NrMRTAINMENT
Former Detroiter
Bruce Rubin's
• screenplay, 'Ghost,'
featuring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi
Goldbergand Sondra Rubin, opens this weekend.
ADRIEN CHANDLER
Special to The Jewish News
B
Bruce Rubin and his sons, Ari
and Joshua.
ruce Rubin has been
on a journey. His trav-
els have taken him to
film school in New York City,
the mountains of Tibet and
the Midwestern heartland.
His last stop — Hollywood.
The 47-year-old native
Detroiter and Mumford.High
School graduate has come a
long way since the times he
wrote and produced plays for
the children of the northwest-
side neighborhood where he
grew up. He has finally, after
20 years of searching, found
the path to success.
For the last six years, Rubin
has lived in Los Angeles,
where he writes movie
screenplays. Not an easy road
to take and crowded to boot;
he and thousands of others
are trying to make it big.
"Everyone in Hollywood is
a screenwriter," says Rubin.
"Many people are writing
_(screenplays). Not many are
selling them. Even fewer get
produced and then fewer than
that become successful films.
You walk into a producer's of-
fice and see wall-to-wall
screenplays. It's very in-
timidating."
But Rubin is on his way to
fat city. He has written the
screenplays for two Para-
mount Pictures films —
Ghost, which is due to be
released nationwide this
weekend, and another,
Jacob's Ladder due out in
November.
Rubin says he has always
wanted to work in film. His
mother, Sondra Rubin, a local
actress, was a profound in-
fluence on him. As a small
child, Rubin recalls seeing his
mother in a performance of
Mary Poppins and being
enthralled.
"I kept hitting the poor lit-
tle kid in front of me and say-
ing, 'That's my mother up
there!' " he said.
Sondra remembers her son
loved movies and theater. He
would write plays and get
neighborhood children to be
the performers and the au-
dience, using the back yard or
the basement as a stage.
That strong, deep-seated,
lifelong attraction is crucial
to pursuing a career in film,
says Rubin. "You need to have
that wish deep inside,
because the struggle is so
enormous. You shouldn't be in
the film business unless
you're going to die if you're
not making movies."
While Rubin says that fire
was always burning inside of
him, it took him a long time
to truly confront it. He admits
he took a lot of detours career-
wise before ending up writing
films. He traveled, worked as
a museum film curator and
obtained a master's degree.
"I spent years trying to
avoid coming to L.A.," Rubin
admits. "It was the ultimate
terror. If I tried to have a
career in film and failed, then
what would I do? I have no
skills other than the ability to
write?'
Rubin attended NYU's film
program, graduating in 1965
with the likes of Martin
Scorcese and Brian De Palma.
From there, he did a stint as
a film editor for NBC. About
a year and a half later, Rubin
set out to hitchhike around
the world, a "spiritual"
journey that would leave a
lasting impression.
He spent much of that time
in Asia, even living in a Tibe-
tan monastery. When he
returned to the United States,
he says he knew he wanted to
write and would have much to
write about.
It wasn't until 1984 that
Rubin finally turned the cor-
ner on the road to Hollywood.
He and his wife Blanche were
living in Illinois, where she
was teaching art history at
Northern Illinois University,
and he was struggling with
industrial films and feature
film script writing. They had
been visiting Los Angeles and
over lunch with his former
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