Script Scouts
Three Alums Seek Out Emerging Film Talent.
When three Cinematic Arts majors started their film management and production company while undergraduates, their assets were beyond meager. Hollywood connections? Zero. Family money? Forget it.
But creativity, ambition and nose-to-the-grindstone work habits? The trio had those to spare.
Jeremy Bell ’00, George Heller ’01 and Michael Lasker ’01 opened for business in Jeremy’s apartment in 1999. (The company’s name, Foursight Entertainment, is a reference to a fourth student, Jonathan Abrams ’00, who was originally part of the group.) One sat on the bed reading scripts, another did the same on the couch and the third made calls on their only phone. They scheduled meetings around their classes.
Jeremy Bell ’00, George Heller ’01 and Michael Lasker ’01 opened for business in Jeremy’s apartment in 1999.
They were artful in getting their scripts copied for free (“Sorry, USC!” said Heller with a grin), and hit upon a resourceful way to get around mailing costs or hiring a delivery service to make the rounds of studios. They would dress in grubby shorts and T-shirts to look like messengers themselves, hoping that none of the agents or producers would recognize them making deliveries.
Foursight has a niche: scouting out universities for emerging film talent. “You see Pete Carroll and Tim Floyd scouting at high school games,” said Heller. “Shouldn’t we be doing that for cinema?”
Barely out of school themselves, the three sent letters to deans of film schools and departments at New York University, Yale, Stanford and the University of Texas, among others, and went on road trips, meeting with faculty members, gathering scripts from promising would-be screenwriters and tapes from fledgling directors.
“We find people who are this close,” added Lasker, holding up his thumb and forefinger, “and we take them over the hump.”
They all kept their day jobs. These included used car salesman (Bell), blackjack dealer (Heller) and arranging temp jobs for the homeless (Lasker). They sold their first option in 2001, netting a paltry $2,000. Steadily, they began selling scripts, representing directors and producing films. They signed up director Stewart Hendler, who has just directed his first feature for Universal. A Florida State student they found landed a three-picture deal with Miramax. They helped produce the Orlando Bloom drama Haven, directed by Heller’s USC roommate, Frank E. Flowers ’01. They now have 25 clients and a string of sold scripts. Two upcoming projects they are most excited about are Friendly Skies for Paramount (written by Heller’s former camp counselor, whom he reconnected with at a camp reunion) and Camp Rockaway for Sony Pictures.
Along the way, they moved to better digs.The Foursight office now is a suite in Beverly Hills. The next step: bundling investors so they can finance and “greenlight” a film themselves.
The three say they appreciate their early struggles.“We have very satisfying moments,” said Bell. “Writer Joe Ballarini was about to have his power shut off when we sold his first script for $600,000. It changed his life.”
“If we all had immediate success, or parents throwing money at us, it might have made us jaded,” laughed Lasker.
“It’s what makes us grateful today,” added Heller.
