Film school is a touchy subject. If you’re in insurmountable debt from it, like me, you have many feelings when it comes to the good ol’ days of wide-eyed academia and the promise of breaking into the movie biz. It’s a place where I wrote a screenplay that sold and allowed me to break in; it’s also a place that charged me way more than that screenplay sold for me to attend.
As it turns, out even legends like Laura Dern have a complicated relationship with film school as well. Dern, the actress in many classic movies like Jurassic Park, Citizen Ruth, and October Sky, as well as Big Little Lies on HBO, went to film school at one point.
And when she got offered one of the lead roles in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, film school stood in the way of her making her dreams come true.
Dern recently sat down with Team Coco and recounted the tale.
Laura Dern | Where Everybody Knows Your Name
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Dern set the stage, saying, “I was 17, so excited to get into UCLA. I was there for two days, and I had auditioned and got offered the role in Blue Velvet.”
This was obviously so exciting and a huge opportunity. Lynch was already an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker who was one of the hottest names in Hollywood. But the Dean of her film school program told her “absolutely not.”
Dern continued, “I said, ‘I have this opportunity and he said, ‘Well, I’ll look at the script if you want to give me the script, but, you know, you’re not going to get a leave of absence. It’s not going to happen. It’s not a medical emergency,’”
Now, Dern understood the script was shocking, but no one can deny she made the correct choice, and her Dean was wrong.
Dern dropped the mic as she expanded, “I will just end by saying after my two days, today, if you want to get a masters in film at that school, when you write a thesis there are three movies you are required to study. And you know what one of them is?”
Of course, one of them is Blue Velvet. Dern finished with, “Pisses me off.”
And rightfully so!
No one knows anything. And if you get an opportunity to work with an Academy Award nominated director, I think it’s okay to leave film school and see what happens.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Author: Jason Hellerman
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
