After her father gave her a Super 8 camera for her eighth birthday, Rachael Horovitz discovered her love for making movies. She went straight to work on a screen adaptation of her favorite book: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. "I was producer, writer, and director—I cast my best friends," Horovitz recalls.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the precocious third-grader grew up to be not only a movie producer (whose credits include State and Main, About Schmidt, and HBO's recent Grey Gardens), but also cofounder of the Cinema School, a selective public high school for film that opens this month in the Bronx.
The idea of the school began in 2002. After a dozen years of working in the studio trenches of Hollywood, Horovitz missed that feeling of creative empowerment she'd had during her Super 8 years. She yearned to make only movies that mattered to her and to give kids in her hometown of New York City a chance to do the same. She met Joe Hall, founder and president of the Ghetto Film School (GFS), a nonprofit program that connects city kids with film-related opportunities, and talked with him about starting a school with a curriculum that emphasized cinema. Over the next seven years—during which Horovitz served as chairman of the board of GFS; had twins Joe and Eli (now 3) with her partner, television producer and executive Michael Jackson; and produced Grey Gardens—she and Hall worked tirelessly to actually open a school.
In addition to taking standard courses each year, the incoming class of about 80 students will make a movie as a group during a six-week film institute. But Horovitz insists that singularity will be valued just as much as teamwork. "At some point, each of the artists we all admire realized, I can tell a story, and people will be interested," she says. "If we're successful, each kid will gain the courage to express her own voice—and to know that there's such a thing as having a voice."
Horovitz's affection for movies is rooted in the emotional impact they had on her when she was a kid. "I found answers much more readily in movies than from asking adults," she says. "When my parents got divorced, for example, the characters' senses of humor and the parent-child love affair in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore explained a great deal to me." Her own ease and poise behind the camera can likely be attributed to her creative genes: Mom was a painter, Dad is playwright and screenwriter Israel Horovitz, one brother is a television producer, and the other is Beastie Boy Ad-Rock.
It's too soon to tell whether Joe and Eli have the creator chromosome, but Horovitz believes movies will also serve as their coming-of-age compass. "Why do my kids love The Jungle Book, even though it's a million years old? Because Mowgli is them," she says. "Young people see themselves on the screen and think, Those struggles are my struggles. I'm not alone." And she believes the same will be true for Cinema School students: "I love that you can literally see that the protagonist of every student film is the student himself."
Next Page: Horovitz's Favorite Creative Triggers
