Free Film School by Steve Boman Page B

who has returned to school. I am careful not to disrupt his business. The hearse looks great, too, and he agrees to act for me a bit, shutting the doors to the hearse.
    At the start of the week, I put out some calls to student actors at USC who had advertised their willingness to work for student directors. I need a full day from an actor. But none of the student actors I speak to are game.
    I go through books of actors’ headshots inside the USC Student Production Office—SPO, as the students call it. I’m new to the casting game, and I’m clueless. No one returns my calls. I’m told to put a casting notice online, but I put it off, hoping to get a USC acting student.
    When Thursday comes, I’m still actor-less. I have to shoot Friday—it’s when the office I’m using is open—and I’ve got nothing. I feel the pressure rising. I was hoping to spend the weekend with my family in Camarillo. I feel the tension grabbing my innards. With my first little exercise, I was able to use my kids. Now I’m coming up with nothing for film #2, and I know FTC is watching me closely.
    I feel surreally out of my element. I’d spent a decade as a reporter convincing people to be interviewed; I spent a year organizing life-and-death transplant operations; I’ve raised three kids . . . and now I’m starting to freak out because I can’t find an actor willing to spend a day in front of a camera, in Los Angeles. And only have to say one word.
    In my 507 class on Thursday afternoon, I’m thoroughly anxious. In class, I ask a few classmates if they know anyone who could act for me. They shake their heads no .
    As class lets out, I feel awful. The sun is going down. I feel my time is running out. S., the comic kid with the red hair, asks me what’s wrong. I tell him I can’t find an actor. S. shrugs and says, “I’ll act for you.”
    I want to hug him, plant a kiss on his forehead. I don’t, but suddenly the sunset takes on a beautiful glow. The cracked sidewalk leading from Zemeckis becomes a gorgeous pathway. I run down the sidewalk to my car. I have some clothes to buy for my character, and now I know what size to buy.
    Friday morning dawns sunny and clear. I understand why early filmmakers loved this city. The weather so predictable, so stable, that it means one less worry when making a film. The cloud cover is exactly the same as it was Tuesday, when I shot at the funeral home, and Wednesday, when I shot at the cathedral. Now, Friday, S. meets me at Zemeckis at 9 A.M. I bought some clothes for him the night before at a T.J. Maxx. I have a white dress shirt and a pair of dress slacks. I brought my own black shoes. S. changes into the clothes, puts his pile of red hair into a tight bun, and the transformation is total. The alt-rock artist is now a conservatively dressed white-collar worker.
    For the film, I ask him to be very reserved, not to display any emotions at the cathedral for the funeral or when he’s reading his father’s handwritten scrawl.
    In the earliest days of film a century ago, actors really projected their emotions: a character about to be run over by a train emoted by overamping the screams, the knuckle biting, the arm waving. Today, to our modern sensibilities, it looks comic.
    But in the twenty-first century, student films have their own version of overacting. Most student films are dramas. Many of the dramas are about breaking up with a boyfriend or a girlfriend. In student films, a woman who discovers her boyfriend is leaving her will generally do one, some, or all of these:
Sob uncontrollably while holding a breakup letter.
Stare out the window, with tears flowing down her cheeks.
Sob while clutching a pillow.
Smoke and stare at a picture of the former boyfriend, then drop her head and sob some more.
    The remaining dramas generally involve bad dads—overbearing and narrow-minded assholes, guys who spend their