Stephen Ujlaki

I'm tempted to tell you to just go ahead and take this guy to prepare you for the money grubbing producers in Hollywood. I mean, I got a lot out of the class as a sort of anthropological study on the Hollywood big-shot type. Ujlaki kind of reminds me of a modern day death of a salesman type, because his career has pretty much been a flop and he just can't get that one big picture made. He seems like a really smart guy, although I don't know how much of that is just me being fooled by his enormous ego or his repeated references to "the Harvard days". He thinks he is really cool. He'll stand there for almost an entire class talking about the different "Hollywood types" and what the Hollywood parties are like. These are interesting stories, but never in the class do you really learn any relevant information about producing or financing. Ujlaki's whole thing is that you have to have millions and millions, as he is purely concerned with Blockbuster Hollywood, and so we artists who might like to make a movie for less than a million are left no better off than when we started the class. There was a month, maybe more, when Ujlaki took off to try and make some kind of deal in Europe for one of his pipe dream films and we were taught by his TA. This poor TA, bless his soul, couldn't teach for the life of him. He tried, God bless him, but he failed. The class went berserk, throwing things, yelling stuff, making screaming sounds, it felt like middleschool all over again. The kid kind of deserved it with his wannabe Ujlaki, bad-ass hot-shot attitude, but it was a sad sight to behold. Not that he's going to be TAing for Ujlaki again this time around, but I thought you might find that little digression interesting. Did you? I hope so. God bless it, I hope so...