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.
