backseat. The trips were filled with lots of yelling and screaming, and one of my jobs was to keep my sister occupied. The best way to do it was by reading picture books to her. Curious George, Dr. Seuss — anything with a rhyme and colorful pictures did the trick. When I was thirteen, my sister wandered off during a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame. My dad, frantic, paid ten bucks for some kid’s bike and tore across Cooperstown, New York, looking for her. She reappeared an hour later, calmly holding hands with the person who found her. Years later in Paris with my parents, Mary Beth refused to leave until she saw the hospital where Madeleine had her appendix removed.

Last Thanksgiving we visited our parents in Florida. Mary Beth, as is her habit, brought three library books with her. She pitched a fit when she realized the books would be due before she returned home, and she didn’t want to pay the forty-five–cent fine. We gave her two quarters, but she wouldn’t budge. So the day after Thanksgiving, we all marched to the post office and mailed the books back to the library. It cost us $3.95, but she was happy that the books were returned on time.

Like the characters in The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine, my parents and I have adapted to our adventure, and while our journey has not been the one we expected to take, it has been, perhaps, better. We do not take for granted moments such as seeing Mary Beth race across the finish line at the Special Olympics, winning yet another gold medal, or the day she moved into her own apartment in Davenport, Iowa where she works for the Handicapped Development Center assisting physically disabled clients. And though I am an egghead college teacher, I think she might have a greater appreciation for the written word. She is the only one in the family who keeps a daily journal.

I have given up on the hope of playing for the Red Sox, and I know Mary Beth and I will never have deep conversations about Fagin or the Cheshire Cat, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to read her. The other day as she worked her way through another Sweet Valley Jr. High book, I sat wonderingwhere those words were taking her. So, I asked Mary Beth why she liked to read, and she looked at me and gave the same answer anybody would, “It’s fun,” she said. “And I like the stories.”

The Experience

If you can just get your mind together
then come across to me.
We’ll hold hands and then we’ll watch the sun rise from the bottom of
the sea.
But first
Are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Well I have.
— Jimi Hendrix

Towards the end of the first class I ever taught a student commented on what we had been doing for the last 15 weeks and said that it was pretty cool. And I flippantly responded, “Yes, that’s The Peter Hawley Experience.” Of course I was just playing off of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and how was I to know he had know idea what I was referencing.

Anyway, a few days later other students were saying they were glad they had the Peter Hawley Experience. I thought they were joking, maybe even making fun of me, but no. Soon it caught on and I was even calling my own classes “the Peter Hawley experience (lower case of course.) But it stuck and even as recently as a week ago I heard from a former student who said they were glad to have the “experience.”

That word- experience- is funny. It says a lot. It is active not passive. A while ago we were sitting around a faculty meeting and my colleague John Murray commented on how much he hated using the word “exercise” when giving assignments. He added that it always made him want to pull on sweat pants an do push ups- not the image you want to give to students. (Push ups, not John in sweats, a striking figure.)

I couldn’t agree more and since then we have made a conscious choice to call all of our in class work- experiences rather than exercises. So my screenwriting students now have the experience of writing and presenting a logline and a pitch rather than the “exercise” of writing one.

This in short is part of what makes up The Peter Hawley Experience. I am so glad I didn’t reference another song on Are You Experienced, or all my students would be suffering from “Manic Depression touching their soul.”

PeterH

The Graduate

I was struck dumb the other day (an easy pose for me) when I saw the release of the special 40th Anniversary edition DVD of The Graduate. I have seen The Graduate maybe 20 times, maybe more. It’s one of my favorite films because every time I view it I see something else.

I saw it first when I was about to graduate from high school and I think I identified with Ben in many ways- just being a little confused and wondering what there was in this life, all these adults coming at you with suggestions. I don’t know what, as Mrs. Robinson says to him.

The next time I saw it was during my freshman year in Boston at a screening on the Harvard campus. Students were laughing. Laughing! How dare they ruin my film by laughing. Then I realized it was also a comedy and really appreciated the humor in the film. On other viewings I enjoyed it for the images- they way they flowed and the montages of Ben and Mrs. Robinson both before and after he tells Elaine of the affair.

I like any film you can deconstruct from multiple perspectives (for kicks look at Casablanca as a musical, then again as a comedy). One could write a thesis on The Graduate as a musical. Everyone remembers the Simon and Garfunkel music but often overlooked is Dave Grusin’s great score and incidental music.

One of the last times I saw the film was just after 9-11 and I was struck by how unaffected Ben and Elaine are by the Vietnam War and the Summer of Love. Nowhere in the film- with the possible exception of Norman Fell asking Ben if he is an “agitator”- is there a reference to hippies and the war. Ben follows Elaine to Berkeley for christsakes. I am almost certain there were protests against the war then and someone on campus had a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s or The Doors first record or Are You Experienced. The lack of contemporary cultural references is the one strike against The Graduate.

I care about the film so much my friend Craig tells me that on my tombstone (OK I want to be cremated, but that’s another story) it will say, “Here lies PeterH. He didn’t get to make The Graduate.”

PeterH

Pulp

The first semester I was a college teacher I began receiving treatments for films that went a little like this:

Two hit men, one black and one white, in black suits travel around the city.

or

A man with a band aid on the back of his neck opens a briefcase and a light glows on his face.

or

A woman overdoses on heroin and a man brings her back to life with a needle of adrenaline to the heart.

That spring vacation I finally had some time off and caught up on some movies. So I am in the theater and John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson hit the screen and I’m thinking this is familiar. Then Uma Thurman gets a shot of adrenaline and I start getting annoyed. Finally when a band-aided Ving Rhames opened a briefcase and a light shines on his face, I swore out loud, mid-movie, “Those sons of bitches!”

When class resumed after the break I read them the riot act and tried to introduce the idea of original thought to the class. Since then I have been on the lookout for the popular student film. The following is a brief list of films important to my students and what they tried to do with it.

1) Fight Club. For a while every student film had to be green and film students started throwing around the processing phrase “bleach bypass.”

2) The Usual Suspects. Student films are often confusing on their own. When they intentionally try to be confusing watch out.

3) Being John Malkovich. Not the plot so much but how many times can you use the half-floor trick.

4) Trainspotting. There was about a three semester stretch where every student film had to have strung out heroin addicts and music by Iggy Pop.

PeterH

The Classic Film

There is something really comforting in that old stand by, the classic film. It’s that film you have seen a half dozen times at least, or you flip on the TV and there it is and you sit down and watch it even though you have things to do, and before you know it the dishes aren’t done and it’s past your bedtime.

A bunch of films come to mind- just about anything by Billy Wilder- Sunset Boulevard, or any of his Matthau/Lemon films. Thinking of Walter Matthau takes my mind to Charade, where he is a good bad guy, and Charade lands me on both Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Who is the modern day equivalent of Hepburn and Grant? Julia Roberts and George Clooney? Even as I type those names I think, wha? As they say, they don’t make them like that any more.

When I was making Victimless Crimes we worked six-day weeks, except for two days when we transitioned from shooting during the day to three weeks of night shooting. I had a serious head cold and settled down with a bowl of matzo ball soup and flipped on the TV. I had been trying to avoid films because I didn’t want to “accidently, ” borrow any ideas, but I was tired and had a cold and North by Northwest was just starting so I couldn’t help myself. I watched it for probably the 10th time and when we came to the cornfield scene I sat up and noticed, really for the first time, how Hitchcock (will I ever be known as a director by just my last name?) put together the sequence.

I took stumbling on NxNW as a sign from the film Gods, so I began redesigning shots for the next scene we were going to shoot. There are no crop dusters in Victimless Crimes, but I can tell you exactly what shots were influenced by watching a classic film.

And my cold went away. Never deny yourself the chance to re-see a classic film.

PeterH

Improvisation

I like to joke that as a teacher I make it up as I go along. All that preparation- who needs it? If I wanted to do homework I would be a student not a teacher. I am mostly joking, but as in any joke there is a little truth to it. I prefer to think of it as being in the moment and open to the flow of the class. Like jazz musicians playing live, there is a general plan and I work within it, yet still go off on solos and come back for the big finish. It works for me, I think.

Currently I am team-teaching (a first for me) with Perry Harovas, the head of the Visual FX department, and it has been a blast. Co-teaching allows me to be both leader and observer- and I have Perry teach all the hard stuff while I sit back and watch. The class is a micro-class of four sessions geared towards opening students up to the building blocks of storytelling. Informally, I call it the attention to details class.

On Thursday I started the class and these were my only notes:

Recap- Why are we doing this?
Hustle and Flow
Sendak- Shape of Music- process
Zappa
Guitar
Fantasia

I didn’t even get to Hustle and Flow- that will be saved for a later day- but those brief notes lead us into a really great 90-minute session. Briefly, for those without a syllabus, our students had read an essay by Maurice Sendak about seeing colors in music. This lead me to ask students about their own creative process. Surprise! they seemed to discover they do in fact have a process, they just hadn’t called it that yet. From there we went to a brief essay by Frank Zappa about framing (placing in context) one’s art.

Earlier in the day I asked Perry what he thought about me bringing my guitar to class and seeing what the students “saw” as I played. I played a minor chord- students saw generally dark, moody images- followed by a major chord- and suddenly everyone was happy. I then passed the guitar to a student who played a nice little riff using both major and minor chords. It was great- we are about to create the Flashpoint school song. All of this lead us into screening the Sorcerer’s Apprentice section of Fantasia and a lively discussion about the interplay of sound and image.

We think it worked well, but only time will tell.

PeterH

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