LEGACY
*
I just came from an event at USC in celebration of George Lucas' recent donation to the School of Cinema-Telvision School of Cinematic Arts...the paltry sum of $175 million. (Yes, that's a lot of money...although probably better spent this way than on another Star Wars movie.)
I hadn't been back to the USC campus since I moved away. I'd been back at night for parties and to visit friends...I even stopped by the Starbucks on Hoover a couple times when we were shooting in the Coliseum on Chasing 3000...but I had not been back during the daytime when the campus is in full-swing with students, y'know, going to classes and stuff. Since I was wearing a suit for the event, I felt even further removed from the kids in shorts and flip-flops, riding their bikes to an fro.
But the event itself was grand. As soon as they started showing clips of successful alumni reminiscing about the good ol' days in film school, I got very nostalgic. But not quite in the sad way you might expect, as in, Oh that's over. After all, all these alumni were interviewed for the video. They're all working in the industry. They still have contact with the school. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Robert Zemeckis - three of the most successful filmmakers of all time - were sitting right in front of me, on my campus, and they are still involved in the school. Mostly, it was nice to be reminded of what all this work is for, what the end goal is. It's easy to forget that it is worth a fight to have a legacy...not just my own, but a shared one with some very amazing and talented people.
In this day and age, I'm not all that proud to be an American. I don't have any religion or a particular culture to take pride in. But I am proud of my school...proud that I'm a part of it for good. It's nice to have something like that, and it was nice to come together and celebrate many achievements of the past and a new and bright future on the horizon. For me, the timing couldn't have been better. Revisiting USC today reminded me what it was that I loved about being there in the first place, and that there are ways to return while still going forward. I wasn't thinking, I'm sorry I'm gone...but rather,
It's good to be back.
I just came from an event at USC in celebration of George Lucas' recent donation to the School of Cinema-Telvision School of Cinematic Arts...the paltry sum of $175 million. (Yes, that's a lot of money...although probably better spent this way than on another Star Wars movie.)
I hadn't been back to the USC campus since I moved away. I'd been back at night for parties and to visit friends...I even stopped by the Starbucks on Hoover a couple times when we were shooting in the Coliseum on Chasing 3000...but I had not been back during the daytime when the campus is in full-swing with students, y'know, going to classes and stuff. Since I was wearing a suit for the event, I felt even further removed from the kids in shorts and flip-flops, riding their bikes to an fro.
But the event itself was grand. As soon as they started showing clips of successful alumni reminiscing about the good ol' days in film school, I got very nostalgic. But not quite in the sad way you might expect, as in, Oh that's over. After all, all these alumni were interviewed for the video. They're all working in the industry. They still have contact with the school. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Robert Zemeckis - three of the most successful filmmakers of all time - were sitting right in front of me, on my campus, and they are still involved in the school. Mostly, it was nice to be reminded of what all this work is for, what the end goal is. It's easy to forget that it is worth a fight to have a legacy...not just my own, but a shared one with some very amazing and talented people.
In this day and age, I'm not all that proud to be an American. I don't have any religion or a particular culture to take pride in. But I am proud of my school...proud that I'm a part of it for good. It's nice to have something like that, and it was nice to come together and celebrate many achievements of the past and a new and bright future on the horizon. For me, the timing couldn't have been better. Revisiting USC today reminded me what it was that I loved about being there in the first place, and that there are ways to return while still going forward. I wasn't thinking, I'm sorry I'm gone...but rather,
It's good to be back.