Film School, Class of '69

By Timothy Wade Huntley

Films of the '50s and '60s were largely of three types, separate-bed comedies, Westerns, and B Sci-Fi films. Westerns outnumbered all other genres 20 to one. All had identical plots, and all were as unwatchable then as now. Hollywood was in need of an overhaul.

Waiting in the wings, eager to pounce, were a tiny number of cocky college kids with extraordinary talent, who were on the verge of saving Hollywood from it's own ineptitude. Their formula, if you want to call it that, was imagination, something seriously lacking in Hollywood fare. Among the better known of these film school kids is Francis Coppola, whose Godfather is the best movie ever made, point of fact, period, end of discussion. And George Lucas who gave us Star Wars, the most influential film ever made. There were dozens of other influential talents known mostly to insiders, all enrolled at the same time in one of three film schools, USC, UCLA, and NYU. The era between 1965 and 69 produced an uncanny number of brilliant film makers, and their success spawned the hundreds of university film schools around the U.S., but at the time, with minor exception, there were just these three.

Why so many of these massively talented kids should find themselves in one place at one time is a mystery this telling does not solve, although it suggests a theory. The UCLA film school, at the time, and at no time since, offered a degree of freedom unmatched by any other department on campus. An unstructured universe is a breeding ground for talent because it allows people to explore paths that reach out in every direction. If your thing was music, rock on. The Doors and two other rock bands of note arose from the same small group of film students. Why? Because no one said they shouldn't. And no one in the anti-establishment climate of the time ever dared to say "Follow these rules for this is how it's done." For these kids, rules were clear statements of what not to do.

The film schools gave their students two things that mattered above all else, freedom, as mentioned, and access - access to equipment, access to a society of like-minded others, and most of all, access to an audience. UCLA offered the most freedom of the three schools, and the biggest audience. UCLA held the Royce Hall Student Film Festivals, twice a year, and these were enormously successful. When a basketball game was playing at the same time, the student film festival drew the larger crowd. People came by the thousands, night after night, because at the time it was their only chance to see films that Hollywood did not make. Student films were crappy films, for the most part, but they had one thing Hollywood was incapable of providing: something different. Critics called student films adolescent smut. Many of the films shown at Royce were just that, but they all showed imagination of the sort that just wasn't available anywhere else. Take George Lucas's student film THX 1138 for example, an SC film. It got whoops and hollers at every screening. The buzz among the students was: "This guy's on to something."

Film School, Class of 69 is a historical novel about the film school at UCLA, written by someone who was there. It is a composite of characters, events, and films based on the faded memories of the author. Like Camelot, it is a story of a brief but magical moment in time, when rebellion flourished and the "establishment" was the source of all evil. It is not point-by-point accurate, like a history lecture, but rather an emotional experience giving the reader a feel for what it was like to be there. It is written from the point-of-view of a fictional character who was entirely unaware that the industry was about to change, or that he and his fellow students were about to change it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Timothy Wade Huntley
• Release date: Jan 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9780971843790

Book preview

FOREWORD

The Film Schools at UCLA, USC, and to some extent NYU, turned out a highly improbable number of exceptionally talented and successful people during the late 60's. Francis Coppola, George Lucas, and The Doors are perhaps the best known of these outside the industry. Insiders are aware of dozens more. The outstanding success of the film school graduates of that era spawned the hundreds of film schools on college campuses across the country and around the world today. But in 1965, there were just these three, as far as anyone can remember.

Hollywood films of the 50's and 60's were largely Separate Bed films and westerns, especially westerns, westerns by the thousands, all with nearly identical plots. They were as unwatchable then as they are today. Why were they so popular, you may ask? Because there was little else to watch. Hollywood producers and investors thought, if westerns are what everyone is watching, it must mean that westerns are what everyone wants as evidenced by the fact that westerns are what everyone is watching. So they made more and more of them. It must be said, that film and TV provided a wonderful way for people of little or no intelligence to make gobs of money.

Hollywood was about to bury itself under it’s own meritocracy when along came a new group of exceptionally talented people who transformed the industry. One of these kids went on to create The Godfather is the greatest film ever made. Another made Star Wars, the most influential film ever made. No argument. Both were made by film school graduates from the late 60's. The Hollywood film and TV industry owes its overwhelming success to a small group of UCLA and USC film school hippies from the mid to late 60's. The Doors were part of the same scene, but they were siphoned off into the music industry, and had nothing to do with the film revolution. They were nevertheless a product of the same small group of people attending the same film schools at the same time.

This is a novel based on real history. For legal reasons which I will never understand, I’m advised to make the following disclaimer:

Much of what follows here is based on my fading memory of actual events. And although nothing happened exactly as described, people who were there will likely be inspired to say, Oh I remember that. I was there when that happened. I remember that student film. Or worse, Hey, that’s me. I’m that person. I promise you, you are not that person. The characters in this novel are composites of two or more individuals based on my seriously faded memory. Yes I was there, but I didn’t take notes. I didn't take pictures either. Many of the photos are PhotoShop composites based on memory. What can I say. It was all so long ago.

If you are bothered by all the sex, my apologies. This story takes place in the 60's, You’ve perhaps heard the joke: What was an orgy called in the 60s? A party. If you were there, you remember fondly. If not, how very sad for you because the 60's, like Camelot, is just a memory of a glorious few years between the pill and HIV, that will never come again.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

JOHNNY LATHEM

THE FABULOUS NICKY D

THE GREAT Bill Bart

ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT ZEITGEIST

THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE

SMOKEY JOE

GARY THE GREAT

GATEHENGE

FILM SCHOOL PRANKS

DOUGULA

EVE’S ELEPHANT

PRISS’S MINI MASTERPIECE

LAGUNA BEACH

FESTER DICK

OOOPS

THE GLORY OF ST JAMES

THE SERRA RETREAT

PARANOID PATTY

RISK FACTOR

GOLDIE THE TALKING DOG

ARCHIVAL MAN

GUNSMOKE

MUFFLER MEN

WAITING FOR JESUS, PART 1

WAITING FOR JESUS PART 2

PRISCILLA VANILLA

THE WEDDING

ESALEN MAN

DOGFACE

THE DIVINITY

TALK SHOW

ALONE

THE MONEY SHOT

THE FROG

IT’S A WRAP 1, THE MOUSE THAT ROARED

IT’S A WRAP 2, THE SAD CASE OF WILLAM WILLIAMSON

IT’S A WRAP 3, LATHAM LEAVES THE WOMB

IT’S A WRAP 4, THE LIFE AND CAREER OF THE FABULOUS NICKY D

FILM SCHOOL

CLASS OF 69

JOHNNY LATHAM

Some people discover they have a goal in life which simply occurred to them and which they devote their lives to achieving. This is the so called purpose-driven life and it involves a whole lot of planning, sacrifice, and disappointment. Mostly disappointment. Hence the world’s oldest joke: ‘How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans.’

Other’s like Johnny Latham are simply blown about by the winds of chance. Latham (not his real name) was asked to explain himself at a writer’s conference once. He just blurted, I’m just a leaf in the breeze. What happens to me just happens. People say I write screen plays. No. I don’t even have control of that. Stuff just dribbles off my fingertips into my laptop and I’m as surprised at the results as anyone else. What works I sell. What doesn’t I toss. I try not to over-think things. I’ve been on automatic since as far back as I can remember. No complaints though. In fact I recommend it. People say a life without purpose is a bad thing. I’ve seen no evidence of that. What matters is luck.

Latham graduated from Kent State University in Ohio with a high enough grade point average that he could apply to just about any grad school he could afford. He could only afford another state school, but his tax-paying mother had moved from Ohio to Los Angeles to be with her third and final husband, a Valley real estate developer. Her move limited Latham’s choices to a California state university. He thought, ‘Berkeley is a funky old town, not unlike Kent. Berkeleyites were of the same political disposition, so why not apply to UC at Berkeley?’ The other option was to leave the school womb, get a job and start his life, which he was loath to do because there was nothing he particularly wanted to do, and he had no natural talent, none that he was aware of anyway, and his psychology major left him ill-suited for any job other than counseling wimpy assholes.

It wasn’t unusual for college graduates of the time to sign up for grad school to continue avoiding the draft, but Johnny Latham had no fear of the draft because, after graduating from high school he found himself unable to endure the sword of Damocles the draft represented. This was the early 60s when all the liberal writers were warning that the conservative anti-communist paranoia was taking us down the garden path toward another war, most likely a guerrilla conflict in a rice paddy nation. War was their answer to everything. So he decided to join up before that happened. He joined under the Reserve Forces Act, which required only 6 months of active service. He knew nothing of the RFA. The army recruiter just assumed that he was there to join the 6-month plan, which coincidently became available the very day Latham drove over to the recruitment office. Pure wind-blown luck. Accordingly, he was in and out in just six months. And, to his great surprise, he had a wonderful time. Camping, exercise, 3 hot meals a day, and a chance to play guns and commies with fellow draft dodgers. The RFA came with a 5 year reserve obligation which he got out of accidentally by taking a job as a mail boy at an oil refinery, which, thanks to Sputnik, was put on a list industries vital to national security. Because his job was related to national security, and because Sputnik scared the shit out of everybody, he was excused from reserves.

Equally delightful, the office was packed with pretty secretaries, all of whom took great pleasure in flirting with the cute mail boy in the basement largely because he was an easy tease, and because he was required to lock the mail room door during lunch hour. The secretaries knew him as Oh Johnny. In today’s terms you might say he was sexually harassed again and again, without mercy. That would be a female point of view. Johnny saw it as a kind of prep school education, one that would serve him well all through college and beyond. The secretaries taught him all he would ever need to know to please a girl, and what to expect in return if he did what he was taught. By the time he left to go to college, he was an expert in sexual matters, coincidentally or not, just as the 60's were getting underway. Perfect timing.

He went from there to college where he majored in psychology, a major that prepared him for nothing he wanted to do. To him, psychotherapy, the one job he was trained for, meant coddling neurotics. He hated neurotics. His solution to mental illness, even after 4 years of study, was to yell in a patient’s ear, Grow the fuck up, and walk out, which he once did as part of a class exercise.

Nothing in the workaday world had any appeal whatsoever. His only option, after college, was to avoid work for another few years by applying to graduate school, like everyone else, but with a new major in something practical, like economics. Economics appealed to him because, just like economics today, there was absolutely no agreement among experts on anything whatsoever, least of all policy. There was nothing considered good news by one faction that was not considered bad news by another. No one could predict a recession in time to avoid it. Chaos, as it’s known, was a good thing in Johnny Latham’s eyes because chaos is freedom. Everything which is right by one theory is wrong by another. But a major in economics would require serious study, and after four years as an undergraduate, Latham was in no mood for any more of that. But, it was either that or the real world, so it was that.

He drove to Berkeley, his favorite town, not for the politics, but for the funky old neighborhoods and laid back lifestyle. The word hippie was just entering the vocabulary and Johnny thought himself one of those. But after reviewing his transcripts, the UCB registrar told him he could not apply to grad school in economics without first taking a few prerequisite undergrad courses, none of which were offered at Berkeley. The courses he needed were offered at UCLA, however, so he drove to Los Angeles, applied, and was accepted into UCLA as a grad student taking undergrad courses in economics. Simply put, the winds of chance blew him to UCLA.

Latham detested academics. His above average achievement as an undergrad was owed entirely to amphetamines, in it’s various forms, Dexedrine, Benzedrine, and Ritalin. Ritalin especially, had the miraculous ability to focus his wandering mind. He was attention-deficit to the max but no one ever told him. No one knew what ADD even was in those days, or if they did, they didn’t mention it to Latham and it wasn’t covered in his courses. But he had it, and amphetamines cured it to such an extent that he could get an A in any subject, no matter how dull with just one night of study per subject per quarter. To offset the risk of addiction, he never took more than 20 milligrams a week, and then only before a test. But in moving to California, he lost contact with his suppliers. And that left him dependent on self discipline, of which he had none. He had an extraordinarily high IQ according to army administered tests, but a brain with no discipline is as useless as a computer with no operating system, or a compass with no pointer. What he needed most was a psychotherapist to scream in his ear, Grow the fuck up.

What saved him from the agony of more academics was another gust of wind. As he put it the night he received his Academy Award, I’d like to thank the winds of chance, which have blown me about my whole life long, and certainly blew me here tonight. People thought he was dissing the Academy by saying, in effect, chance more than merit is what wins Oscars. He probably should have thanked his mother like everyone else, but, as Latham was the product of a busted condom, mommy dearest never showed much interest in his achievements, although she was generous with her money. She got rich by virtue of her good looks and her late oil-rich second husband who died and left her a bundle. Even she got what she got by chance. So he thanked the winds of chance instead.

One afternoon, near the end of his first week as a grad student majoring in economics, Latham, in one of his all too usual dismal moods, was wandering aimlessly around the UCLA campus wondering what he’d got himself into, and how he could get himself back out, when he chanced upon William Williamson, a very good friend and one time roommate from Kent State. Williamson (known as Wee Willy at Kent, and Willam at UCLA) was also out for a walk. They acknowledged the extraordinary coincidental nature of such an encounter, although as the great American philosopher Yogi Berra once said, Some things are just too coincidental to be coincidence. Or as Willam put it, Far fuckin out, man. You’re about the last person I ever expected to see wandering around UCLA. What the fuck are you doing out here? Incidentally, don’t fret about the swearing. That’s just how young adults talked back then. Didn’t mean a thing.

I’m looking for a place to jump. Not right now, but, you know, for future reference.

Trust me. The best place for that sort of thing is Inspiration Point at the north end of Palisades Park in Santa Monica. Good long drop to PCH. It’s better than the Golden Gate Bridge because if you somehow survive the fall, you’ll get hit by a car.

What about you, Willy? I thought you were going home after school.

No no no. I enrolled in the film school. I’m just starting my second quarter. By the way, I’m known here as Willam. No more Wee Willy, thank you.

Enrolled in the what?

Film school man. It was either here or SC. This is a state school. It’s cheaper.

Today there are hundreds of film schools. Back then there were just 3 in all of North America: UCLA, USC, and NYU. Each had a struggling film school Latham had never heard of. There were a couple of film schools in Europe he’d never heard of either.

You’re kidding. There’s a school for film? I thought people learned how to make movies by... I don’t know. I never thought about it really.

Willam Williamson could get worked up over film the way most folks his age got worked up over the military advisors in Vietnam. Have you ever wondered why every American movie looks like every other American movie? Cliche´ after cliche´ followed by another cliche´. Ten thousand TV westerns, all with the same plot, bad guy pisses off a good guy leading to a shoot-out. You know it’s coming, and you know who’ll live and who will die.

Not that I really care, but okay.

Musicals are about people singing when they shouldn’t. Orchestras appearing out of nowhere. Everyone standing around breaks into dance. It’s embarrassing. You know what the French do with American musicals? They edit out the musical numbers. That’s all the major studios know. That and comedies based on sexual innuendo. Way too much inbreeding, believe me. Every film looks like every other film. Film today is 10 percent inspiration, 90 percent duplication. But all that’s gonna change. Revolution is in the air, my man, can you feel it? Prophetic words. Within the next two years, the UCLA film school would graduate Francis Coppola, and USC would graduate George Lucas, and American Film would never be the same. Meantime, anyone who put film school graduate on their resume would be laughed off the lot by cigar chomping morons.

Far out, man. Where is this film school you speak of?

I’m on my way to the Gypsy Wagon for a burger. Hang with me.

Lead on. God it’s good to see someone I know.

So, after lunch at the Gypsy Wagon, (a food trailer near the law school parking lot with a history of its own) the two walked over to the film school.

The film school, in those days, consisted of 5 or 6 old army barracks at the north end of campus, remnants of WWII when they were used for god knows what, probably photo reconnaissance. Wandering aimlessly among them were a total of about 60 hippie kids, all film majors. No distinction was made between grads and undergrads. They were all treated as equals. A few film students were the sons and daughters of Hollywood biggies, writers, studio execs, agents, and the like. But most were there for no higher reason than that they liked getting college credit for watching old movies. And, of course, the all-important draft deferment college provided. They all were well versed in the lifestyle and lingo of the trade. They could talk industry talk well above their station. The film school was the nearest thing to a hippie enclave outside of Berkeley itself. Everybody was just sort of wandering around, a fact Latham noticed right off. He asked Willam What do you guys do for grades around here?

Willam explained, We take classes, pass tests, but only to satisfy university requirements. I’m not here for the classes. Nobody is.

Really. So what are you here for, if you don’t mind my asking?

We’re all here for the same reason.

The draft?

Aside from that.

Knowledge?

Oh fuck no, man. No one goes to college for knowledge, you know that. You can read a book for knowledge. Save a lot of time and a lot more money.

Okay, then, you’re here for a degree.

No way. You put film degree on your resume and you’ll never get a job.

Then what?

In a word...

I’m waiting.

Access, ma man. Access.

Access could have meant a lot of things. There was a window in one of the barracks where enrolled students with an approved script, could check out cameras, sound gear, lights, tripods, dollies and assorted paraphernalia, but no video gear. TV was another department, and was looked down upon. There was a well-financed Theater Arts department right next door, with a long list of famous movie star graduates. The film school students thought of the Theater Arts Department as a resource. If you didn’t have a friend for a part, you’d post a notice on a bulletin board in the Theater Arts Department, and choose among the applicants. One of the barracks was a shooting stage. Another was a mixing stage. Another, a screening room, known as the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse was large enough to hold all the students in the film school. Another building had six or seven editing rooms each equipped with primitive editing machines called Moviolas, which were perfectly designed to tear all the sprockets off of a roll of film in a