I was an English major at UCLA when I was 18, and then I left after a year to start acting. I was educating myself during that time.
I always bring it up to my lawyer every now and then. And another reason we have to revisit it is because there is a restoration going on right now for the film through UCLA and Sundance.
My explosiveness, I really couldn't show it at UCLA. It's still there. It's always been there. It was not a lot of running. It was a half-court game. Coach Howland came from the Big East and so you know that's a grind out game.
I was especially impressed with Pauley Pavilion [at UCLA campus ]. The floors hadn't been laid down yet, when they gave me the tour, each new room got my heart thumping. They even had a surgical operating room in case an athlete was severely injured.
UCLA acknowledged this shift by bringing in Alex Haley (the co-author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X) and Eldridge Cleaver (Soul on Ice) as speakers.
I teach a lot - I teach at the UCLA and USC graduate film programs - and a lot of those projects are my students' projects that I act in or I do a cameo.
I'm starting to teach now: I teach in the graduate film program at NYU and next year I'm going to be teaching at Los Angeles at the film program and English program at UCLA.
At UCLA I quickly learned the knack of getting grades, a craven surrender to custom, since grades had little to do with learning.
Growing up in Los Angeles, I was incredibly fortunate to be taken to theatre by my parents to see everything at the Music Center, at UCLA and beyond. I just adored it.
Really, UCLA's a great place as well, but they don't have the kind of environment they have here. The fans here have a passion.
When I wrote Chuky script, I was a student at UCLA, an undergraduate and my biggest aspiration for it was that I would get my foot in a door somewhere, that I would get an agent or something and it was just beyond my wildest dreams that this big-time producer, David Kirschner.
I watched UCLA football for many, many years. I've grown accustomed to the Pac-10 style.
My best girlfriends are the girls I went to college with at UCLA.
