Head of the (film) class

BIG PICTURE BAPTISM Crime Fiction's Don Lee Boone (Christian Stolte) soaks for the camera.

Known for brainy alumni like astronomer Carl Sagan and former Secretary of Defense Deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the University of Chicago isn't exactly the go-to place for aspiring filmmakers. But a team of intrepid students has been trying to change the school's rigorous academic reputation—where fun comes to die, as the rampant campus T-shirts declare.

Crime Fiction marks the first time that students have formed their own company, Crime Fiction Pictures, to produce a feature film in the school's 115-year history. On June 26, the 20-person crew—made up of mostly U. of C. students who belong to Fire Escape Films, the campus filmmaking club—wrapped the 17-day shoot. They filmed at locations in and around Chicago, from famous South Side bar Jimmy's to a field in Peotone.

Written by and starring Jonathan Ullyot (a Ph.D. student in comparative literature) and directed by third-year undergraduate Will Slocombe (a political science and cinema/media studies double major), Crime Fiction follows the rise and fall of a struggling writer who kills his girlfriend and then becomes famous after publishing a controversial novel about his crime. According to the press release, it's equal parts "comedic metafilm genre" and "Hitchcock thriller."

But for these first-time movie-makers, call it a learning experience.

Operating on a shoestring budget of about $28,000 ($10,000 from the university; the rest came from crew, friends and credit cards), the Crime team endured police shutdowns at three in the morning, searching for last-minute props in the dead of night and filming a crowd scene—with not a single extra in sight. One crew member was even hospitalized from stress: "My roommate Jesse was trying to book all the locations himself," says producer and poli-sci major Jonathan Cowperthwait, 23. "His goddamn stomach exploded."

While Crime's filmmakers—who got some help from a camera assistant from Columbia College and a production designer flown in from London—realize they may not have the production skills of their NYU or UCLA rivals, they're not letting that stop them. "It's true that the U. of C. doesn't teach you the ins and outs of filmmaking," says producer and recent economics grad Marc DeMoss. "It doesn't really teach you the ins and outs of anything practical, but it does teach you how to think."

And it's great minds—not great technicians—that make great movies, Cowperthwait argues. "These are introspective, articulate, observant and insanely brilliant people," he says. "And you can buy technical talent, but you can't buy brilliance."

Director Slocombe is content with the fact that the university's priorities are elsewhere. "No one is holding our hands through this," he says. "We are making it up as we go along with a couple of XL1 [cameras] in a dingy basement next to a dirty college bar. Everything is on us.

"U. of C. did produce Mike Nichols," adds Slocombe, referring to the director of The Graduate. "So they must be doing something right."

Then again, Nichols dropped out to go to New York.—Anthony Kaufman

Crime Fiction will premiere in late 2005.