The perils of puberty are often many people’s worst nightmare. Zits, raging hormones and growing body parts are all part of this glorious miracle of adolescence that everyone must go through to reach adulthood ““ everyone except Lucy.
Lucy is the protagonist of UCLA graduate student Julie Sagalowsky’s short film “Lucy: A Period Piece,” which recently won first place for comedy at the 30th College Television Awards ““ the same organization in charge of the Emmys.
The film also recently won the Audience Award for Best Short when it screened at the AFI Dallas Festival.
The film features a 16-year-old girl named Lucy, whose tiny, shapeless body fuels her constant obsession of reaching “normalcy.”
Sagalowsky, a film student at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, said that Lucy is obsessed with the fact that she looks too young for her age, which leads her to “seeing breasts everywhere, except on her own body.”
Sagalowsky, who had previous experience in theater, first became interested in film while earning an undergraduate degree in theater from Dartmouth College.
“What I really loved about film was that you got to pull the viewer right up close,” Sagalowsky said. “In theater, sometimes when I was watching my actors work, they would be doing all these interesting nuances that I knew were not going to read from the back of the theater. But in film, you can pull the camera right up in there and really direct the audience’s eye.”
While the film is not autobiographical, Sagalowsky admits that she did get her inspiration for the film from that certain period of life.
“I was very much a late bloomer, and at that time it was very much not funny at all,” Sagalowsky said. “But in retrospect, it was very appealing to take a comedic look at this moment in life. I feel that those emotions when you are a teen are so strong and for whatever reasons that you think you are a freak, it becomes so powerful, and that was kind of the impetus for telling the story.”
The film was shot in the surrounding Los Angeles area ““ much of it here at UCLA.
“We shot the big dance in the (Kerckhoff) Grand Salon, which is so beautiful,” Sagalowsky said. “It’s amazing that they let us use it.”
Other scenes were shot in different houses around town, including a “medical film place” for what Sagalowsky called the “awkward gynecology scene.” Sagalowsky wrote and directed the film, but was the co-producer along with another UCLA graduate student, Josh Feldman.
“I had seen Julie’s previous film, called “˜Ruthless,'” Feldman said. “I was just struck by her talent and her voice. I was just blown away that she was so talented.”
Praise for Sagalowsky’s work not only comes from Feldman, but also Myrl Schreibman, the chair of Sagalowsky’s thesis committee and a professor at the film school. He first met Sagalowsky through one of the first directing classes required in the graduate program.
“She has grown a great deal,” Schreibman said. “She learns very quickly and is not afraid to take risks as a director. She goes with her instincts, which is a sign of a great director,” Schreibman added. The film was shot in the spring of 2007 and screened for the first time at UCLA’s Director’s Spotlight film showcase last spring.
But it’s just now ““ a year and a half after production began ““ that the film is starting to hit the festival circuit.Having experienced her first glimpse of critical success, Sagalowsky plans to pitch some of her ideas to a larger Hollywood audience soon.
“I definitely prefer directing over writing, and I really love working with kids and teens,” Sagalowsky said. “I would love to be directing some television shows on some children’s channel.”
“I just find that (kids) are really complex and funny and very real. I think the challenge of creating smart and entertaining programming for them is something that is really appealing to me,” Sagalowsky said.