The Wibbs

Marianne Wibberly & me (Cormac Wibberly is just over my shoulder)

When I went to film school at UCLA I took advantage of every opportunity that came my way. Screenings, extra classes, guest lectures, everything, even the free fair each August that might yield some useless flyers and a couple run ins with classmates. And I'm fortunate that as an alumnus, I'm still able to take advantage of some of the cool opportunities that come about. Last night was one of those very cool things.

A few months ago on Twitter I began following @dottiehudson, the account that belongs to The Wibberlys. The Wibberlys are writing partners who are also married. They've written movies like NATIONAL TREASURE, I SPY, BAD BOYS 2, and CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE. Big, billion-dollar grossing movies. They (though I think the account is mostly updated by Marianne) tweet about anything and everything. I follow them and occasionally I favorite a tweet. Then a few weeks back they tweeted something about their USA television series COMMON LAW. Ang and I were big fans of the show and sad to see it get cancelled after only one season. Marianne mentioned they were gonna just start shipping copies of the DVD out to fans. I favorited that tweet because I thought that was a really cool thing to do and the next thing I knew we were Twitter friends and I had a copy of COMMON LAW show up on my doorstep from Amazon.

Cormac, Hal Ackerman (UCLA), Marianne

Fast forward to last night. I was excited to be able to head back to UCLA and see The Wibberlys be honored with an award, enjoy a screening of NATIONAL TREASURE (which holds up really well -- I saw it 10 years ago when it first came out and it was just as enjoyable this time around), and then hear Cormac and Marianne speak about the film after. The only bummer of the night? There were just 10 of us there for the screening. The thing about people no going to things in LA? Totally true. UCLA couldn't even fill a theater with film students for this event. Just crazy.

But, that meant that we had a nice intimate evening with the screenwriters. No mikes, I just loudly asked my question from a few rows back, and then we held court in the reception area as they shared stories of Jerry Bruckheimer and their college days and what it's like to be married to your writing partner. And best of all? I got a huge smile from Marianne when I whipped out the COMMON LAW DVD and asked her to sign it.

Sometimes we meet people we've admired and they fail to meet our expectations. And then sometimes we meet people and they exceed those expectations and it turns out to be just a fun night. One more adventure for the books. I'm glad last night was one of those nights.