Robert Zemeckis Interview (page: 3 / 4) Motion Picture Production	Print Interview

How did you get into USC? What kind of credentials did you have to get into film school?

Robert Zemeckis: I had gotten a job in Illinois at a little commercial film house where they did little industrial films for Outboard Marine Corporation, that sort of thing. You know, outboard motors. But it was a big deal. It was real commercials, and they had crews and that kind of thing. And I was a gopher, and then I would use their editing machines. And all the money that I made that summer I used to buy raw stock for film. I mean, for processing and film. And I went off on the weekends and filmed this little story which was an illustration of a Beatles song. It was like a rock video, which is what all film students used to do: illustrate something that the Beatles wrote.
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So I made a film that summer, and I wrote an essay, and I only applied to USC. I didn't apply to UCLA. I didn't apply to NYU. It was completely irrational thinking. It was "do or die" type thinking. It didn't go with the odds at all and I didn't have a Plan B. I sent the film and all the information and the essay to USC.

I got accepted by the Film School, but I hadn't heard anything from the University. And my grades were just absolutely not good enough to get into USC. And so I got this congratulatory letter from the Film School, and about three days later it kept gnawing at me that it didn't feel right. So I called the university, and I spoke to my evaluator. And I guess she was a graduate student or something. And she said, "Oh, no, no, no. We didn't accept you. Your grades aren't good enough." And I said, "But I got this letter." And she said, "Oh, the Film School. They keep doing that. We keep telling them not to do that." And I realized at that moment that this was it, that I had to do something. So launched into this impassioned plea to accept me. I mean, I said, "Look. I'm in the Film School. How can you do this to me? I'll go to summer school," which I did, "And get some of these grades up." And all these things. And at the end of the conversation I basically talked her into it. I mean, I just have this image of some graduate student being on the end of the phone who put a little check in a box and changed the course of my life. I mean, it's a scene out of a movie.
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I'm always fascinated by what crossroads in life those places can be.

Does this lead you to the conclusion that you can pretty much do anything that you want to if you want it badly enough? Or is it much more complex?

Robert Zemeckis: Having accomplished these things, and looking at the way that they happened, it's chilling. It was the folly of a young man. It really is not very responsible behavior. It's harder to do this as you get older. When I got to film school, this was in the days before it was famous. The film school, in those days, was considered an embarrassment by the university. They were a bunch of hippies, and the industry didn't have any respect at all. The industry's collective idea was that film students can never make movies that make money, that they were a bunch of artists living in an ivory tower.

The very first day I walked in, I had a really tough camera instructor who was one of the old-school guys who came up through the Navy, which was one of the main supporters of the USC Film School. Like the Navy combat photographers, right? And he was a combat photographer who became a professor later in life. And he looked at us and said, "What are you guys doing here? There's no work." This was the first day. You know, here I am at USC, and he looks at you and it was sort of like that marine sergeant kind of teaching style. And it was like, "There's no work for you out there. Why are you wasting your time here? You think you're going to get a job?" And I remember standing there thinking, "Yeah. Well, not me, pal." And it's interesting, because in a way I realized what he was doing. He was shaking out the weak, you know? Anyone who listened to him wasn't going to be able to take the years of rejection that lie ahead.
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What do you think brought you to the point where you could have that kind of perception, to realize that this guy in authority is really just testing you and trying to shake you out?

Robert Zemeckis: Right. There is a wonderful contrast that I see in some of my contemporaries, in some of my colleagues.

There is a healthy cynicism that is bred into you when you grow up on the south side of Chicago. I mean, you know, my father never, never paid for a traffic violation. It was always fixed. That was the way life was. That kind of Mayor Daley corruption that living in this -- you understand, sort of, the real workings in a cynical sense. I talked to most of my colleagues, and I must say, being a film director, I don't want to sound -- but you have to come from a comfortable background to toy in this arena. So I think that I was very fortunate in being grounded in sort of the harsh realities of real life that helped me a lot in Hollywood.
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Is this one of the keys to success then, learning to work the system?

Robert Zemeckis: That's what I did to get into USC. I'm conflicted now, because I have a ten-year-old son. I just know, intuitively, that the educational system, and the grading system, were thought up by a bunch of men in 1860. And this has very little to do with how life really works. I have this south Chicago pride in being able to say,

"Here I am, this Academy award winning film director, and never got a grade higher than a C." I mean, the truth is that I was fortunate to have teachers that inspired me along the way, which is what I believe education is. I had one teacher in the Chicago public high school -- one -- and that was the one I mentioned who inspired me to read Shakespeare. And somehow, I had a way. I mean, for me, English and English Literature was the punishment. It was horrible in high school having to go and sit in those classes until I was able, and then of course, when I got to film school, it was a fountain of inspiration. And then very quickly the struggle for grades was not even an issue. Consequently, all that I got was straight A's. It's like it all just went away.
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