It’s not often that film students get their “big
breaks” immediately after college, but producer Lance
Williams’ career as a professional filmmaker has taken off
though he’s still a UCLA student.
While Williams is still in his second year of graduate school,
calling his most recent project just another student film would be
an understatement.
“Charly,” which made its initial debut in Utah
several weeks ago, (it’s scheduled to be released in the Los
Angeles area on January 24th), continues to hold steady at the box
office, already grossing half a million dollars in limited
theatrical release, according to Yahoo! movies. Williams made most
of the film while taking classes, allowing him to use
professors’ experience, and to ask questions directly
relevant to his film.
Hoping to mirror the success of other independent films, such as
“My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” Williams is confident that
the box office dollars will continue to trickle in as the movie
makes its way around the nation.
Based on a novel of the same title written by Jack Weyland, the
film tells the story of Sam, a buttoned down Mormon from Salt Lake
City, and Charly, a fast city girl from New York. With the
religious thematic backdrop, their different personalities clash as
they learn to love each other.
Williams first discovered the novel as freshman at Brigham Young
University, where he graduated in 1984. At the time, the book
created a phenomenon among many students on campus.
“Everybody was reading it,” Williams said.
“All the girls were openly reading it, and that’s
all they talked about “¦ the guys were reading it too, but
they just wouldn’t admit it,” added Williams.
When finally given the opportunity to produce his own project,
Williams knew that “Charly” was the story he wanted to
tell on film, as he felt both men and women could relate to it.
Shot on location in Utah and New York, Williams co-produced the
film with Kaleidescope Pictures using a budget of $1 million; it
was a miniscule amount compared to mainstream Hollywood movies, but
huge for a project produced by a student still earning his
degree.
To off-set many of the additional costs associated with
feature-length films shot on location, Williams gathered product
placement from Southwest Airlines, which provided free travel
within the continental United States during production, and from
Palm Pilot, which provided some of the props used in the film.
Though still in the process of earning his master’s
degree, several large production studios, including Disney and
Warner Brothers, have already contacted Williams with offers to
produce films.
A large portion of Williams’ success can be attributed to
his years of prior experience in the film industry, despite just
having been accepted into the graduate school at UCLA last year. He
kept his connections from acting on such projects as “Return
of the Jedi” and various commercials. He was also the protege
of acting coach Ted Danielevsky, who discovered Woody Allen. In
fact, for the past 12 years, Williams has run Danielevsky’s
Professional Actors Workshop in New York.
According to Denise Mann, co-chair of the producers program at
UCLA, Williams’ film serves as a prime example of what
projects in the graduate school should aspire to be.
“I’m completely tickled pink because this is the
tradition that the producers’ program was built on: the
notion that you go out and find a piece of material that you love
and … you figure out how to get it written and how to get it
developed into the project that you saw originally in your mind …
and then to top things off, find a distributor so that people will
see the movie,” Mann said. “Lance accomplished all that
while a full-time student at UCLA, and we’re extremely proud
of that accomplishment.”