Reel life was his real love
He may be unknown to moviegoers, but retiring Crossroads School teacher Jim Hosney has had a profound influence on what they see.
By Shawn Hubler Times Staff Writer
June 27, 2007
FOR a month now, young Hollywood has been planning a retirement party. The guest list spans the pop culture landscape studio executives, novelists, Academy Award winners, sitcom writers, musicians. One proposal has Martin Scorsese jumping out of a cake.
The honoree will take the bus unless he can hitch a ride with someone. A lively, bespectacled bachelor who lives alone in a rent-controlled apartment, he can't drive. Nor can he afford a limo, though some of the most successful people in show business attribute their very sensibility as artists to him. [....]
"I actually have a theory," said actor Zooey Deschanel, "that everything in Hollywood is directly or indirectly influenced by Jim Hosney. And if it's not the case, it should be."
Jim Hosney doesn't work in show business. He's not a critic or an emeritus studio head. In one of the sharper ironies of a field often disparaged as mindless and superficial, the most influential Hollywood player you've probably never heard of is a 63-year-old English teacher. This month, after a career that has spanned nearly four decades, he'll be taking early retirement from Santa Monica's Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, where he has taught high school film studies and literature for 25 years.
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