ACCESS HOLLYWOOD Darrow alums find success in the entertainment industry From the foothills of the Mountainside to the footlights of the theater, the small screen, and the big screen, many Darrow alumni have forged stellar careers in entertainment and media. 18 PEG BOARD FALL/WINTER 2016–17
Sam Harper ’74 at his home in Tivoli, New York Sam Harper ’74 Rookie of the Year The definition of the term “longsuffering” has rarely had a more powerful illustration than the 108-year championship drought experienced by fans of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs. One of those fans is Sam Harper ’74, a New York native who moved to Chicago at age 10 and grew up a diehard Cubs fan. Although the Cubs’ 2016 World Series victory may have rendered “long-suffering” inapt, a more appropriate descriptor might be “prophet,” because Sam actually “foretold” of a Cubs championship in the screenplay he wrote for 1993’s Rookie of the Year. In the film, a Little League bench rider suffers an arm injury that results in an uncanny ability to throw a baseball at blinding speed, resulting in a contract with the Cubs and a World Series victory. The first original screenplay he ever wrote, the film made him something of a “Rookie of the Year” himself. Sam took his first steps toward the big screen when he joined Darrow as a sophomore in 1972 and cultivated his love for writing. “I was a shy kid from a large family, so it was not unusual for me to escape to a quiet room and write in my journal,” he said. Having attended public schools, as well as more rigid “coat and tie” private schools, he found at Darrow the ideal mix of academic and creative stimuli, complemented by the grounding structure of activities like Hands-to-Work and the collective support of teachers and mentors such as Bob McCannon, Herb Lape, and Mike Clarke, who spent time with him and encouraged his development as a writer. “My senior project was writing four creative short stories, and my Hands-to- Work job senior year was putting together the weekly newsletter with Jane Feldman ’74 and Kemp Parker ’74, so I was writing a lot,” he said. “It was Bob McCannon who pulled me aside one day and said, ‘You really need to pursue your writing because there’s something there.’” After Darrow, he attended Colorado College, where he majored first in English and then in history. Though the School had no film program, a teacher who taught a course on history as seen through movies suggested screenwriting as a possible career for the confirmed movie addict. Before that, though, he tried his hand as a writer for Advertising Age. “There was an editor there who just cut my writing to ribbons, but it was so helpful. It was the best schooling I ever got in writing,” he said. The subject matter, on the other hand, was extremely boring. “I had the chewing gum beat, the cigarette beat, and the sporting goods beat. After three years, I was dying to do something more creative.” While visiting his older sister, who had moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, he met an agent friend of hers who encouraged him to move west and pursue screenwriting. “I had been writing creatively in New York but couldn’t get any traction. So I saved what money I had and quit. I moved to L.A. in 1981 and started out reading scripts and writing synopses and criticism for studios. They paid me $15 a script and $25 per book. I was just barely getting by but I was still writing my own creative stuff on the side.” Sam’s first paying studio job arrived in 1987 with a film called Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, for which he wrote a version of the script. “I didn’t get credited on it, but the experience was fantastic. I was able to quit my other job and things began to pick up. I was getting one script deal a year.” While working in script development, rewriting scripts that “might or might not get made,” he wrote Rookie of the Year in 1991, which became a major release in 1993. In 1997, in the midst of a career slump, he wrote a romantic comedy titled Just Married, which was based on his 1985 honeymoon with his wife, Anna McDonnell. The film released in 2003, starring Brittany Murphy and Ashton Kutcher. “I felt like I was back in it,” Sam said of the box office success. DARROW SCHOOL 19
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