Filmmaker Luke Matheny On His Oscar Win

Beverly Hills - The King's Speech may have ruled the Academy Awards, but Oscar also gave an unexpected boost to a young filmmaker just out of grad school.

We caught up with Luke Matheny, who won the Oscar for Live Action Short Film, at the Venice Family Clinic's Silver Circle Gala fundraising event on Monday night.

Watch Jane Yamamoto's video report in the media player.

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Luke Matheny never expected to win an Oscar for a live action short he made in film school.

"This was my student film in New York University's graduate film program," Matheny said of "God of Love," which he directed, wrote and starred.

"Short films are basically the unit of currency of film schools," he told reporters Sunday night at the Kodak Theatre. "It's exciting when this kind of thing happens."

He noted that James Franco, an acting nominee and co-host of the Academy Awards ceremony, also enrolled at NYU's film school, though they'd never met.

Unlike Franco, "there was not much attention on the red carpet for our team," Matheny joked.

Asked what advice he would offer to would-be filmmakers, he said, "Make the movie he or she wants to see ... Don't worry too much about how it's received."

Online:

Luke Matheny:
lukemathenyfilms.com

Venice Family Clinic:
venicefamilyclinic.org