Class conflict - the liberal slant that pervades the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles film schools - Column

National Review, June 21, 1993 by Arlene Sterling

The woman (like many foreign students) was being paid $2,000 per month by her government to go to school here. Perhaps her countrymen hope she'll return home to reverse a distressing trend: over three-quarters of French box-office receipts go to American films.

The English, for their part, carry on an odd love affair with older American movies, especially from the Sixties. This love is only matched by their hatred of nearly everything made before and since. While many French students will never admit that America has produced anything worthwhile, the English--and the Germans--enjoy lamenting the pathetic, irreversible decline of American cinema and, by extension, of America itself.

Oddly, the only foreign students (and, more often than not, the only students at all) to openly admire American movies and moviemaking are the ones from Central and Eastern Europe. Other students trade knowing smirks and roll their eyes as the guy from Hungary extols the latest Michael J. Fox comedy for its superior wit and sophistication.

Contempt of this kind, for the people who it's hoped will someday buy you that chalet in Aspen, isn't universal; but it is the dominant feeling in film school. You might expect that the PC pretensions of my fellow students will suddenly vanish after graduation. You might also think these anti-Hollywood crusaders would shun a career in "Hollywood." They don't have to.

Happily, graduates not only find that Hollywood offers five- and six-figure writing and directing deals, it also shares their attitudes-if less openly. At both schools, large numbers of studio chiefs, producers, and other power brokers teach and lecture. Recently, the term "cultural elite" has been a focus of discussion. While a few decry the notion as a myth, most embrace it in a grand spirit of noblesse oblige. Columbia Pictures Chairman Mark Canton generously put it this way: "I'm not suggesting everything we make should satisfy the cultural elite. We still need a mix of cappuccino films [for the elite] and popcorn movies [for the masses]."

The secret? Hollywood loves to be thought of as culturally elite. Sony Pictures Chairman Peter Guber shouted to his UCLA class one day, "Congratulations! You're all members of the cultural elite!"--then stage-whispered, "Just don't let anyone know how much fun it is." He was greeted with warm smiles and appreciative laughter. Film students too love to refer to themselves as members of the "cultural elite," though with just the right hint of mock-embarrassment, self-deprecation, and irony. At USC, a recent party invitation came addressed, "Attention: Members of the Cultural Elite."

As time goes by, however, the irony gets harder to detect. The notion of Hollywood as a community profoundly alienated from ordinary America may have been advanced by conservatives as a criticism, but it is quickly gaining ground in Hollywood itself.

This is a long way from the Hollywood of the moguls who created it. According to the Hollywood historian Neal Gabler, in An Empire of Their Own, the early moguls celebrated "an America where fathers were strong, families stable, people attractive, resilient, resourceful, and decent. This was their America." Louis B. Mayer (of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the greatest of the old studios) didn't worry about popcorn movies and cappuccino films. "My unchanging policy," he wrote, "is great star, great director, great play, great cast."