From Classroom to Call Sheet: Western Professor Lands Film Role in Major Colorado Production

Steven Cole Hughes was in the middle of a semester teaching an on-camera acting class at Western Colorado University when he got an email from his agent: a major Hollywood movie was filming in Denver, and he had the chance to read for a role.

It was an email he hadn’t seen in a while. Originally from Upstate New York, Hughes moved to the City in the late 90s to play his hand as a professional actor, earning a place in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in 2000. He performed every chance he got, even landing a spot as a supporting character in Law & Order, and later in a spin-off. But he knew more opportunities lay elsewhere.

When he decided to move back to Denver, where he’d earned an MFA at the National Theatre Conservatory, Hughes knew the opportunity to work in film would be limited. Not long before, the state of Colorado stopped offering financial incentives to make movies in Colorado and hire local actors. After ten years without so much as a reading, friends urged him to leave the SAG union card and dues behind. “And I said, ‘I’m never dropping my union card. I worked too hard for it.”

Then, last spring, that decision paid off, and he immediately saw the opportunity, both for himself and for his class. “When that audition came in, I was like, I don’t really audition much in Denver anymore … But I’ll do it, because it’ll be cool for my students to see the experience,” Hughes said. “So I showed my students the e-mail from my agent. It said I need to visit this website. I had to accept the audition. Then once I accepted it, I could download the script. Then I filmed myself and uploaded it. And they watched me doing it.”

The reading was for a role in The Man Who Changed the World, a $15 million feature film set in and around Denver in the 1960s. Backed by a revitalized film incentive program from the State and a Colorado Springs-based executive producer, Dean Stoecker, the movie stars Christopher Lowell, Jeanine Mason, Wallace Shawn, and Ileana Douglas. It tells the true story of Bud Stoecker, a self-starter who launched a business selling mail-order do-it-yourself A-frame houses.

A few days after submitting his audition, Hughes heard that the director of the film liked him for the role of Bud’s neighbor, a curmudgeonly father of 12 children who owns a lumberyard and donates the lumber Bud needs to start his venture. Out of more than 150 characters listed on the call sheet, which lists the actors in order of importance, Hughes’ character, Frank Senior, was number 10, just below the film’s main characters.

In March, he spent eight days on set, filming scenes in Denver neighborhoods, where residents came out of their homes between takes for photos. He drove a vintage VW van in stunt sequences and shared screen time with veteran actors, dozens of Colorado-based actors, and a long-time friend who played Frank Senior’s wife.

And through it all, the connections to Western kept popping up.

“The first assistant director on the film went to Western in the 80s, and his mom used to run a theater camp in Crested Butte. And our administrative assistant, Cindy Petito, knows his mom,” Hughes said. “The guy who was my stand-in has also worked here at Western and directed a play here in the late 90s or early 2000s. There were all these little connections.”

More importantly, the experience gave Hughes fresh insights to bring back to his students, many of whom saw his audition process unfold in real time.

“This was an incredible opportunity,” he said. “I got to show students what it really looks like to audition, land a role, be on set, and navigate the business side of film. That’s not something you can simulate in class.”

As the film made its way through the editing process, Hughes was called to provide additional dialogue recordings, which he was able to do with his students watching at a studio on Western’s campus.

The Man Who Changed the World is expected to be released next year and may even screen in Gunnison, with a follow-up Q&A with executive producer Dean Stoecker. And with the renowned Sundance Film Festival relocating from Park City, UT, to Boulder, CO, the momentum behind Colorado filmmaking is growing.

“It was super fun to be on set again, and I’m glad my students could be even a small part of it,” Cole Hughes said. “They need to see that there are paths from Gunnison to an industry job, if you stick with it.”