AGGIELIFE
Tiii sday, February 1,2000
THE BATTALION
Page 3
Director, producer Coulter returns to B-CS
former resident to visit campus to speak to A&M students about his career, successes in Hollywood
»CHHEI0CX
Matt D'Amic
recn
BY JEFF WOLFSHOHL
The Battalion
B ryan-College Station does breed success. Allen
Coulter, director and producer of the Golden
Globe-winning HBO show, “The Sopranos,” is
speaking at Texas A&M this week about his experience
ill the film business.
■ Coulter is briefly returning to Bryan-College Station
to educate Aggies abou,t the world beyond college.
■ “1 want to show students how things work in the
world outside of school,” Coulter said.
■ A former resident of College Station, he attended
A&M Consolidated high school. After graduation, he
rejected local scholarships and went to the Universi
ty of Texas.
■ “I was more interested in the arts and more interest
ed in theater, and at that time there was not a strong the
ater department at A&M,” Coulter said. “Also, there
was the desire to get away from home.”
I Coulter said that A&M w as a different school at that time.
■ “It was compulsory military, it was not co-ed, it was
aftmal 1-town school,” Coulter said. “Now College Sta
tion is overwhelming — I get lost when I get home.”
■ While attending University of Texas, Coulter w ent
through the typical process of choosing his field of
study. He said his next-to-last year at UT he was able to
find his path through an epiphany.
' “I saw an article about the movie 2001: Space
Aiyssey by [Stanley] Kubrick, and there was just some
thing about the pictures from that that was something I
wanted to do,” Coulter said.
I “1 was trying to find something where I could take
advantage of the different areas of interest that I had,”
Coulter said. “I was interested in music, 1 was interest
ed in photography, and I was interested in theater.”
Directing was the profession that Coulter understood
to be the culmination of his interests.
“I realized that if I direct in film and television 1
could be involved w ith all of these things,” he said.
Coulter said fellow students helped form his career
decision.
“I was around people who knew w hat they wanted to
do, or if they didn’t, there was a constant inquiry,” he
said. “These were like late-night conversations, drinking
beer and doing all the things you weren’t supposed to do.”
His professors also had a hand in molding his decision.
“I would gravitate toward the professors who only
seemed to take an interest in me, but have something
that I wanted,” Coulter said. “And being around that
and seeing their focus, 1 was envious in the fact that they
seemed like they knew what they were doing.”
His last year in school, after Coulter had found his
direction, he made sure to independently study film to
prepare for his career.
“I went to as many movies as .1 could go to, as a form
of research,” he said. "Just like how you study all of the
great books of literature to be a writer.”
“Seeing movies as a kid, like Sierra Madre, I was
floored, but they left deep impressions and in college it
came back to me,” Coulter said.
After graduating from UT, he said he went directly
to New York, with $90 in his pocket and a few crates
that contained his belongings.
Coulter said that since money was an issue, he
moved around several times and worked various jobs.
“It was about four years of scrambling around until
I saved enough money to make a short film that took
about three years to complete,” he said.
“One of the reasons it took so long was that I had run
out of money at one point,” Coulter said. “We also had
to do some reshooting because I had decided to change
the ending.”
This film became known as The Hobbs Case, de
scribed as a comedic detective story, and it went on to re
ceive numerous awards from festivals around the world.
Coulter said in the ’70s it was possible to make an
offbeat film.
“Even major studios were making offbeat films,” he
said. “It’s not like now [when] the studios make Ar
mageddon and consider that a good film.”
Many of the films that were made years ago are ac
tually something that would be difficult to see today,
Coulter said.
"’Rosemary's Baby was a very popular film at the
time, like Blair Witch Project, [being] the hot horror film
of the time,” he said. “Well, if you look at that film now,
it is completely avant-garde.”
“I think that films have dumbed down,” Coulter said.
“People are growing up with television and the subject
of newer films are affected by that.”
Coulter said television today tends to spoon-feed the
idea that the audience is idiotic.
“Contrary to popular opinion that people are more
visually sophisticated now, the truth is it is exactly the
opposite,” he said.
Coulter was able to put his own personal touch to
See Coulter on Page 5.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MSC FILM SOCIETY/Thi Battaijon
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Gran Turismo 2
System: Playstation
Genre: Racing
Developer: Sony Computer
Entertainment
s i> a holitfr. For any racing fan, the name Gran
to recognize. Turismo is synonymous with extreme-
story,” Ron :'iy realistic racing. The second edition
■ at the 66 celf
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further expands upon the original’s
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El Gran Turismo 2 (GT2) features
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One addition many racers will
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it takes a whole lot more time to get a
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On the bright side, the game is
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Id in, Editor in Cliit
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will save many players more time.
GT2 also adds a new rally version
of racing in which players can try
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The arcade version itself is actual
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The only problem is that GT2 is-
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For those hardcore race fans who
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— Matt McCormick
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
System: Playstation
Genre: Skateboarding
Developer: Activision
This game rocks. Plain and sim
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all come together to make
Tony Hawk s Pro
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The premise of the game revolves
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The player skates around several
venues which include skate parks,
shopping malls and high schools.
The player gets points by pulling
tricks off of
/hatever he
or she can find to use. The graphics
arc amazingly realistic in the motions
of the character pulling off these
tricks.
Skaters defy the laws of physics
sometimes, shooting into the air al
most a hundred feet off of half pikes.
The skaters can also get up after
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blood spilled whether it is after a
hundred feet of road rash or a failed
aerial trick that plants the skaters on
their faces.The game is hours of in
tense, and sometimes hilarious, fun.
(Grade: A)
v —Kyle
Whit acre
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For more information call Michelle Cororve at the
Texas A&M Psychology Clinic - 845-8017
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