AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI there is a man who has seen the other side of the screen. Paul Lazarus III spent more than 20 years in the gritty world of Hollywood, the land of fast talk and hard deals.
He has made million-dollar decisions as a producer, an agent and a studio head. He survived and prospered in the film business by knowing how to be tough, blunt and sharp-witted. He is a skeptical man, with a degree from Yale Law School.
Yet on a corner of his desk stands a black Maltese falcon, a replica of the statuette that Sidney Greenstreet pursued around the world in the 1941 movie, until it fell into Humphrey Bogart’s hands. When Lazarus explains what the falcon means to him, he repeats Bogart’s famous line at the end of the film:
“It’s the stuff that dreams are made of.”
When people talk about the movies, they always come back to dreams. That’s what Hollywood has always meant, after all — a place where fantasies step out and dance.
Movies make us laugh, make us cry, make us feel young again. They are lodged deep in the weave of our culture. We all quote favorite lines from movies, and the Academy Awards presentation is still the most glamorous night in America.
Movies give us a glowing vision of what we aspire to be. Samuel Goldwyn was an immigrant glovemaker before he went to Hollywood, Clark Gable was a lumberjack, Marilyn Monroe was a restless teenage bride. In the world of film, there is always a chance to mold yourself in the shape of your imagination.
Paul Lazarus’ job is to take the wide-eyed screen dreams of youth and refine them into something useful and, perhaps, brilliant. As director of the motion- picture program at the University of Miami, he follows his own dream of creating a center for film studies that will rival the best in the country.
“I like building things,” he says. “I don’t like coming into a status quo situation and treading water.”
The movie industry is thriving throughout the state, and film programs are now offered at Florida State University and the University of Central Florida. But the University of Miami is widely considered the best place to study film in the Southeast. Call it starry-eyed, but Lazarus’ goal is for UM to be in the same league as the three finest film schools in the land — New York University, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles.
“We’re at the beginning,” says Edward Pfister, dean of UM’s School of Communication, and the man who brought Lazarus to Miami. “We want to make our film program one of the five most distinguished in the country. I think we can do that in the next three or four years.”
BEHIND EVERY SCENE OF EVERY movie is a hidden world of action. Hundreds of people — directors, sound engineers, camera operators, makeup artists, set designers, lighting experts, costumers, assistants of every kind — work together to put a single vision on the screen. The amazing thing is that it succeeds so often.
“Movies, on the surface, look so easy,” says UM film professor Paul Nagel, Jr. “But they are the most difficult art — and the most expensive. You’re molding together all the arts.”
The purpose of a college film program is to teach students how to build that magic. But they must also learn that without hard, mundane work, their illusions of glamour are only so much stardust.
“A lot of kids dream of working on feature films,” says UM film professor George Capewell. “But very few of them wind up doing that.”
In fact, about half of all film school students will never work in the movie industry at all, and most of the rest will never be part of a big Hollywood production. Instead, they will make commercials, educational and industrial films or work in television.
Capewell, who has taught film at UM since 1975, includes a lecture called “Facts of Life” in his introductory course for freshmen. He tells of his own bleak experience after graduating from film school at New York University. Of the 100 resumes he sent out, he got just one response and not a single job offer.
“I tell my students, ‘If you want security, be an accountant’,” says Capewell, who recently received the university-wide Freshman Teaching Award. “If you want to break into the movies you have to hustle, you have to go door to door, you have to get rejected. After the first year, a lot of students are gone. They can’t stick it out.”
Even so, UM’s undergraduate program is at its capacity of 190 students, and there are far more applicants than can be accepted. For the 15 openings in the new graduate program, which will get into full swing this fall, the university received applications from Australia, China, Europe and South America.
“It was staggering to see the qualifications of the people who were applying to the graduate program,” says Capewell. “Right now, this place is really cooking.”
It is only a matter of time before some of these students break through in Hollywood and establish the university’s reputation for good.
Among UM graduates so far are David Isaacs, script editor of the M*A*S*H TV series, a writer and producer of Cheers and screenwriter for the film Volunteers; Cynthia Cidre, screenwriter of the film In Country and the writer and producer of a well-regarded TV movie, Killing in a Small Town; directors George Fernandez and David Nut- ter; and John Pike, an executive with Paramount.
“While we have not yet had a Steven Spielberg or a George Lucas,” says Paul Lazarus, “we have had ample success.”
HALF A DOZEN GRADUATE students and teaching assistants have overrun a house on Miami Beach. This is the third day of shooting on a student film with the working title of Ghost Story. The students have rewritten the script of their 10-minute film five times and have spent two weeks outlining every shot and camera angle.
“There is a purity of narrative and intent in student films that is beautiful to me,” says Matt Barr, one of the professors teaching an intensive summer seminar for grad students. “This is your one chance to do it your way, with no one telling you how.”
A pleasant bustle fills the house. An actor dries his hair after a scene filmed in a shower. Two students improvise a camera stand by attaching a camera to a milk crate. Light-meter readings are taken. The dis- tance from the camera to the actors is measured with a long yellow tape. The crew debates whether a scene should be reshot because of a shadow obscuring the actor’s face.
As she checks the elaborate tape recorder, sound engineer Alison Troy shakes her head. The microphone is so sensitive that passing traffic sounds like a jetliner ready for takeoff.
Lights are put in place on tripods. Students peer through the lens to “frame” the scene with the camera’s eye. For a scene to be shot from below, they sprawl on the floor and practice moving the camera in one smooth stroke so the film will not have a jerky visual stutter. The actual filming of a scene often lasts only a minute or even a few seconds — the real work in filmmaking is in the preparation.
“It’s two minutes on, two hours off,” says Steven Bockus, a professional actor playing the lead role in the film.
At last everything is ready.
“Roll sound,” someone calls. “Roll camera. Speed. Slate it.” Betty Del Valle, the film’s director, stands in front of the camera with the “slate,” the familiar striped clapper used to start the action.
“Scene 5B, Take 1,” she announces, slapping the arm of the slate down.
In this scene, a mailman delivers a package to Bockus. Everything looks fine, but all Alison Troy can hear through her headphones is muffled talk and the crinkling of paper. Bockus has held the package directly over the microphone.
They film a second take, but an airplane flies over, and Troy covers her face with her hands.
“Scene 5B, Take 3.”
This time they get it right.
THE STUDY OF FILM BEGAN, appropriately enough, on Hollywood’s doorstep at the University of Southern California. USC offered a bachelor’s degree in film as early as 1932 and, ever since, has filled Hollywood back lots with its directors and technicians. In the last 20 years, nearly all the prominent young directors — Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, to name a few — learned their craft in film schools.
The University of Miami offered its first film courses in 1951 and made film a full major in the early ’70s. In the last three years under Paul Lazarus, the enrollment, academic standards — and ambitions — of UM’s film program have been on the rise.
Though trained as a lawyer, the 52-year-old Lazarus has spent most of his working life in movies. In the ’60s, he was Woody Allen’s agent, and it was he who sold Allen’s first feature, Take the Money and Run, to Hollywood. Later, he ran his own studio in Los Angeles and became chief of production for the film division of HBO. He produced five movies, including Westworld and Capri- corn One, and wrote a book explaining the job of a producer.
But after 20 years in Hollywood, Lazarus was burned out. He spent a year as director of the New Mexico Film Commission before getting a call from the University of Miami.
“Frankly,” says Edward Pfister, the dean of UM’s School of Communication, “it is one of the best decisions I have made in my four years here.”
There are currently only seven full-time professors in the film program, plus another seven part-timers. The UM faculty has graduates of each of the “Big Three” film schools: George Capewell is from NYU, Tony Allegro went to USC, and Matt Barr is from UCLA.
Other top film schools have dozens on the faculty, but Miami finds advantages in being small. From the very first day, even the rawest undergraduates are taught by senior professors. Lazarus himself teaches a survey course for freshmen.
“One of the things most gratifying about this,” he says, “is seeing talent emerge at the earliest level. I like to see the light bulbs go on over their heads.”
During spring break, Lazarus leads a field trip to Los Angeles, where he introduces his students to actors, writers, directors, agents and a growing network of UM alum- ni.
“He shows you every aspect of the business,” says graduate student Karin Anderson. “He gets people we would otherwise have no contact with.”
Last spring, Anderson even got to meet actor Mel Gibson. “That was the highlight of my life so far,” she jokes.
Perhaps more than any other art, moviemaking relies on craft, technique and hardware. Whether they ultimately want to direct, write screenplays or analyze the German avant-garde, all UM film students have to help make original movies, from the initial script through the final edit.
“Our undergraduates make more films than at any film school I know,” says professor Tony Allegro.
It may be the program’s single greatest strength. If nothing else, working in film imposes a discipline, a respect for the medium.
“Learning production,” Paul Laz- arus points out, “is not dissimilar to learning how to paint or play a musical instrument.”
Some students complain about the antiquated equipment they have to use, but the basic mechanics of cameras and sound equipment have changed remarkably little over the years.
“What’s amazing,” says film professor Matt Barr, “is the magic that can come out of this equipment.”
By the time they graduate, students are expected to know what goes into a film, from the script to camera work to editing to the final credits.
“Our students deserve to know how the film world really works,” says Lazarus.
That idea has caused grumbling among academic purists in their ivory towers. When Lazarus was forming plans for the graduate program, he faced some resistance in the College of Arts and Sciences.
“It’s always been something of an anathema at this university,” he explains, “to have academics deal with the professional world.”
Moreover, the film professors remain active as writers, directors and producers. Paul Nagel, who has been on the UM faculty for 40 years, has found time to write more than 1,000 documentaries and recently sold a mini-series to actor Bob Hoskins. George Capewell is working on a documentary about Miami Beach and appears on WPBT-Channel 2 as a critic. Matt Barr has had screenplays produced and is completing a documentary on hate crimes.
To Lazarus, their professional credits are as valid as their scholarship. Their experience also gains the students’ respect.
“These are not people who couldn’t make it in the real world and decided to teach,” one undergraduate comments.
Film students at the University of Miami must choose one of three specialties –production, screenwriting or film studies. Production is the technical side of filmmaking — equipment, camera angles, sound, editing. Screenwriting, of course, means creating the script on which a movie is based. Film studies cover history, theory and aesthetics.
At any university, film students are among the most imaginative, intellectually engaged people on campus. Nevertheless, there has long been a stigma that the study of film is little more than an excuse to slide through four years of college by watching movies. So at the University of Miami, there is a conscious effort to have film students learn more than just how to match sound and pictures on celluloid.
“We’re not interested in teaching students how to run machines,” says film professor Tony Allegro. “We’re interested in taking their interests and expertise and transferring them to film.”
For that reason, every UM film student must complete a second full major in another field. In the last few years, the university has graduated young filmmakers with double majors in art, philosophy and marine biology.
“It’s a wonderful idea,” says Paul Nagel. “This is the only school in the country I know of that does that. I like to think that in our film program we teach the kids to make movies, and with the other major we give them something to make movies about.”
FILM REQUIRES CREATIVE INSPIRATION as well as discipline and technique. It is both art and craft. It is not easy to learn, but for those working in it, film excites a passion that can last a lifetime.
“Let’s face it,” says Tony Allegro, “people bring their dreams to the film department, and you don’t necessarily see that in biology.”
Chris Kas will be a senior this fall and is president of a student group called the University of Miami Filmmakers Association. For years, he has held firm to his goal of becoming a director of feature films. He has already done just about every job there is in film: acting, directing, editing, cinematography, lighting. He has made four films in his classes, five more on his own, plus 40 videos. The dream is still strong.
“It just became a passion for me,” he says, “and I’ve wanted to pursue it since I was 13.”
There is something touching about his earnestness. The sense of purpose, the desire to create something fresh, bright and alive — you can see these things in students’ eyes, even when they are working on a little 10-minute film about a ghost story.
“I would characterize them as very serious about filmmaking,” says George Capewell, “very serious about their careers and very serious about academic standards.”
The professors themselves have an unusual sense of unity, as well. They know they’re in at the beginning of something good, and they want to see how this experimental, true-life epic turns out. It’s clear that the passion runs just as deep for them as for their students.
“Teaching never gets old,” says veteran professor Paul Nagel. “I like seeing fresh ideas, being questioned on everything.”
The real business of education is still to ignite that spark of inspiration between student and teacher. And at a time when schools are stumbling at every level, it’s impressive when it seems to work.
“Our role is encouraging ideas and experimentation, encouraging people to use their brains,” says Tony Allegro. “A university’s place is to be on the cutting edge of ideas.”
The hallways of the film office are full of humor and candor. It’s a refreshing, slightly odd thing to hear. In most academic departments and in most businesses, people speak a strange language of their own, a jargon only the initiated can understand. But except when they talk about lenses, light meters and editing tables, the professors of film speak in a language common to us all.
But, of course, that’s what film is meant to be. It is a complicated art with a simple soul. It is a human enterprise, a way to see into the heart.
“There’s an old saying among screenwriters,” Paul Nagel says. “Equipment doesn’t make films — people do.”
MATT SCHUDEL is a Sunshine staff writer.
