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One of the greatest challenges new graduates in any discipline face is making the transition into the workplace. Perhaps nowhere is that challenge more daunting than in Hollywood, where connections are paramount and talent is a given. Though USC had enjoyed a long tradition of established alumni helping new grads find their way in the world, originally the school had no formal job placement service.
That changed eight years ago, with the creation of the Student-Industry Relations Program – sponsored by a gift from George Lucas’s ex-wife, film editor Marcia Lucas. The elite program is directed by former William Morris Agency vice president Larry Auerbach, who in his 47 years with the agency represented such notable directors as Norman Jewison (Moonstruck, 1987) and Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor, 1987), as well as actors Alan Alda, Robert Wagner and Bea Arthur.
Fledgling filmmakers Steven Spielberg, John Milius ’67 and George Lucas ’66 chat at Warner Bros.
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In the time-honored tradition of teaching a person how to fish rather than furnishing the catch of the day, Auerbach believes one of his key functions is to instill in students the absolute imperative of “culturing” their own relationships. Sitting by the phone and waiting for it to ring doesn’t produce results, he says. “You’ve got to motivate the action. If you build up the proper kind of network, where you can reach people to help open doors, you’ll get your shot,” Auerbach augurs.
Besides offering his advice to writers and filmmakers, Auerbach has developed a certificate program at USC, called the Business of Entertainment, designed for graduate-level students in business, communications, law and cinema-television. Working with the USC Marshall School of Business, he has also helped create an undergraduate track to groom students for careers as industry executives.
Auerbach’s office also hosts the “First Look” film festival. Presented twice a year, “First Look” gives industry people and film buffs a chance to see the latest in USC cinema school film fare.
 ooking beyond the alumni’s recommendations, Daley addressed a few imperatives of her own. First on the docket was beefing up the television aspect of the program.
“When I came here,” she recalls, “I took a look at the place and said: That t on the building – I don’t think it’s a capital letter.”
To boost the school’s emphasis on television, Daley brought in one of the medium’s most seasoned hands – former CBS executive vice president Barbara Corday – to chair the film and video production division. Corday, along with electronic media program director Jerry Isenberg, built on the division’s successful sitcom pilot course, adding classes on sitcoms and dramatic episodes where students could learn the ropes of producing, directing and writing for the small screen.
“More than half of the industry’s employment opportunities are in television,” Corday says. “It really was up to us to make sure students were prepared to go out there. For our graduates to lack such training would be like a doctor not knowing about tonsils when he got out of school.”
Having bolstered the television program, Daley turned her attention to the challenge of recruiting more women and minorities into the profession. A flurry of new scholarships, fellowships, youth institutes and special programs have addressed this need. Driving it all is Daley’s “very fundamental belief that this industry needs
to look like the country. We need – both from a business perspective and from a moral perspective – to better represent the country.”
A third imperative was keeping up with the proliferation of digital technologies redefining the way Hollywood works. Everything from how people make films and TV shows to what format the audience watches them on is up for grabs.
Daley has proved a visionary in this arena. In 1993, she took on an additional role as executive director of USC’s Annenberg Center for Communication (www.annenberg.edu). Created by a highly publicized $120 million endowment from publisher Walter Annenberg, the center underwrites research that joins high-tech engineering and the social sciences with the product-oriented perspective of cinema.
As USC mounted a strong push to be the pre-eminent university in the field of communications, Daley has partnered with the School of Engineering on other cutting-edge projects, such as the Entertainment Technology Center (www.etcenter.org), a multimedia think-tank created in 1993; and the Institute for Creative Technologies, a $45 million effort funded in 1999 by the U.S. Army to explore virtual-reality immersion tools for entertainment and military applications.
In another coup, Daley persuaded Mark Pesce – co-inventor of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language, now a worldwide 3D effects standard – to sign on as director of the school’s Interactive Media program in 1998.
With these and other projects, Daley aims to keep the cinema-television school “a little ahead of the industry.” And she’s not shy about going after the resources to make such ambitious undertakings happen, harnessing her widely admired talent to network within the industry.
“I’ve never minded to ask,” she says. “People can say no. I have never yet had anyone be upset with us for asking.”
Daley’s asking has translated into multimillion dollar improvements for the school, including the $2.5 million Sony Media Center, funded in 1996; and the soon-to-be-completed $15 million Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts.
“I’m very proud of the school,” she says. “I feel very legitimate in saying to the folks in the industry, ‘Give to any charity you want. I give to charity, we all do. But this is not a charity. This is an investment in the health of your industry.’”
 he adage “if you build it, they will come” is especially apt in the field of celluloid dreams. Careers in Hollywood remain as seductive, lucrative and creatively gratifying as in the early days. But breaking into Hollywood is harder than ever, which perhaps explains why competition to secure one of the 1,200 graduate and undergraduate slots in USC’s program is stiff.
What draws them?
For some, it’s the cachet of attending a film school that has consistently topped U.S. News and World Report surveys. For others, it’s the chance to follow in the footsteps of masters such as Lucas, Milius and Zemeckis. For others still, it’s the hope that having USC on their résumés will open doors that otherwise would have remained locked.
“I got something out of the school that was important to me or people like me, who come from the outside, don’t have the connections, don’t have all the things going for them,” says Bill Mechanic ’79, chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment.
Mechanic came to USC with a dream of writing for film. He landed a job as head of programming for SelecTV in the early days of pay television, and has since worked his way up the ladder at Fox. “[USC] allowed me to become the person I am and prepared me for my current job,” he says.
Though a USC cinema degree opens doors, there aren’t any guarantees about what’s on the other side. Aspiring screenwriters may wind up as TV executives, cinematographer wannabes could become film editors, animators might find themselves working as multimedia consultants, and production hopefuls could turn into talent agents.
Besides mastering a range of filmmaking skills, students also have to learn how to “play the game.” The school’s “studio model” approach ensures that students learn to hustle their wares. Nothing comes on a silver platter. Even on student projects, screenwriters must peddle their scripts; producers must learn to manage budgets; directors must articulate
Director James Ivory MA ’57 editing at USC.
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the artistic merit of their vision.
For senior Andy Cheatwood, who will graduate this spring with a degree in critical studies, the most positive aspect of his USC experience was not to be found in the formal courses or resources the school offered, but rather in the way he learned to fend for himself in a highly competitive environment.
“I realized that if I was going to get anything out of the film school, I would have to go out and seek it, rather than expect it to come to me,” Cheatwood says. “I had to be more proactive in the types of classes I took, the types of people I surrounded myself with, and my whole path in the film school in general.”
Such basic survival skills come in handy in the real world, observes Gregory McKnight MFA ’94, a literary agent at the William Morris Agency.
“There’s something about competitive systems at the film school that causes talented students to figure out how to arouse that talent and shape that knowledge within themselves,” McKnight says. “This is a critical function when you’re in the movie business. Nobody in particular is going to help you or tell you how to do it. They’re just going to hope you’re talented, self-actualizing and motivated.”
 hat would Douglas Fairbanks and Rufus von Klein-Smid say if they could see USC today? After grumbling about having to check their dueling swords with USC Public Safety, they would likely be dumbstruck by the transformation the film program has undergone in the past 70 years.
They might have trouble recognizing this first-rate school – with its digital special effects labs and elaborate, multi-building complex – as the direct descendent of the basic “Introduction to the Photoplay” course they helped foster.
But the university president and the silver-screen star would take comfort, no doubt, in knowing that despite all that has changed in the intervening 70 years, the core mission of the program has remained true to their early mandate.
“Our fundamental business of engaging people and telling stories, of reflecting the society we live in – that doesn’t change,” says Daley.
John Zollinger, in addition to being an aspiring screenwriter, is the editor of Networker@USC, the university’s technology newsmagazine.
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