Wharton seeks presence amid snowy cinema

Napoleon Dynamite became a celebrity after his debut in Park City, Utah.

The same was true for blockbuster hits Clerks, Saw and The Blair Witch Project - after they were featured at Park City's Sundance Film Festival.

And Marketing professor Nelson Gayton hopes the festival can do the same for the Wharton Media and Entertainment Initiative, a group of Wharton professors dedicated to turning Penn - and Wharton, in particular - into a prominent research institution in media and entertainment.

Gayton, managing director of WMEI, moderated a panel yesterday at Sundance entitled "New Money & The State of Film Finance Today" that explored films as potentially fruitful investments.

The panel, sponsored by the Center for Applied Media - a nonprofit organization that helps schools understand media - was meant to introduce WMEI to the film industry as a whole, Gayton said.

"Clearly, Sundance is the lightning rod for the industry," he added. "Our goal is to ensure [that], . when you think of media and entertainment, you think of Wharton."

Others affiliated with Wharton agreed.

For example, 2006 Wharton Graduate School alumnus Ken Gawrelski, who is now the director of the Strategic Transactions & Development Group at America Online, said that, by focusing on the business side of the entertainment industry, WMEI could fill a major vacuum.

"I think Wharton can carve out a nice niche," Gawrelski said.

But Wharton's potential doesn't guarantee a free ride, some say.

"The biggest hurdle for [the initiative] is someone stepping up and funding it," 2006 Wharton Graduate School alumnus Tom Balamaci said, suggesting that Wharton alumni step up and take initiative.

"There is a pretty small group of very household names that came out of Wharton that would be able to do it themselves," he said.

But Penn is no stranger when it comes to sending alumni to Hollywood.

Prominent alumni run the gamut from 1969 College alumnus Dick Wolf, the creator and executive producer of Law and Order, to DreamWorks Chief Executive Officer - and 1982 College alumna - Stacy Snider.

In the meantime, other Wharton student-led initiatives are likewise looking to gain a deeper understanding of the entertainment industry.

Though the club was founded just over a year ago, the Wharton Undergraduate Media and Entertainment Club's listserv already boasts 75 members, the vast majority of whom are underclassmen, Wharton senior and club co-president Wei Ming Yen Dorado said.

The club focuses on attracting executives from the entertainment industry to speak at Penn and last year spearheaded the student branch of the Philadelphia Film Festival that celebrates student-produced films.

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