Steve Faber ’84

Wedding Crashers elbowed its way into theaters last July and grabbed rave word-of-mouth and repeat business from audiences looking for a laugh. The New Line Cinema release went on to become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever, creating a very bright spot in a fairly lackluster summer movie season.

Starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, Wedding Crashers was the debut feature film from Steve Faber '84. At UCLA, Faber studied literature and history, and then earned a law degree from University of the Pacific. He eventually turned to sitcom writing and production, earning credits for Married With Children, The Trouble With Normal, For Your Love and The Bonnie Hunt Show.

His next feature project is We're The Millers, currently in pre-production with The Full Monty director Peter Cattaneo. Faber describes the film as “A man, a pot dealer turning 30 realizes his life is meaningless and wants to get out of the business, but not before one last big score that will finance a new life. Problem is that he needs to assemble a fake family to smuggle 1,400 pounds of pot across the Mexican border in a motor home.”

Of his time spent at UCLA, Faber says, “Focusing primarily on history and literature gave me a real sense of time and place. There is not a minute when I don't at least in some way rely on that experience, if only subconsciously, to bolster and shape my writing. That's the way I can best describe it. The way I'd really describe it? I had fun. Sure, I missed some classes. Absolutely I engaged in behaviors that some would call ‘irresponsible.'

“However,” he adds, “I also learned a great deal about history from professor Robert Dallek, studied Joyce with professor Kinsman and traveled to Central America with professor E. Bradford Burns. I met people I would have never met had I gone to any one of scores of other colleges. People of all ethnic backgrounds and social status.”