Seeking the Big Screen

The world was awed in 1982 when “E.T.” made its big screen debut, but perhaps no one was more awed than a little boy in Idaho who was glued to his T.V. set.

“I was in the story with Elliot hanging out with ‘E.T.,’ and I literally felt like I was off my seat. I was just enamored by it,” said Spencer Woodhouse, a budding screenwriter and director. “It was so magical to me, how anyone could captivate all these people to such a degree. … It was at that moment that I was like, ‘I’ve got to find out what this magic is.’”

The passion that began with “E.T.” would soon evolve into the journey that has consumed his life.

“Every dreamer [has] that genesis of a dream where they just get captivated by something they can’t escape from – it’s almost like a curse,” Woodhouse said. “You can’t, you literally can’t, walk away from it.”

With no camera readily available to him, Woodhouse began by drawing small storyboards, resembling comics, to let his ideas flow. After graduating from high school, he immediately began working to save up for his dream, making his first big investment by purchasing a top-of-the-line camera, some lenses and a tripod.

“It was a couple years down the road that I amassed all this equipment and I was making movies with friends,” he said. “I have twenty tapes full of all these little dumb movies that I made. … I was just blindly going at it, but never really had a plan.”

When he tired of the limitations of his situation, Woodhouse decided to move on to college at Idaho State University to begin his formal education.

For six years, he took all of the classes relating to film that ISU offered. Although course material was in no short supply, Woodhouse found the actual opportunity aspect severely lacking.

“At that point I got really frustrated, so I just thought, ‘Well, I’m going to create the opportunities myself,” he said.

Woodhouse was soon hard at work creating a student organization centered around film and working out equipment deals with various sponsors. To give students a chance to showcase their work, Woodhouse also started the ISU Cinematic Film Festival.

Having caught the attention of the university, Woodhouse was asked to complete various projects for ISU, including creating a promotional video for on-campus dorms.

“We were doing all this cool stuff, and I was building up my resume like mad,” he said.

When Woodhouse felt he had gained all he could from the collegiate experience, he moved on to some local projects in the professional world – not that those held his attention for long. By lucky chance, he got in contact with an experienced audio expert in Hollywood, and flew to California to learn more about his Hollywood dream.

“I got the VIP treatment where the limousine picked me up from the airport and I got to be on set working under him,” Woodhouse said. “[The audio professional] basically made me realize in that short amount of time that Hollywood’s a scummy place. He’s like, ‘This place will eat a guy like you up. You don’t want to be here. This isn’t your goal.’”

Now convinced his best chance at success lay in Idaho, Woodhouse returned home with single-minded determination. He began working jobs that required little to no thought on his part, earning just enough to live on while focusing on his goal of becoming a movie director.

“… Every second, every thought, every synapsis in my brain, if it didn’t have to think about work or church, was just thinking about script-writing,” he said.

He spent years collecting and piecing together ideas and came out of the process with not one, but 12 completed screenplays.

The first screenplay he completed and the first he intends to direct is a teen-romantic comedy titled “The Quest for Perpetual Bliss,” but the road to get there has not been easy.

Woodhouse began the process of sending out his newly completed manuscript all around Hollywood, searching for an agent or producer to sponsor the project and get things rolling, but the response he was met with only confirmed what the audio professional had warned him of years ago.

“I had agents telling me, ‘I won’t buy this; where’s the sex?” he said. “They wouldn’t even take my screenplay unless they could filth it up.”

Turning back to Idaho, Woodhouse landed a producer and began a kickstarter campaign to fund the project. Although finding funding has been difficult, he has had no shortage of willing and hopeful actors and actresses.

He hopes to get the project rolling before the end of this year, and he’s not going to give up, no matter how much rougher the going is than he originally anticipated.

“If I fail at all of it, then I’ve done all I can do,” Woodhouse said.