The Hollywood Reporter – August 14, 2019

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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 98 AUGUST 14, 2019

Top 25 Film

Schools

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TUITION $49,550 (undergrad);
$39,720 (graduate)
ALUMNI Barbara Broccoli, Emily
Spivey, Patricia Whitcher

9

CALARTS
VALENCIA, CALIFORNIA
You can go to CalArts
to study dance, theater, film or
video, but the real action at the
school Walt Disney co-founded
is, of course, animation. This is
where John Lasseter (’79) studied
before becoming creative head
of Pixar (he’s now at Skydance)
... and where Pete Docter (’90)
learned his craft before taking
over Lasseter’s job. The school is
in something of a holding pattern
as everyone waits to see what
plans the new provost, Tr a c i e
Costantino, has for the campus,
but infrastructure might be a
good place to start: Some say the
facilities could use modernizing.
Even so, CalArts continues to pro-
duce animators of every stripe,
from stop-motion masters like
Henry Selick (’77) to CG wizards
like Andrew Stanton (’87) to hand-
drawn traditionalists like Gary
Trousdale (’82). A more recent
graduate, Gravity Falls creator
Alex Hirsch (’07), just signed a fat
first-look deal with Netflix.
TUITION $50,850 (undergrad);
$40,720 (graduate)
ALUMNI Tim Burton, Brad Bird,
Brenda Chapman, James Mangold

10

EMERSON COLLEGE
BOSTON
It may look like a small
liberal arts college, but it’s actu-
ally a sprawling international
network of film school partner-
ships. The latest is a collaboration
with the Paris College of Art
that will allow 25 students to
get a film degree while taking
a grand tour of European cam-
puses that includes a castle in the
Netherlands. “We just started the
program this summer,” says dean
Rob Sabal. “It’s an idea that comes
from an overall global initiative
at Emerson.” Those stuck back in
Beantown can console themselves
with the school’s newly renovated

“We haven’t valued the arts enough in lower education, even in

kindergarten,” says Ruskin. Below: Ruskin (second from right)

and UNC President Margret Spellings (right) visited the campus

of UNC School of the Arts on April 29, 2016.

AFI Gets a New

Boss (Again)

Susan Ruskin on how

she’ll bring ‘stability’ to

a turbulent institution

By Rebecca Keegan

T

his fall, Susan Ruskin takes over as

dean of AFI, the conservatory’s third

in two years. Fortunately for her, she

has a lot of experience — in both academia

(she was dean of UNC School of the Arts’

film school) and in the industry (she’s pro-

duced such movies as Anaconda and Haunted

Honeymoon and worked for Gene Wilder and

Lucasfilm) — which should help her deal with

turbulent times up in the hills of Griffith Park.

Do you know why your predecessor, Richard

Gladstein, left after only 18 months?

I do not. I do not know. I do not have the history.

What I do know is there has been a lot of change,

and I hope I can bring stability.

How will you create that stability?

You just have to have a basic knowledge and

understanding of why academia is different from

the industry itself. I bring a kind of experience

that is not that common among deans, and I know

some of the faculty from the business.

Is academia and the business of making movies

wildly different culturally?

They are different. A school has to be much more

structured, and there are a lot more rules and

regulations. Sitting down and putting a curriculum

together — none of that happens in the indus-

try. Another aspect that’s different is when you

accept somebody into a program, they have an

equal right to the same education as another per-

son accepted into the program. In the business,

there’s a hierarchy. Among students, there cannot

be. And that’s harder for some faculty to get over.

You didn’t go to film school, and you obviously

managed to have a thriving career in the indus-

try. So why would someone need to?

The reason for film school is you truncate the pro-

cess of learning and you create a safe space for

people to find their voices. That doesn’t happen

in the industry. It shortens the period of learning

who you are as filmmakers.

One of the major shifts that happened after you

moved into academia was the #MeToo move-

ment and Time’s Up ...

Schools are not immune to this. I have come to

recognize that, even though I personally had a

relatively fine experience in the industry, the sub-

tle #MeToo stuff, keeping a woman out of certain

rooms, was always there. For this next generation,

how are we training them to be conscious of it?

We can’t make every micro-aggression a major

problem. I’ll give you an example. A senior was

asking a first-year student to work on a movie

for the weekend. But the senior asked them on a

dating app. And I had to explain that that is abso-

lutely inappropriate. That is not the way you offer

somebody a job.

How much of your job is fundraising?

I don’t like to think about it. Then I realized I’ve

been fundraising my whole life. I’ve been getting

movies made and having to convince somebody

to put money up — a lot of money. So, in some

senses, it’s a lot easier when you’re asking for

the students.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Continued on page 102