Dynamighty
In Hollywood, the ‘normal’ stuff is where you make money.
Normal just never was Scott Sanders’ style.
by David Menconi
MARK MAINZ/AP PHOTO
There are a million Hollywood stories, some of them actually true — and a lot of the true ones feel like fiction. Con- sider rising director Scott
Sanders ’ 91, whose story is a true tale of
Hollywood moxie.
You know the one about the guy who
broke into films via the mail room? That’s
where Sanders started out, in the United
Talent Agency mail room not long after
getting his radio-television-motion pictures
degree from UNC.
“That was a great place to be, actually,”
Sanders says. “Everybody I knew from
there is huge now, big agents or partners,
which comes in handy. Starting out at a
talent agency is great because you get a
sense of the ebb and flow. Then you get
out of there.”
Sanders didn’t stay in the mail room for
long, although it was a circuitous route
from there to the director’s chair. But he’s
reaping rewards now with his buzz-heavy
second film, Black Dynamite — a dead-on
parody of 1970s-vintage “blaxploitation”
films that is well on its way to becoming a
cult classic after premiering at Sundance last
year. Peyton Reed ’ 86, who has directed
Bring It On and the 2008 Jim Carrey com-
edy The Yes Man, first saw the finished cut
at a film festival in Los Angeles.
