From Princeton to Hollywood: Mazin '92 shares wisdom

If you had to place bets on what successful screenwriter Craig Mazin '92 majored in while at Princeton, you would probably be wrong. And if you had to guess how Mazin took his first step into the film industry, you would probably be surprised.

Mazin was a neuro-psychology major who got his first Hollywood job by waltzing into a temp agency and taking a position as a clerk making Xeroxes for a promotional company. Now, 11 years after graduation, he is a screenwriter for Miramax, has written a remake of a Jimmy Stewart '32 film and is currently working on "Scary Movie 3."

He was also one of the judges of Princeton-in-Hollywood's Short Film Festival 2003, which aims to promote Princeton alumni and undergraduate filmmakers by giving winners "ins" to the film and TV industry.

This year, the panel chose five winners from 50 entries. These films will be shown in October at Warner Bros. Studios, and a reception will follow the screening.

"Hollywood is fun," Mazin said simply, and it certainly seems he's there to stay.

But the alum won't forget his inner tiger; Princeton taught Mazin many things. For example, he learned "never to drink kamikazes, and that I didn't know how to write," Mazin said. The story is not clear on how he came to the first conclusion, but the second was spawned by a freshman year writing teacher who whipped her students' writing into shape during the first three weeks of class. This strengthened Mazin's appreciation for good writing, though he never took a creative writing class at Princeton.

Another favorite of his during his undergrad years was American Focus – a group that made radio shows about public affairs – and shipped off the tapes of the shows to stations around the country.

This was good training in media production, but the real contribution of American Focus was a seminal experience: going to NBC studios in Rockefeller Center to interview Lauren Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live.

Mazin was caught by the glamour and excitement of the entertainment industry, and after college was over, he left for Hollywood.

After the clerk position, Mazin became a marketing executive at Disney. Through that job, he was able to pitch his first script, "Rocketman"— which he wrote when he was only 24 years old along with Greg Erb '91 — to the "people who mattered." It was produced in 1997 by Walt Disney Pictures.

This achievement represents Mazin's belief that, in reference to the Hollywood maxim "it's not what you know, but who you know," who-you-know is key, but only if you've got the right talent to go along with it.

"Rocketman" wasn't Mazin's proudest piece of art, but it was enough to land him a series of other screenwriting jobs, including "Senseless," starring Marlon Wayans, Matthew Lillard, Rip Torn and David Spade. That slapstick comedy featured a man on an experimental drug treatment that heightens all his senses, then randomly knocks out one just when he most needs it.

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Also, Mazin has recently been working on "Scary Movie 3" with the team that did "Airplane." Like most assignments he receives, he had an incredibly short time to write the script — two weeks to churn out a first draft.

During this time, Mazin realized that these scripts aren't the highest forms of art, but he had to learn the "formula" before he could subvert it.

"We just want to make you people laugh," he said, with a little chuckle.

The project Mazin is most proud of to date, however, involved an invisible rabbit. In May, he recently finished a remake of the 1950 film "Harvey," which starred Jimmy Stewart '32 as an alcoholic schizophrenic who befriends an imaginary, six-foot white rabbit.

The film was conceived as a comment on the state of psychology in the 1940's, as Elwood's (Stewart) sister tries to get him institutionalized.

To update the film, Mazin took the basic message of the old version, but modernized the language, characters and comedy, and rethought the form which the social commentary might take.

Whereas institutionalization was a hot topic in the '40's, Mazin chose "diseasification of normal behavior states" as the modern equivalent.

Mazin's text focused on the contemporary trend of turning many behaviors — anxiety, attention span, even a little creative imagining — into a disease that should be treated with a pill. It is currently scheduled to come out in 2004.

Along with his own career, Mazin is a member of Princeton-in-Hollywood, which Alison Graham Faggen '84 founded to help Tigers make it in the industry.

Mazin said he hopes that Princeton-in-Hollywood will encourage Princetonians to join a career path which he feels that the University doesn't stress.

"The U.S. is the largest producer of media in the world," Mazin said, and he wonders why the University seems to take such an apathetic view to popular culture.

Nonetheless, Princeton-in-Hollywood helps out its members in countless ways — from finding Hollywood jobs for seniors to publishing a directory of Princetonians in the media to sponsoring a short film festival.

And many Princeton students aspiring to make it big in the glitz and glamour on the West Coast have continued to seek Princeton-in-Hollywood's aid. When asked if he had some wisdom learned from his various Hollywood experiences that he could share, Mazin noted that while no advice will work for everyone, attitude is a key to the business.

"If you want to succeed, you have to be serious about it," he said. "You have to be ready to take any job you can. Be the best at that thing, and suddenly you will find yourself in a position in order to get yourself to a place where it can happen."