Emerson, the L.A. semester pioneer, recently took a big step. It paid $12 million in April for a Sunset Boulevard parking lot in Hollywood where it plans to construct classrooms, dorms and production facilities. David Rosen, Emerson's vice president for public affairs, said the campus would show that after 20 years in Los Angeles, "we were there to stay."
On a recent morning, things were bustling at Emerson's current headquarters in a Burbank office building.
In one classroom, veteran television writer Debra Epstein was leading eight students she had assigned to devise plots for established TV series such as "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." After one promising but complicated reading involving a murdered Russian spy, Epstein gently urged a rewrite. "It's getting too hard for the audience to follow. You need to streamline," she said.
Upstairs, the Emerson program's executive director, Jim Lane was screening "A Clockwork Orange," the controversial 1971 movie, for 19 students in his course about American films of the '70s. Later, Lane lectured about director Stanley Kubrick's bold cinematic style and detailed the film's themes of violent youth and untrustworthy authorities.
"It is a self-conscious, aggressive film that challenges you on all sorts of levels," said Lane, whose course also examines "Dirty Harry" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," among others.
Elon University is the newest here. The North Carolina school started its Los Angeles program this summer with 20 students and space at the Oakwood, according to coordinator Jason McMerty. Since a growing number of graduates move to L.A., he said, Elon figured it should "demystify" the city to students who knew it only from "Baywatch" or "Entourage."
Los Angeles' libertine reputation did not stop the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities from starting its Los Angeles Film Studies Center. Its 50 current students, from schools such as Asbury College in Kentucky and Calvin College in Michigan, work on film projects and internships. They also pledge not to drink or smoke and must take a course called Theology in Hollywood.
Any culture shock is less about morality than adapting to a big city, said program director Rebecca Ver Straten-McSparran. "A lot of our students come from towns with one stop light. So this city is overwhelming," she said.
Evan Kaufman, a senior from Connecticut in Emerson's program, often bicycles from his Oakwood apartment to his internship with film producers on the nearby Universal lot. A writing major, he says the L.A. semester is a good way to "dip your toe in the water" of the entertainment industry without the risk of going it alone.
It's possible to work on independent movies in Boston, Kaufman said. "But if you want to write the next 'Iron Man,' you have to be here. There's really no two ways about it. And I think a lot of kids have that fantasy of coming out here and making it big."
He too may return to Hollywood next year, he said. And if things don't work out: "Mom and Dad's basement awaits."
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larry.gordon@latimes.com
