Like many future filmmakers, Morgan J Freeman began making home movies while still in his teens. In his case, these included shorts based on the popular 1980s NBC TV series "Miami Vice". The native California studied film at UC Santa Barbara where he got to make his first short films. A sojourn in Paris, which included courses in film theory at the Sorbonne and a stint as a production assistant for Why Not Productions, followed before Freeman landed at NYU. While in the graduate program, he wrote and directed six short films and also made the acquaintance of Todd Solondz, who hired him as
