Get Smart director and alumnus Segal talks college with MovieMaker Magazine Posted June 25, 2008

Peter Segal  (B.A. Broadcast Journalism ’84), director of the film version of Get Smart, America’s top-grossing movie on its opening weekend, recently sat for an interview with MovieMaker magazine and said he had been pulled in two professional directions while a student at USC.

The article detailed Segal’s success at creating the atmosphere of collaboration and improvisation that has made the film a hit nationwide, and he also described his days as a student weighing his post-collegiate options.

“You know, when I was in school I had no idea that I was going to wind up making movies” Segal said in the interview. “I thought originally I was going to go into journalism so that’s what I was studying at USC — Broadcast Journalism and English. I was a double major. The first two years at USC were very writing-intensive and then my first production class in television introduced me to the making of television things. I fell in love with it and thought, ‘Well, okay. How do I get into this business?'"

Get Smart, featuring Steve Carell (pictured with Segal, left) premiered on June 18 with a fundraising benefit in Westwood in support of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where Segal crashed classes that his roommate, a Cinema major, took while at USC.

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