| Show Boarder has a lot riding on Sundance entry John Horn Los Angeles Times As a skinny teenager growing up in Missouri and Nebraska Steve Berra was pummeled by bullies and ridiculed for ditching organized sports in favor of skateboarding With a shaved head baggy clothes and few friends Berra slept through most classes and had a 12 high school grade- grade point average What I was Berra says was the kid who everybody assumed was a complete lost cause The lost cause went wenton on to become not only a wildly successful professional skateboarder with endors endorsement ment deals and screaming fans but also an impressive writer As much muchas as he might have changed Berra now 33 never forgot his childhood isolation I IF r H r. r M l. l V and he has channeled those memories into The Good its Life a movie having premiere in the dramatic competition of the Sundance Film Festival Festivals which opens Thursday Like mastering a kick-flip kick backside tail-slide tail or any of his other shin-shattering shin skating tricks Berets Berra's transition from friendless teen to gregarious filmmaker required dedication amid repeated failure His films film's journey to Park City Utah makes for a quintessential Sundance story Determined storyteller perseveres for a decade ho gung-ho producer cobbles together a motley crew of investors intensely personal film beats out more than other submissions for a spot in inthe inthe inthe the nations nation's top showcase for indie cinema Skating gives you an endurance that very few people have Berra B r says in the middle of private indoor skate p parkin iri fk downtown Los Angeles Angeles as skaters Felix Madonna and Heath Kirchart fly off ramps behind him occasionally tumbling tumbI ng onto the concrete as they try to perfect new moves You learn to get your butt kicked kicked- and push through The way out is the way through After deciding at age 14 that he was destined to tobe tobe tobe be a professional skater Berra moved to Southern California in 1992 to live with skateboarding legend Tony Hawk The sport was wa scarcely popular back then and Hawk counseled his year old roommate to develop a fallback plan He told me You have to look at skating as fun But But Sundance Continued on page 2 f I rr r t t. 1 Boarder at Sundance Continued from page 1 its it's not a career U Berra recalls He He remembered the thead ad his ng career took off ofT Berra also started acting On his first television series 1997 Hope St. St Berra was allowed to revise some of his dialogue Writing he found was fulfilling Despite his lowly academic record Berra had excelled at typing I think that was the only A AI I ever got and he also loved to read While on a skateboard tour Berra went into a thrift thrill store where for a quarter he bought Ben Bagdikian's In the Midst of Plenty The Poor in America The book resonated with Berra I was considered poor when I was growing up I didn't have a phone he says His personal recollections of trying to get by matched Bagdikian's Bagdikian s 's premise Youre looked at as a failure Berra says Not only in your neighbors' neighbors eyes but in your own So Berra seized on those two elements of his childhood emotional and financial impoverishment and some 10 years ago started to craft the screenplay for The Good Life The story unfolds in modem-day modem Nebraska in inthe inthe inthe the shadow of a college football powerhouse that is all but called the University of Nebraska A young man named Jason doesn't care carea a bit for football but he is passionate about a dying movie theater and for caring for the infirm man who runs it Into that world enters a mysterious young woman Frances who seems to love old movies as much as Jason dislikes football Concerned that too many predictable TV roles would ruin his skateboard image he had a good run on Felicity but then there were the turns on Nash Bridges Berra stopped auditioning He looked to star in The Good Life himself Unfortunately as one producer promptly told him he wasn't good- good looking enough to carry a film and couldn't compete with the likes of Luke Wilson That was such an obscure comparison Berra says still laughing over the incident So Berra put The Good Life down and focused on more commercially viable scripts twisted thrillers in the spirit of Director Guy Ritchie and producer Matthew Vaughn Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Layer Cake optioned one of his scripts I loved the genre says Berra who grew up watching Steven Friday the thet Pt and kung fu movies It wasn't just to get attention And I progressively got better at writing But Berra knew enough about Hollywood to know the chances for his passion project weren't good If there was any way I was going to get in a room and talk about The Good Life it was going to be through one of those thriller scripts he says And that's pretty much what happened Warner Bros production executive Lance Lanee Sloane was working on a modern modern- day surfing pirate movie and Berra came up as a possible screenwriter Berra wasn't interested but Sloane and Berra did eventually meet I thought he only wrote these crazy psychological thrillers Sloane says But he said Ive written another script Its It's called The Good Life I immediately read it and thought of Sundance It was clear he knew the story so well Within a month Sloane joining forces with his brother Devin who worked in the oil business had raised the films film's under 10 million production budget assembling a group of investors from oil real estate and ice hockey the backers include former Los Angeles King Luc Sloane and Berra considered filming in Nebraska but negative local reaction to an early script as well as Canadas Canada's financial incentives and bleaker winter weather brought the film to Manitoba Mark Webber Vebber Web r Storytelling was vas s cast castas cast castas castas t as the lead with Deschanel Winter Passing as Frances and Harry Dean Stanton as the theater owner Berra will arrive in Park City with no theatrical distributor for The Good Life but he doesn't seem worried I think its themes Berra says of his movie are pretty universal |
