Alex Kustanovich (5)
ACT V -->
HORTON: As far as motivating you in the quality of the screenwriting class . . . who was your favorite professor -- wherever -- as far as teaching screenwriting?
KUSTANOVICH: Well . . . my favorite professor was Lew Hunter . . . because Lew Hunter liked my work. He was a champion of my work with a big 'C' . . . big 'C' for champion. And he liked me, and I liked him. He encouraged me tremen-dously. [Also, he] tried to help me after I wrote my script . . . after my second year at UCLA . . . [he] tried to help me get an agent . . . and, of course, I couldn't get an agent because none of the agents responded to my script.
H: And what script was that?
K: That was THE KING AND IVAN.
H: Okay. That was the short that you finally wrote into a feature.
K: That's correct.
H: And that was solely written by you, and there was no co-writer on that?
K: No, there was no co-writer on that. It was solely written by me.
H: So Lew Hunter was sort of your mentor at UCLA?
K: In a way, he was. Not officially, but he was my mentor in a way that . . . he always returned my calls. He always tried to give me good advice. He'd [read] my work.
H: If you were going to recommend an undergraduate program . . . a film-school program for screenwriters -- which program would you recommend? AFI, UCLA, or NYU for undergraduate?
K: AFI is only a graduate program. AFI doesn't have undergraduates.
H: Okay.
K: [Also] . . . I'm not familiar with the undergraduate program at UCLA. I know that NYU has a very good undergraduate program. NYU is far more expensive than UCLA. Therefore, if the money is an issue, go to UCLA.
Although . . . it's probably harder to get into UCLA these days because UCLA is very competitive, and it's very difficult to get in.
[But] I wouldn't go to an 'undergrad' as a filmmaker. I would just go to a small liberal arts college like Amherst. But that's a separate story altogether.
I would just get my liberal education first, and as a graduate student I would go to a film school.
H: So, you really would not recommend an undergraduate program in film. You'd say: 'Get a degree in something else as an undergraduate, and then if you wanna pursue screenwriting or film . . . go to a graduate film program.
K: Right. Right. Unless . . . unless that person is hellbent on becoming a director and already had directed some short films on his own . . . and really that's what he wants to do.
Then I would say: 'Sure. Then go and take advantage of their facilities and their cameras and their film and allotment and all that stuff.'
Yes, that's a different story.
H: But for a screenwriter . . . it's not really . . .
K: For a screenwriter -- no.
H: . . . vital.
K: For a screenwriter it's definitely not.
H: Now -- if you were going to recommend an M.F.A. screenwriting program . . . which . . .
K: I would say UCLA. I'm pretty sure of that. I wouldn't go anywhere else.
H: Okay. And . . . how many screenplays did you write at UCLA?
K: I didn't write that many screenplays at UCLA, unfortunately . . . because . . . in my second year I got a couple of writing jobs, and I was too busy doing them.
H: And . . . you still [didn't] have an agent at that point?
K: No, I did not have an agent at that point.
[But] I was lucky to get one job. I met a guy at a party . . . at a screening for a movie called -- ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY . . . which was Paul Mazursky's movie.
And [for] my first gig . . . I got hired to write a screenplay adaptation of a book called: THE MASTER AND MARGARITA . . . which is one of the most complex books in modern literature. [Written] by this Russian author name Mikhail Bulgakov.
H: Okay.
K: And it's a very, very famous book . . . here in America, too.
H: Did he have the rights to this . . . or was it public domain?
K: Well . . . his idea was this. If he hired an American person, he would have to buy the rights to the translation. But he thought . . . and I think later he was proved wrong . . . but he thought that the Russian version was in public domain.
And when he found out that I was a Russian screenwriter, he knew he could hire me . . . [to do it] without paying for the rights. So that was my big break.
H: So . . . you were still at UCLA, and you got this adaptation deal?
K: I just started UCLA . . . actually.
H: Oh, okay.
K: Yeah.
H: And so that gave you an extra income for your resume.
K: Right, [but] he ended up abandoning the project. [And] I got paid a little bit.
H: Okay, were you trying to get an agent at UCLA, or were you still not trying to get an agent at UCLA?
K: Not at that point. I tried to get an agent with the first script -- for which I received the J. Grossman Comedy Writing Award, and [that's the] script that Lew liked a lot. That was THE KING AND IVAN.
I tried to get an agent with THE KING AND IVAN. And Lew recommended a few people. I had some other people . . . some friends of mine who'd recommended certain agents.
None of the agents responded. It was too samll for them. Too weird. Whatever. None of them.
H: And that was an Elvis script, I believe?
K: That's right. It was.
H: [So you won] the Grossman Comedy Writing Award . . . but that still didn't get you an agent. No one was knocking on your door.
K: No.
H: But you had started to do some small development deals where people just came to you and said: 'I want you to write this project.' And they'd pay you a certain amount of money -- basically . . .
K: Not at that point, no.
H: No?
K: No, not then. No one asked me to write with them.
H: Okay.
K: If I had to do it over again -- at my age now -- I wouldn't have given up. I would've just continued to try to get an agent for that script.
But I was lucky because my friend -- whom I mentioned before, E. Max Frye -- had read the script and liked it and showed it to one of his friends.
H: THE KING AND IVAN?
K: THE KING AND IVAN. And his friend's name was Al Corley. And Al Corley, who now is a producer . . .
He just produced a movie called: PALMETTO.
H: Wow.
K: . . . with Woody Harrelson. And just finished a movie called HEARTS AND BONES. They just finished shooting.
Anyway, he loved THE KING AND IVAN and had it under option for three years. And couldn't . . .
H: These were small options?
K: Small option money. We're talking, like -- five grand a year.
H: Wow.
K: That he paid me. Three years that he continued to pay me. And I did a couple of rewrites for him. And nothing happened with the script.
H: And you still didn't have an agent, and no agent came out of the blue . . .
K: No, no agent came out of the blue.
H: Okay.
K: None whatsoever.
H: Okay, so -- in 1992 you graduated from the UCLA M.F.A. screenwriting program . . . and what happened next?
K: What happened next was . . . while I was at UCLA . . . no, as soon as I graduated from UCLA -- I got a job with an Israeli producer to write a script for him . . . which took me to Israel. And the year was 1992.
I stayed in Israel for a month. I wrote some . . . this script didn't work out. And I wrote another script for them called THE SOFT KILL -- which got made into a film . . . here in L.A.
And it turned out pretty good. And it starred Michael Harris, Brion James, and Corbin Bernsen.
H: What was the budget on it?
K: The budget was, I believe, a little over a million dollars.
H: Well, I saw THE SOFT KILL on cable, and for that amount of money, it looked pretty good to me.
K: Yeah.
H: Y'know, I always factor in -- how much did they pay for it . . .
K: Right.
H: . . . and how much time did [it] take for them to shoot it?
K: I think that was the budget. That's what I was told. I'm not sure what the actual budget was.
H: At those levels you can't expect it to be an Academy Award-winning production.
K: Right.
H: It's not like you're competing against the thirty-million-dollar studio people.
K: Right, right.
I thought the script was pretty good, actually. I honestly liked the script I wrote for them. And I think that if they'd gotten a different director, maybe this movie would've been released on the big screen.
H: And so this deal -- with the Israeli producers -- basically, they had an idea, and they flew you to Israel, and they told you what they wanted, and you sort of shaped a script around their parameters.
K: That was the idea. However, when they faxed me the idea . . . the idea was terrible. And I said, 'Listen, guys. I have some better ideas . . . around this same premise.'
So I faxed them some ideas on that idea. And they liked them. And they said, 'Why don't you come over to Israel? We'll work on a treatment. And you write it. You go back and write it.'
I went to Israel for two weeks . . . worked on a treatment, stayed in a hotel.
[And while I was there . . . I] happened to have fallen in love wiht a girl who worked for their production company. And I asked them if I could stay there and write . . . instead of going back.
So they said, 'Sure.'
So I stayed there for a month, lived with a girl, and wrote the script for them.
H: And . . . was the process . . . was that sort of . . . a nice creative process? Did you feel comfortable in that type of . . .
K: Yes, I did. I liked them very much. I did feel very good with them.
H: Okay.
K: One of them was a hard-guy producer. The other guy was a very sensitive guy. And I'm sad that I lost touch with them.
[But] I just saw them again, but it was different. Y'know, they were already working with different people and . . .
H: Well so . . . that was 1992 . . . so . . . the same year that you graduated in June from UCLA . . .
K: Right.
H: Basically, you were in a development deal with a producer that really was going to camera . . . or trying to go to camera very seriously.
K: Right.
H: And . . . the only thing that may have not been up to speed was . . . maybe they didn't have enough money to pay you what you thought you . . .
K: [Not] enough money. Although, looking back on it now . . . I got more money . . . [than] I'm getting [right] now [with a] script . . . the deal I'm about to make . . .
[So] in retrospect . . .
H: So actaully -- you were pretty happy about this whole deal. Your first deal out of UCLA was a pretty good deal, then.
K: Yeah.
H: Cool.
K: $12,000 for a script and two rewrites.
H: Well, that's . . . I call it the gray market. That's the standard . . . a $10,000 . . . deal like that.
K: Right.
H: It's enough money to make it worthwhile, but it certainly doesn't give you enough money [to get] into the WGA.
K: Oh, no, no, no. This was not . . .
H: So, it's sort of the gray market. But still, you can make a living doing it.
K: Exactly, exactly.
(To read ACT VI --> click on --> "Alex Kustanovich (6)" below.)
< (c) 1999 > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HORTON: As far as motivating you in the quality of the screenwriting class . . . who was your favorite professor -- wherever -- as far as teaching screenwriting?
KUSTANOVICH: Well . . . my favorite professor was Lew Hunter . . . because Lew Hunter liked my work. He was a champion of my work with a big 'C' . . . big 'C' for champion. And he liked me, and I liked him. He encouraged me tremen-dously. [Also, he] tried to help me after I wrote my script . . . after my second year at UCLA . . . [he] tried to help me get an agent . . . and, of course, I couldn't get an agent because none of the agents responded to my script.
H: And what script was that?
K: That was THE KING AND IVAN.
H: Okay. That was the short that you finally wrote into a feature.
K: That's correct.
H: And that was solely written by you, and there was no co-writer on that?
K: No, there was no co-writer on that. It was solely written by me.
H: So Lew Hunter was sort of your mentor at UCLA?
K: In a way, he was. Not officially, but he was my mentor in a way that . . . he always returned my calls. He always tried to give me good advice. He'd [read] my work.
H: If you were going to recommend an undergraduate program . . . a film-school program for screenwriters -- which program would you recommend? AFI, UCLA, or NYU for undergraduate?
K: AFI is only a graduate program. AFI doesn't have undergraduates.
H: Okay.
K: [Also] . . . I'm not familiar with the undergraduate program at UCLA. I know that NYU has a very good undergraduate program. NYU is far more expensive than UCLA. Therefore, if the money is an issue, go to UCLA.
Although . . . it's probably harder to get into UCLA these days because UCLA is very competitive, and it's very difficult to get in.
[But] I wouldn't go to an 'undergrad' as a filmmaker. I would just go to a small liberal arts college like Amherst. But that's a separate story altogether.
I would just get my liberal education first, and as a graduate student I would go to a film school.
H: So, you really would not recommend an undergraduate program in film. You'd say: 'Get a degree in something else as an undergraduate, and then if you wanna pursue screenwriting or film . . . go to a graduate film program.
K: Right. Right. Unless . . . unless that person is hellbent on becoming a director and already had directed some short films on his own . . . and really that's what he wants to do.
Then I would say: 'Sure. Then go and take advantage of their facilities and their cameras and their film and allotment and all that stuff.'
Yes, that's a different story.
H: But for a screenwriter . . . it's not really . . .
K: For a screenwriter -- no.
H: . . . vital.
K: For a screenwriter it's definitely not.
H: Now -- if you were going to recommend an M.F.A. screenwriting program . . . which . . .
K: I would say UCLA. I'm pretty sure of that. I wouldn't go anywhere else.
H: Okay. And . . . how many screenplays did you write at UCLA?
K: I didn't write that many screenplays at UCLA, unfortunately . . . because . . . in my second year I got a couple of writing jobs, and I was too busy doing them.
H: And . . . you still [didn't] have an agent at that point?
K: No, I did not have an agent at that point.
[But] I was lucky to get one job. I met a guy at a party . . . at a screening for a movie called -- ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY . . . which was Paul Mazursky's movie.
And [for] my first gig . . . I got hired to write a screenplay adaptation of a book called: THE MASTER AND MARGARITA . . . which is one of the most complex books in modern literature. [Written] by this Russian author name Mikhail Bulgakov.
H: Okay.
K: And it's a very, very famous book . . . here in America, too.
H: Did he have the rights to this . . . or was it public domain?
K: Well . . . his idea was this. If he hired an American person, he would have to buy the rights to the translation. But he thought . . . and I think later he was proved wrong . . . but he thought that the Russian version was in public domain.
And when he found out that I was a Russian screenwriter, he knew he could hire me . . . [to do it] without paying for the rights. So that was my big break.
H: So . . . you were still at UCLA, and you got this adaptation deal?
K: I just started UCLA . . . actually.
H: Oh, okay.
K: Yeah.
H: And so that gave you an extra income for your resume.
K: Right, [but] he ended up abandoning the project. [And] I got paid a little bit.
H: Okay, were you trying to get an agent at UCLA, or were you still not trying to get an agent at UCLA?
K: Not at that point. I tried to get an agent with the first script -- for which I received the J. Grossman Comedy Writing Award, and [that's the] script that Lew liked a lot. That was THE KING AND IVAN.
I tried to get an agent with THE KING AND IVAN. And Lew recommended a few people. I had some other people . . . some friends of mine who'd recommended certain agents.
None of the agents responded. It was too samll for them. Too weird. Whatever. None of them.
H: And that was an Elvis script, I believe?
K: That's right. It was.
H: [So you won] the Grossman Comedy Writing Award . . . but that still didn't get you an agent. No one was knocking on your door.
K: No.
H: But you had started to do some small development deals where people just came to you and said: 'I want you to write this project.' And they'd pay you a certain amount of money -- basically . . .
K: Not at that point, no.
H: No?
K: No, not then. No one asked me to write with them.
H: Okay.
K: If I had to do it over again -- at my age now -- I wouldn't have given up. I would've just continued to try to get an agent for that script.
But I was lucky because my friend -- whom I mentioned before, E. Max Frye -- had read the script and liked it and showed it to one of his friends.
H: THE KING AND IVAN?
K: THE KING AND IVAN. And his friend's name was Al Corley. And Al Corley, who now is a producer . . .
He just produced a movie called: PALMETTO.
H: Wow.
K: . . . with Woody Harrelson. And just finished a movie called HEARTS AND BONES. They just finished shooting.
Anyway, he loved THE KING AND IVAN and had it under option for three years. And couldn't . . .
H: These were small options?
K: Small option money. We're talking, like -- five grand a year.
H: Wow.
K: That he paid me. Three years that he continued to pay me. And I did a couple of rewrites for him. And nothing happened with the script.
H: And you still didn't have an agent, and no agent came out of the blue . . .
K: No, no agent came out of the blue.
H: Okay.
K: None whatsoever.
H: Okay, so -- in 1992 you graduated from the UCLA M.F.A. screenwriting program . . . and what happened next?
K: What happened next was . . . while I was at UCLA . . . no, as soon as I graduated from UCLA -- I got a job with an Israeli producer to write a script for him . . . which took me to Israel. And the year was 1992.
I stayed in Israel for a month. I wrote some . . . this script didn't work out. And I wrote another script for them called THE SOFT KILL -- which got made into a film . . . here in L.A.
And it turned out pretty good. And it starred Michael Harris, Brion James, and Corbin Bernsen.
H: What was the budget on it?
K: The budget was, I believe, a little over a million dollars.
H: Well, I saw THE SOFT KILL on cable, and for that amount of money, it looked pretty good to me.
K: Yeah.
H: Y'know, I always factor in -- how much did they pay for it . . .
K: Right.
H: . . . and how much time did [it] take for them to shoot it?
K: I think that was the budget. That's what I was told. I'm not sure what the actual budget was.
H: At those levels you can't expect it to be an Academy Award-winning production.
K: Right.
H: It's not like you're competing against the thirty-million-dollar studio people.
K: Right, right.
I thought the script was pretty good, actually. I honestly liked the script I wrote for them. And I think that if they'd gotten a different director, maybe this movie would've been released on the big screen.
H: And so this deal -- with the Israeli producers -- basically, they had an idea, and they flew you to Israel, and they told you what they wanted, and you sort of shaped a script around their parameters.
K: That was the idea. However, when they faxed me the idea . . . the idea was terrible. And I said, 'Listen, guys. I have some better ideas . . . around this same premise.'
So I faxed them some ideas on that idea. And they liked them. And they said, 'Why don't you come over to Israel? We'll work on a treatment. And you write it. You go back and write it.'
I went to Israel for two weeks . . . worked on a treatment, stayed in a hotel.
[And while I was there . . . I] happened to have fallen in love wiht a girl who worked for their production company. And I asked them if I could stay there and write . . . instead of going back.
So they said, 'Sure.'
So I stayed there for a month, lived with a girl, and wrote the script for them.
H: And . . . was the process . . . was that sort of . . . a nice creative process? Did you feel comfortable in that type of . . .
K: Yes, I did. I liked them very much. I did feel very good with them.
H: Okay.
K: One of them was a hard-guy producer. The other guy was a very sensitive guy. And I'm sad that I lost touch with them.
[But] I just saw them again, but it was different. Y'know, they were already working with different people and . . .
H: Well so . . . that was 1992 . . . so . . . the same year that you graduated in June from UCLA . . .
K: Right.
H: Basically, you were in a development deal with a producer that really was going to camera . . . or trying to go to camera very seriously.
K: Right.
H: And . . . the only thing that may have not been up to speed was . . . maybe they didn't have enough money to pay you what you thought you . . .
K: [Not] enough money. Although, looking back on it now . . . I got more money . . . [than] I'm getting [right] now [with a] script . . . the deal I'm about to make . . .
[So] in retrospect . . .
H: So actaully -- you were pretty happy about this whole deal. Your first deal out of UCLA was a pretty good deal, then.
K: Yeah.
H: Cool.
K: $12,000 for a script and two rewrites.
H: Well, that's . . . I call it the gray market. That's the standard . . . a $10,000 . . . deal like that.
K: Right.
H: It's enough money to make it worthwhile, but it certainly doesn't give you enough money [to get] into the WGA.
K: Oh, no, no, no. This was not . . .
H: So, it's sort of the gray market. But still, you can make a living doing it.
K: Exactly, exactly.
(To read ACT VI --> click on --> "Alex Kustanovich (6)" below.)
< (c) 1999 > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
