Former TV producer pursues passion for storytelling at UCLA

Janie Thompson was raised on stories about how her family worked as migrant farmers in Texas and built a life for themselves in the United States.

These narratives planted a passion for crafting stories in the 59-year-old UCLA student, who is graduating with an English degree and a concentration in creative writing this spring.

Thompson, a former television producer, briefly started college in 1975 but she left a year later when she got married and started to raise a family.

She began looking for work and soon landed a job as a production assistant for commercials, bringing food and running errands for members of a production set in Texas.

Buying the right kind of food for people on set was a good way to build her reputation in the entertainment industry, Thompson said. Delivering good and memorable meals helped producers and others recall her name.

Thompson said she worked her way up the entertainment ladder from an assistant to a producer who worked on commercials for companies such as Mattel and Jimmy Dean.

In the late 1980s, she moved from Texas to Los Angeles with her immediate family. She said change was difficult because she had to start from the bottom of the entertainment industry again to gain a position as a producer.

From stories about her great-grandparents, Thompson learned about her family’s hard work ethic and hoped to adopt the same values. She was told tales about how her family members lived in a covered wagon until they earned enough money to buy their own farm.

Thompson worked her way up and eventually gained some success on the West Coast working as a television producer for shows like “thirtysomething” and “Secret Millionaire.”

She remembers a time when producer Lillian Foote, the wife of Academy Award-winning screenplay writer Horton Foote, contacted her to work on a small film called “On Valentine’s Day.”

Though the pay was small for the movie, she thinks working with the Footes on the project provided her with useful experience.

“There is a great camaraderie (in the entertainment industry) because you are working with hundreds of people,” Thompson said.

Kelley Dixon, an editor of “Breaking Bad,” worked as a production assistant under Thompson during the late 1980s on “thirtysomething.”

Dixon said she always wanted to be an editor on set, and by working under Thompson, she got the chance to sit with editors and learn more about the job.

“(Thompson) was telling production assistants to follow our dreams and do what we wanted to do,” Dixon said. “She thought it was really important for us to look at what we wanted and put that in our job.”

Thompson tries to bring her persistence and drive as a television producer into her work as a UCLA student.

Since she transferred to UCLA after two years in a community college, she has tried to use as many educational resources as she can by going to the UCLA counseling office and talking to professors on a regular basis.

“There wasn’t a day where I didn’t visualize myself on a college campus,” Thompson said.

Dr. Marian Gabra, an academic counselor for the Academic Advancement Program and an English lecturer who met Thompson in one of her courses, said Thompson was supportive of other students in her class, encouraging them at every step along the way.

“Thompson was very aggressive about learning and understanding the landscape of the university,” Gabra said. “It was really impressive to see how she took control of her education and had expectations of what her education should look like.”

While at UCLA, Thompson said she has learned how difficult it is to juggle other activities and jobs while being a full-time student. Still, she tries to be active in her home community by sending regular newsletters about different neighborhood events and happenings.

Val Maisner, a UCLA alumna and Thompson’s neighbor, said Thompson is eager to improve her community and be involved in the neighborhood, especially through her newsletters.

After she graduates, Thompson wants to attend graduate school at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and focus on screenwriting.

She said she hopes to use her degree and understanding of creative writing to one day share stories inspired by her family’s experience in the U.S.