The high school set of “Boston Public” doesn’t look much like the classrooms and buildings on MSU’s campus, where Anthony Heald - who plays Scott Guber - got his start.

But if he’s lucky his career with the Fox series, on which he plays a hard-nosed yet slightly dorky assistant principal, will last as long as his MSU career.

Heald, who graduated in 1971 after his nine-year, off-again-on-again enrollment, said his determination ultimately helped him graduate from MSU, and land the prestigious television role on the show that just completed its first season.

“I took three years out to work in theater and I also went part-time for five terms,” Heald said. “I finally went back full-time and left school in ’67 to work professionally - I was two terms shy of graduation.

“Then I came back in the fall of 1970. It took awhile but I was determined to come back and finish.”

And Heald isn’t the only Spartan to have made his way to Hollywood, either.

Dozens of graduates can now be found amidst the scenery of movie sets and television studios - in front of and behind the cameras.

Memories of MSU

Screenwriter Jack Epps Jr. didn’t have any idea what he wanted to do with his life when he came to MSU in the early 1970s, until he met a professor who would later become his working partner - Jim Cash.

Together Epps and the now-late Cash wrote “Top Gun,” “The Secret of My Succe$s,” “Dick Tracy” and “Turner & Hooch.”

“‘Top Gun’ was actually based on a magazine article that was given to us by Paramount Studios to write,” Epps said. “They said, ‘Here’s this article, we know there’s this school down in San Diego, we would like you to write a movie about it.’”

Others have also gotten their start behind the scenes of films at MSU.

Bill Mechanic, a 1973 graduate, said the first time he got published was in The State News.

“I had to get published,” said Mechanic, the former president and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment. “I decided to utilize my film appreciation by getting film reviews. That got me to the attention of film schools, which got me into” the University of Southern California.

Mechanic, who now has his own production company, Pandemonium L.L.C., said his two years as a film critic thrust him into the movie business.

“It was fun, you’re kind of unfettered and ambitions are unformed and really experiencing and experimenting with life,” he said. “Reading great literature, being exposed to psychology - that’s what you’re doing as a writer, trying to understand the people you’re creating.”

Behind the scenes

But while some may have fallen upon the business after coming to MSU, Ed Feldman says he always knew he was made to make movies.

“I always wanted to be in the movie business since I was 8 years old,” said Feldman, who graduated in 1950. “When I got out of school I went back to New York (and) I wrote a publicity release about myself in the third person. I sent it to all the major companies. About four weeks later I got a call from 20th Century Fox, got hired and was there for the next nine years.

“I worked my way up.”

Eventually Feldman ended up producing movies, including such hits as “The Truman Show” and “101 Dalmatians.”

He said making movies allows one to “create something and sort of immortalize yourself.”

Feldman is working on a film with Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, which Ford requested he produce.

Mechanic also said he likes working behind the scenes on movies best - because he selects the movies, hires the people and hires the talent.

He said casting proves to be a different process with each movie because sometimes there are specific actors wanted for a certain role.

And sometimes there aren’t.

“In the case of ‘Cast Away,’ the idea of ‘Cast Away’ was Tom Hanks’ and he brought it to us, so he was always going to be the actor,” Mechanic said.

“In something like ‘Ever After,’ we developed the picture and there wasn’t anybody I was particularly interested in and we didn’t have a director yet. I brought Drew (Barrymore) in and talked to her and hired her for the job. That started a long-standing relationship with her out of it.”

What the audience sees

But while the acting business can be glamorous, what audiences don’t see is the time commitment each player is forced to adhere to.

After spending several years in New York in on- and off-Broadway shows, Heald - who was also in “The Silence of the Lambs,” “The Client” and “The Pelican Brief” - moved to Oregon to be part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He said he wanted to raise his 9-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son in a small-town atmosphere, away from New York.

But he still doesn’t have much time for his family.

Now that he’s on a regular television series, Heald commutes each weekend from Los Angeles to Oregon to see his family

“Nobody’s happy about it,” he said.

“Except maybe United Airlines.”

But it’s still a business he said he enjoys taking part in, as do several other MSU alumni.

And watching the MSU connection make a name for itself - sporting former Spartans like James Caan, Sam Raimi and Robert Urich - is exciting for those currently tied to the university.

English Professor Bill Vincent said he revels in the fact that some of his former students have “made it.”

“It’s exciting to watch their careers and see what becomes of them,” he said. “You have to have talent, of course. You have to have self-confidence, perseverance. You can’t get discouraged easily.”

Meanwhile, Vincent said students trying to get into the business can breathe easier - as they are helped by the MSU network currently in place.

“There’s a large MSU contingent out there and they’re very helpful to newcomers,” he said. “So I think it’s going to keep building and building.”