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The fifth time was finally the charm for Dave H. Johnson. He was accepted in the masterÕs program at UCLA, and is now a successful screenwriter.

Johnson's personal script has a happy ending

UCLA finally says yes; now he's on his way

By Jennifer McBride

It would have been so easy. He could have just given up. With a pile of rejection letters in his lap, who could have blamed him?

Dave H. Johnson's dream was to be in the master's program for screenwriters at UCLA--but the school had rejected his application four times.

However, he kept on trying.

Today, Johnson has a different pile in his lap--a pile of industry awards and movie studio paychecks, along with an offer to teach at the very school that had rejected him as a student.

Johnson, 32, grew up in Saratoga; his family has lived off Quito Road since the 1960s. As a student at Westmont High School, he always thought radio and film were his destiny. Writing was definitely not one of his passions.

"I was a horrible English student," he recalls. "I was more into radio and video. I would DJ the local high school events, and make highlight video reels for high school athletes trying to get scholarships into college."

After high school, Johnson started out at De Anza and West Valley community colleges and then put in for a transfer to the radio program at Long Beach State University.

All of a sudden, he found himself without a major.

"They dropped the program the day I arrived," he remembers with a laugh.

So, film it was. He enrolled in the directing program and made a string of short films.

"I realized fairly late, right before I graduated, that I would rather write these things than film them," he says. "So I wanted to learn to write."

After graduation, he applied to the master's screenwriting program at UCLA, one of the top of its kind in the nation. His application was denied. The school suggested he try the "professional screenwriting program" instead.

"It's similar, but you don't get a master's degree. It's more like a certificate program," Johnson explains. "So I took that for a year. It was good, but I still felt like I had a lot to learn. So again, I applied to the master's program."

He was denied again--many times.

"I applied four times before I got in, which is a record, I hear," he says. "They really didn't want me."

In the end, it paid off, in ways he could have only imagined. Johnson entered the program in 2000, and says it was everything he'd dreamed it would be.

"It was a very creative atmosphere, an ideal atmosphere. It was a master's program, but you have open range to do whatever you want to fulfill the curriculum," he says, referring to the four full-length films the students are asked to write during their two years. "All they want you to do is write. There's no set, strict rules."

Johnson's first screenplay was Flesh and Blood, which he describes as a Western twist on Star Wars.

"I was trying something different. I just took Star Wars and placed it in the Wild West. Like, Luke thinks he knows who killed his father, and then finds out that person is actually his father, and decides to join him," he describes. "It was just a very simple story, but apparently people liked it."

That's an understatement--the screenplay ended up winning several awards, including UCLA's highest honor, the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award, and an industry award called the Harmony Gold Screenwriting Award. Flesh and Blood was also selected as one of the five screenplays for the UCLA Screenwriting Showcase, in which the writers put on a stage production of their screenplays for an audience of industry professionals.

The showcase opened many doors for Johnson--he had offers from managers and agents, and signed with one of each. Even before graduation, he was hired as a staff writer for the UPN TV show, Jake 2.0. He contributed to every episode during the show's run, and even wrote two episodes on his own.

Johnson's star is definitely on the rise. He sold a pitch to Paramount Studios for a movie called Sweet Child of Mine, which is already in development.

"Another writer, the one who did the movie Hitch with Will Smith, is working on it," he says. "Usually when it's a screenwriter's first movie, they'll bring in another established writer to polish it. Then directors will be brought in. So hopefully it will be a movie soon."

Not long after, he sold a pitch to 20th Century Fox for a feature film he calls Big Man on Campus.

"It's about this kind of geeky nerd who returns to his 15-year high school reunion. Instead of being the geeky nerd no one knew about in high school, he tells everyone he's the super-jock everyone loved," Johnson explains. "He finds out that reputation is hard to live up to."

Johnson says local residents might recognize an element or two in Big Man on Campus--it takes place at a fictional school called Westmont Academy. "Yeah, people might recognize their names here and there," he warns.

In February, Variety magazine ran an article about Johnson's most recent pitch, tentatively titled Man Wedding. The comical work-in- progress was so coveted it sparked a bidding war among studios that resulted in New Regency purchasing it for an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the six-figure range.

"It's about a guy who gets stuck planning his wedding when his future wife is called out of town on a work assignment; she's a journalist," Johnson says. "He enrolls his male friends from work to help put it together. So, it's about how a guy would plan a wedding. It's very much a register-at-Circuit-City-and-Home-Depot kind of movie, since he's a food and beverage salesman.

"It's a lot of fun. But at the end of the day, it's about a guy finding out more about his future wife by having to live in her shoes. He becomes a better man by being a woman."

Not bad for a four-time UCLA reject.

These days, Johnson says he is enjoying life in Long Beach with his wife, the former Angel Cordero of Los Gatos, whom he met and started dating during their freshman year at Westmont.

"Everyone who knows me knows her. I think people would be shocked to hear that I married her and we've been together 17 years," he laughs.

In addition to working on the script for Man Wedding, Johnson has recently begun another venture--teaching at the very school that rejected him so many times.

"It's very surreal," Johnson says of his new job teaching screenwriting classes at UCLA.

Johnson he told his students the story of how it all came to be--since he'll never forget how far he has come.