Conquering the celluloid ‘Beast’

Screenwriter and alum Cameron Alexander breaks into Hollywood in a big way

by David Silverberg

Cameron Alexander ’10 is experiencing a surreal moment: The words he’s written in a screenplay are currently being spoken by actors Brad Pitt and J.K. Simmons thousands of miles away in New Zealand, where the film is in production. Director David Ayer is quarterbacking the project, while back in Hollywood, director/ producer Damien Chazelle is prepping the other nuances of what’s shaping up to be a blockbuster hit.

“Heart of the Beast,” scheduled for a 2026 release, is Alexander’s first feature-length movie after years of directing music videos and writing short films. He also serves as the film’s executive producer.

“My goal is to learn as much as I can from working with David Ayer,” Alexander says in a Zoom interview from his home in San Luis Obispo.

The film stars Pitt as a former Army Special Forces soldier who, along with his retired combat dog, fights for survival after a plane crash deep in the bleak Alaskan wilderness. The idea came to Alexander three years ago, after the death of his miniature pinscher, a companion he had since the dog was a pup.

“In film writing, they say, ‘Write what you know,’ so I just began to write down all the feelings I had about my dog, with no expectations about what I was putting down on paper,” Alexander recalls.

Getting a feature film off the ground was an inspiring experience for the young screenwriter. It was also an education in how Hollywood operates. “I found there are two types of people in the film business,” Alexander says. “There are people who don’t care about you; they don’t want to meet you. Then there are people like Damien and David, who are open to taking a meeting with you even if you’re not widely known.”

When the stars align

A throughline of most Hollywood success stories is networking, and having the right people look at your project at the right time. Alexander was never keen on fake smiles and handing out business cards, he says, but he struck it lucky with the latter half of that maxim.

After he wrote the script for “Heart of the Beast,” Lionsgate showed interest. But when the pandemic struck, Alexander was told, in not so many words, that the studio was focused on their John Wick franchise. He got the script back to keep shopping it elsewhere.

A friend of a friend read it, promising to show it to some A-listers he knew. One of those celebrities was this friend’s neighbor, Chazelle, Oscar- winning director of “Whiplash,” “La La Land” and “Babylon.” Almost as soon as he read Alexander’s final line, Chazelle wanted in.

“That solved one of the key challenges writers have in Hollywood, which is how to get a script to the people you want to read it,” says Alexander. “There’s a lot of industry gatekeeping.”

Alexander later met Chazelle at his home in Malibu and, within hours, he got a call from Paramount to buy the script. “It’s wild how sometimes things can move so fast in the film business,” Alexander says. “But it helps to have someone in your corner like Damien who can move mountains.”

Within weeks, Chazelle got Ayer (“Suicide Squad,” “Training Day,” “The Beekeeper”) on board to direct, and Pitt agreed to take on the lead role.

From music and movie festivals to momentous scripts

Before Tinseltown came calling, Alexander treasured the film studies courses he’d taken at UC Santa Barbara that prepared him for things to come. “I really loved the production-oriented classes,” he says, “classes on the bureaucracy of Hollywood, which helped me understand how to navigate certain systems that I knew would be a mystery for me once I graduated.”

Lisa Parks, a UCSB professor of film and media studies, remembers well Alexander’s innate ease with filmmaking. “Cameron has a sharp eye for cinematography and editing,” she says of her former student. “His visual compositions are lush and expansive and he has a subtle sense of rhythm and timing.”

Soon after leaving UCSB and moving to L.A., Alexander directed several music videos for artists including indie bands Polyphia and Grand Pavilion and rapper Gucci Mane. When the pandemic struck, his music video work dried up, but he took it all with a shrug.

“I didn’t make much with those videos,” Alexander says. “All the money would go into the budgets, and it was just something me and my partner did for fun.”

Alexander also dabbled in short films, one of which (“Aquarius of the Hearts”) debuted at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. “Being part of that festival was important for me as a young filmmaker,” he says, “because it’s so cool to be shoulder to shoulder with people who are actually in the industry and doing important things.”

Industry insiders spotted Alexander’s talent early. Alex Ginno, a producer and head of film at Platinum Dunes Production, bought one of Alexander’s first scripts 10 years ago. It didn’t materialize into a movie, but he recalls young Alexander having “a great voice with his writing, and he’s a super smart guy and easy to work with,” Ginno recalls. “He’s really strong at developing story and emotion along with concepts that feel both commercial and fun.”

Ginno’s production company is working with Alexander to develop “First You Hear Them,” a screenplay by Sean Harrigan that Alexander produced. It’s described as a social horror film in the vein of Jordan Peele’s work.

It’s one of many projects currently on the go for Alexander. He also wrote the script for “Song of the Buffalo Nation,” a film inspired by his mixed background of European, Mexican and Navajo ancestry. It follows the story of a young man from a Lakota tribe as the Indigenous community struggles to defend its land against invasion.

“I’m most proud of this script; it’s my life’s work,” says Alexander with a widening smile. “But I really need some big names to make it happen, to finance it. See, you’re starting to see how this game is played, right?”