ICLA's Inside Hollywood

One of the most impressive things I've heard about our students, aside from their obvious intelligence, is their work ethic and lack of "jadedness" (is that a word? well, now it is). When we send IC interns out into the "job market," employeers KNOW our students will go the extra mile. Well, that attitude and willingness to do more than expected applies double to the IC grads working in LA, too.

Disney creative exec Mac Torluccio (IC '97) and CAA literary agent Bill Zotti (IC '95) spoke to all of our summer students last Monday night about the film business, their jobs, how they got where they are and all the pitfalls and successes along the way. They were great and everyone in the room responded and learned something. But what stood out most to me was that each of these guys took their Monday nights to give something back. They went above and beyond the call. And not only were they happy to do it, but they want to work with the ICLA program to provide internships, mentoring advice and contacts for the future.

As I said to the group assembled -- it's not as if these guys HAD to do this. I mean, they're not getting paid, they can't take off from work the following day (in fact, both have demanding jobs that keep them in their offices from early in the morning till well past "quitting" time) and they DO have personal lives. The truth is they did it because they WANTED to. They know how much they would have appreciated it as students. And they enjoyed it. A lesson to us all.