Hollywood director and producer Stan Brooks ’79 paid a visit to his alma mater to discuss his transition from Brandeis to Hollywood on Monday.

Brooks’ recent works include his directorial debut “Perfect Sisters,” starring Oscar winner Mira Sorvino, Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin and Georgie Henley, best known for her role as Lucy in the “Chronicles of Narnia” film series. Brooks has also started two film-production companies: Stan & Deliver Films, which created “Perfect Sisters,” and Once Upon A Time Films. Having produced over 60 films, Brooks has also garnered multiple Emmy awards and nominations for his work in television miniseries.

Prof. Thomas Doherty (AMST) introduced Brooks, noting that the ultimate purpose of Brooks’ lecture was to demonstrate “how a liberal arts education can form a professional filmmaking career.”

Brooks got his bachelor’s degree in American Studies after declaring and then dropping Pre-Med and Psychology majors. He then went on to pursue a graduate degree from the American Film Institute (AFI) as only the second Brandeis student to have been accepted there at the time.

Brooks began his lecture by recalling his experience at Brandeis with a mixture of nostalgia and humor. “Who lives in the Foster Mods?” he asked the audience, following his question with an anecdote about recently breaking into the mod he had inhabited in 1979 with his ex-roommates — including good friend Mitch Albom ’79 — to celebrate the “Tuesdays with Morrie” author’s 50th birthday. Though he expected to feel a certain amount of nostalgia, Brooks said the emotion he felt was closer to horror as he realized “the carpeting, the appliances, the furniture [were] all the same,” which incited groans and laughter from the crowd.

Not one to fly below the radar, Brooks also cited his high level of participation in event planning during his time on campus, including staging bi-weekly movie nights in Levin Ballroom and bringing Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League, to deliver a lecture. The latter effort, he says, got him into some “trouble,” prompting then-University President Marver Bernstein — “a cross between plant moss and a basset hound” — to call Brooks personally to complain.

Success didn’t follow Brooks immediately after his graduation from AFI — “I took a job in the mailroom … at Film Ways … a television production company,” he said. At that job, he was also supposed to take care of the actors’ needs. John Bennett Perry, the star of the company’s show “240 Robert,” cared only that “his son … didn’t eat too much candy off the crafts service table,” adding that this “really annoying” child was Matthew Perry, later of “Friends” fame.

But all wasn’t lost, Brooks added, noting that his grandfather gave him a “really amazing” piece of advice: he “asked me the most bizarre thing … ‘What are you wearing when you go to the mail room? … Wear a tie.’” He said his grandfather continued, giving him a well-worn, but, as Brooks noted, highly important piece of advice: “‘Dress for the job you want, not for the job you have.’”

“By day five, the guy who was producing ‘240 Robert’ plucked me out of the mailroom and made me his assistant. So the tie worked.”

In his lecture, Brooks also shed light on the relationship between opportunity and association: “The thing about Hollywood is everybody is a heat-seeking missile,” Brooks said. “They look for where heat is, and they want to be around it. It’s like a giant bonfire in the middle of the forest; they run to it. They don’t really care what it is; it could be burning the house down. … Because I was at the company where they made ‘Flashdance’ … The ability to work in television was easier because I had these super-hot bosses.”

Brooks gave several more Hollywood anecdotes, including his experience in casting with “Rocky 3” — “I was responsible for [discovering] Mr. T,” a former bouncer from Chicago’s South Side — and as producer for Emmy Award-winning “Broken Trail,” starring Robert Duvall, whom he called “the most detestable human on the planet.” Duvall, according to Brooks, lost his temper on set, calling co-star Thomas Haden Church a “no-talent, sitcom-hack.”

“Every meeting I have ever been in, I use my Brandeis education way more than I use my AFI education. … I have made movies on every subject imaginable … because I was an American Studies major.” He urged students interested in film to pursue it as a graduate student, even stating that he dissented with “Friends” creator Marta Kauffman’s ’78 suggestion to create a school of film at Brandeis.

Brooks then took his Emmy award — won for his production on “Broken Trail” — out of his backpack. “This,” he said, lifting the award above his head, “is because I went to Brandeis.”

This event was sponsored by the American Studies department.