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Issue #48 – Mentor News
by L. Swift and Jeff McQ
Sandy Stern: All I knew is that when I was in graduate school, I was in New York, was that I was spending of all my money on seeing movies and going to the theater and not reading anything about schizophrenia. I sort of had to connect those dots and figure out where do I really want to spend my time and my energy and what is it that I want to be doing in my life.
RRF: So how did you land your first job in film?
Sandy: My first real job in the business… and here I was in graduate school [with] advanced degrees and all it came down to … “Can you type?” and “How fast you could type?” I was just hired as an assistant. … That’s one of the things I always tell my students: what I love about the business is that it’s surprisingly democratic. I didn’t know anybody in the business. I didn’t have a relative. I didn’t have a friend. I didn’t have any clue of how it works, but I feel like the nice thing about this business is that you can actually fail upwards.
RRF: You’ve told us you had some negative experiences with bosses when you were starting out. Have such experiences impacted the way you perform as a mentor?
Sandy: Well, I think it’s a good question…In a way, it’s more than just the way I work as a mentor and work with my students, it’s the way I’ve decided to be in my professional life. After a number of negative experiences with certain persons, I made a conscious decision never to be a jerk in the business. I have worked and managed my career to not ever be that kind of person. To be honest, to be straightforward, to look for the best in people, to encourage—that is my philosophy as a producer and as a teacher.
RRF: Film Connection apprentice Parushka Moodley has been very impressed with the guidance you’ve been giving her on her screenplay. Do you have anything to report about Parushka?
Sandy: She’s just super interesting, super smart and creative. Just sort of present and dynamic, and I think she’s got a great idea for a movie. It’s been really exciting getting her to get the best version of this movie in her head and on the page and by sort of challenging her in a collaborative way. I feel like we have made a lot of progress.
RRF: When you were first starting out was there a particular moment when you took a deep breath and thought, “Wow, I’m really doing this!”?
Sandy: Probably that moment was when I made my first movie, Pump Up the Volume. … Here’s what’s funny about that movie: that’s the movie that moved me to Los Angeles. I was living in New York. I flew out here for a week thinking I was just making a deal on the movie, and I never went back to New York. It was like of all the things I’ve done in my career, of all the things I’ve worked on—nothing has had such a charmed, easy trajectory as that movie.
RRF: It sounds like you’re a very positive person. Does being positive inform your work?
Sandy: Well, let me just say this. My friends say to me that I’m one of the most positive people they know. The answer is I know no other way to be a producer. I know no other way. … The answer is you find the good people. You work with the good people. You are a good person. That’s the pocket and the world you create for yourself here.
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