For now, though, I want to shine the spotlight, as it were, upon our convocation speaker this year, Leith Adams. It is great perk of my job that I get to meet the distinguished alums who we invite back to campus as convocation speakers each year, and this year I really enjoyed having the chance to spend a bit of time with Mr. Adams and his wife Char. Inspiring, charming, lovely people. Also, as it happens, Leith is in charge of the batmobiles! But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Mr. Adams, who grew up in Paris, Illinois, earned his B.A. in English from the University of Illinois in 1969. From there, by way of one tour of duty in Vietnam and another at film school at the University of Southern California, he found himself in Los Angeles and working for Warner Bros. He is now the Executive Director of the Warner Brothers Corporate Archive. This is important work. Film is arguably the most recognizable narrative art form of the last century, and certainly films—from new blockbusters to classics in revival— lie at the core of our shared cultural experience. Adams's work involves curating and preserving this important cultural legacy. Adams is also the only speaker I have ever introduced who has a) written a book with an introduction by Dennis Hopper, and b) been featured in the newspaper with Voldemort's cloak.
I was also pleased to have Adams address the class of 2012 because his personal story exemplifies something that I know to be true and that I see instances of all the time: the fact that English alums succeed in a huge variety of different kinds of unexpected careers and that the English major--with its emphasis on analysis, creative critical thinking, cultural awareness, and writing skills--turns out to be great preparation for almost anything.
Adams may be a big shot Hollywood guy, but he's still one of ours! And—to quote from one of Warner Bros. best known and most beloved films—he'll also always have Paris, Illinois.
Here, very lightly edited, is the text of Adams's address to the class of 2012.
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My name is Leith Adams and I work as Corporate Archivist at
Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. I want to congratulate all of you members of
the Class of 2012 and hope your careers will be as exciting and memorable as
mine has been.
I come from a small town down the road: Paris, Illinois. I graduated from the U of I--barely--by the
skin of my teeth--in 1969 with a degree in English and a split minor in Speech…and
something else. I’ll be darned if I can
remember what that something else was. But
Speech: that’s where all of the film courses were.
When Professor Perry asked me to speak here, I mentioned to
him that I’m probably the ugliest stepchild of English Department graduates to
ever come through the University of Illinois. After flunking Analytical Geometry my first
semester (side note: to prepare for the final which was held in Altgeld Hall, I
went to the Student Union and watched BATMAN which was the new hit show January
of 1966; my instructor always said to the class, “Don’t worry, it’ll come to
you.” I’m still waiting for the lightning of Analytical Geometry to hit me…and
I guess I always will). Oh yeah--after flunking
the course, I was on probation every semester until the day I graduated. I told Professor Perry.
He said, “That’s okay, I was kicked out of woodshop class once.”*
I replied, “But I flunked Typography.” That
was during the brief, but shining, moment when I imagined myself majoring in
Journalism and becoming the next Mike Royko.
“Don’t care,” said Professor Perry.
“Look, I flunked Juvenile Delinquency…how could anybody
flunk that?”
“So what?”
“All right, I didn’t want to say this, but…I even flunked
Creative Writing taught by Professor John Scouffas.”
But I guess you all know the answer, because I’m here.
Oh yeah…and when I stepped onstage in 1969 at the Assembly
Hall to receive my diploma, I smiled as I went back to my seat…opened it up and
what I saw was: “Please report to Bldg. 'such and such'--Room 'so and so' for a
matter of great importance.” There was no degree for me at graduation.
Telling you this reminds me of the time my wife and I were
driving back to L.A. from Vegas and as we were leaving town, we stopped to get
some gas. I put money in the Coke machine and waited. Nothing came out. I
couldn’t even win at the Coke machine in Las Vegas.
I did go to Room “so and so.” I owed the University $15 for
some unpaid fee. My degree came in the mail--along with my draft notice. This
was 1969 after all.
But I finally realized why Professor Perry invited me. On
Christmas Day of this year, Warner Bros. is releasing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE
GREAT GATSBY...in 3-D…with Leonardo Di Caprio as Gatsby. That was the reason. I’m sorry, Professor Perry, Leo couldn’t make
it today.
So what does an archivist do? We save history--and the fact that a kid from
Paris, Illinois who while in high school learned to run 35mm projectors in the
local movie theater--who wrote Warner Bros. back then asking for 8x10 black and
white photos from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE with James Dean and HOUSE OF WAX with
Vincent Price to illustrate non-existent articles that he said he was going to
write for the high school paper--and got those photos at 25 cents each because
that’s what Warner Bros. did--sold photos to the fans for a quarter--the fact
that I became the archivist for the movie studio that sold me stills from my
favorite movies completely boggles my mind…even today.
Your English degree can get you anywhere you want to go. You just have to know where that is. In a world of tweets & texts, you can read
and write and comprehend much more than the general population. What you have learned
here will take you wherever you want.
So where is that? You
tell me.
I knew Sophomore year that if I made it through the draft
alive…through Viet Nam alive (as much as I ran from it for the four years I was
here, it was waiting for me when I got out…but I was lucky…I was a college
graduate and the Air Force sent me to Saigon six months and a day after hitting
Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio…and I was an English
teacher in Saigon for a year…and then a motion picture cameraman for two and a
half years in Dayton, Ohio…I was lucky.)… so Sophomore year I knew I was
going to go where they made the movies, if I made it through the draft alive.
And when I was ready to go, I was armed with a couple of
things I’d read in a book. Peter
Bogdanovich wrote a book called PIECES OF TIME. In the early 70’s he had directed Larry
McMurtry’s THE LAST PICTURE SHOW--a novel that was a life-changer for me when I
read it here in Champaign-Urbana. Bogdanovich had also directed WHAT’S UP, DOC?
with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal…still one of the funniest movies I’ve
ever seen. And he even directed a movie
based on Henry James’ DAISY MILLER which I liked, and the world hated. And when Bogdanovich wrote that you have to
have a game plan when you pursue your life’s dream, I listened. He said you have to set a time limit and it
has to be long enough to get you going, yet short enough that you can cut your
losses and continue on with Plan B if it is not working…five years was that
time limit.
And you also have to set a goal to achieve in those five
years, so you’ll know you are doing better at the end of the five years than
you were doing at the beginning of the five years. The goal has to be something
you don’t have now that you truly want…but it should not be something
unrealistic. For example, as a writer
the goal you don’t want to set is…I’ll write a book that will make millions. The goal you might want to set is: I’ll write
a book that attracts a publisher…or that gets good attention. If it is the internet or creating games that
you love, it isn’t that you’ll create a million dollar website or game in five
years, it will be that you have created something that gets good attention…or
maybe brings in a little bit of profit.
For me--going to Hollywood cold, fresh out of the Air
Force--I knew I didn’t want to be just another geek on the street looking for
work. So I applied for film school and
amazingly enough, I was let in. That
way, I could look around, try to understand the town…and see where I wanted to
go.
Early on, I realized Hollywood was just like Paris, Illinois…where
if I threw a snowball at a car, by the time I’d walked through the snow to my
father’s insurance office, the driver had seen my dad, yelled at him and
cancelled his insurance. I realized that if I sneezed in West Los Angeles,
someone across the Hollywood Hills in Burbank would say, “Gesundheit.” It will be the same for you in Silicon Valley.
It will be the same for you at Harvard. It
will be the same for you in New York City Publishing.
So the goal I set for myself wasn’t any of what I just mentioned
to you--direct a feature, write a great script, get good attention. When I contemplated my navel, the goal I
desired was to be able to drive onto a studio lot any time I wanted…and at the
end of those five years that was something I could do.
So I reevaluated. Do
I stick it out for another five years? You’ll
have to do the same, if you use Bogdanovich’s barometer. Are you better off than you were five years
ago? Did you come close to your goal? Only you can know if you should be staying
that next five years. My goal for the
next five years was to sell a script.
Now another lesson I learned…and this was from a class on
Studio Politics I took at USC Cinema…really, I took a class called Studio
Politics. Just think of all the time and
money you’re saving by not having to take these classes or read these books. But this lesson applies to anything you will
be doing in any business anywhere, always. It sounds simple, but: “You would be
surprised,” as Ken Evans said, “how many careers never got off the ground because
they never learned this lesson.” Always
treat the secretary in the office you’ve just entered with respect and dignity,
because that secretary is going to get you in to see the boss…or not…or when
you call later, he or she will put your call through…or not. That secretary is the key to everything you
want at that moment in your life…or not.
Another way of looking at this is what I was told when I
reported to a new boss at Warner Bros. He
said to me: “I only demand three things from the people who report to me: 1)
you work hard and do your job, 2) always treat everyone here the same, whether
it is the greens person tending the lawn or the producer of the new series
we’re making or the security guard that asks to see your ID at the gate…treat them
with the respect they deserve because if you take one of those people away, the
studio falls apart…and 3) never, ever lie to me. One of the best bosses I ever had. I hope you run into someone like him at one of
your jobs.
We have a museum at Warner Bros. I was hired twenty years ago with the idea I’d
help start an archive and maybe help them open a museum. So the museum opened and a couple of years in,
the studio sent a new custodian and he was a kid from Boston. Maybe twenty years old. Every once in a while, someone would say:
“Have you talked to Tommy? He really likes movies.” And I’m thinking: “Everyone likes movies. Why
should I talk to Tommy?” But I noticed his work. The kid was good. “Have you talked to Tommy?” “No, I haven’t
talked to Tommy.” But eventually I did--and
I continued to watch him work.
And an opening came up in the Warner Bros. Corporate
Archive--and we hired Tommy. He hadn’t wanted to go to college. He wanted to make movies. So he came to Los Angeles and he took the only
job available at Warner Bros.: custodian.
At the archive, you’re assigned films and tv shows. You read the scripts. You focus on what to
save, and work with the productions to make sure we get the costumes and the
props and the art department drawings and on and on, so we can represent that
film now and twenty years from now and much, much longer.
Tommy was good--and just like I noticed his work, the productions
began to notice him. And before we knew
it he was hired to work on a Ridley Scott movie--Scott directed ALIEN and BLADE
RUNNER and now Tommy was going to watch a legend up close while working as a
production assistant on MATCHSTICK MEN. And
before he knew it, he was working for his hero Steven Spielberg on THE TERMINAL
with Tom Hanks and later on INDIANA JONES AND THE CRYSTAL SKULL. Someday Tommy Bernard will be producing a
movie we’ll all be standing in line to see. And he was a custodian at Warner
Bros. (Oh yeah, he has won an award or two at Slamdance and other festivals for
a couple of short horror films he’s made.)
Me? I worked for the
USC Bookstore, so I could pay for my tuition at the Cinema School. Ended up off campus on the top floor of an 8 story
warehouse shipping books to External Programs classes when the sum and total
paper history of Warner Bros. Studios showed up on the 6th floor of
that building--donated to the University--1915 to 1967: CASABLANCA, REBEL
WITHOUT A CAUSE, THE SEARCHERS, BONNIE AND CLYDE--legal files for Humphrey
Bogart, Bette Davis, Ronald Reagan--it was all there. They hired forty people
to inventory the collection, and I was one of them…from bookstore to backstage
at the best studio in the history of the movies.
But I was also writing scripts--going to sell that million
dollar screenplay--but writing at night and on the weekends because I knew you
should never give up the day job (whether it was working at the bookstore, teaching
English as an Air Force airman in Saigon, running projectors at the Virginia
Theater in Champaign, working at the soda fountain at Dorris Pharmacy in Paris,
Illinois). Never give up the day job
until you get that next, better, day job.
And today--2012--where is that job for each one of you?
Don’t be surprised if is a temp job in a profession or a
company or university where you want to work. Take whatever job it is that gets you in that
door--and then keep working. I worked at the Bookstore during the day and I
wrote at night. I worked at the archive
during the day, and I wrote scripts for tv documentaries at night and on the
weekends. When you latch onto that
dream, take it where it leads you.
So it’s time to take a break--show you an archive--here are
some of the artifacts we take care of at Warner Bros.
[At this point, Adams treated us to a brief set images of iconic items held in the Warner Bros. archive, ranging from items from Casablanca to the Batmobiles from the current, Christopher Nolan directed Batman trilogy.**]
So someday all this will be yours. The world is open to you as English
graduates…but the world is open to everyone. What you can do better than them
is put sentences together. Spell without
spell check. You know that you have to
write and rewrite and rewrite to make something flow. We live in a world of typos--grammatical
mistakes in books and magazines and newspapers (while they last) and the
internet--so if you can step up and stand taller than the mediocrity around
you, you will find your place, wherever it is you want to be.
So a couple of things: go after your passion. Think of Tommy. He jumped from Boston to Los Angeles armed
only with the knowledge that he wanted to work in the movies and took the only
job open to him at the time--custodian--to archival representative--to
production assistant--to assistant to the producer of big time, big budget
films. The choices you make are the
choices you live with.
I am the happiest guy in the world that I graduated from the
University of Illinois with a degree in English. I hope you will be able to say the same when
you look back.
Thank you for your time--and go get 'em.
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* Sad but true. Now I can never make a crude wooden birdfeeder for my backyard.
** Batmobiles! See!
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