I went back to film school the other night for a screening of Luke Wilson's My second thought was, it's tough going back to film school, for any reason. Only three years out, and the only face in the crowd I vaguely recognized was the department chair, B.B., the one-time producer who knows everybody who's anybody and isn't shy about telling you so. In fact, she'd discovered the Wilson boys back when they were a couple of Texas yokels with a crazy short called Bottle Rocket. When she said "the boys" had lived with her while making the Wes Anderson feature, I wondered where she got the uncanny knack for differentiating your garden variety film geek from a trio of film geeks who would go on to become a Very Freaking Hip Art House Director and two Adorably Mopheaded A-list Movie Stars.
On the way out, I did run into a guy I'd known in the screenwriting program. It's always tough to know what to say when this happens, since if you bring up your big deal studio assignment you sound like you're bragging and if you don't you sound like you're a has been who never was. So I just hugged him and told him I thought the movie sucked. In lieu of nepotism, favor trading and name dropping, mocking the failures of others is a grand Hollywood tradition that seems to work just fine.
