Alan Ball's experience at Florida State is probably not unusual for someone who wanted to learn the art and craft of playwriting. It's his phenomenal success that sets him apart from most of his colleagues.

Ball, whose very first screenplay turned out to be the 1999 film American Beauty, which won five Oscars (including a best screenplay award for Ball), spent much of his time honing his craft in a few less-than-elegant venues on the Tallahassee campus.

"I was constantly writing, producing, directing, and sometimes performing in my own material in the basement of the Fine Arts Building, in the Downunder Club, in the Student Union," recalls Ball.

"My second year at Florida State, I was so desperate to get into this production of Picnic, that really dated William Inge play, and I didn't. Some friends and I did this sketch comedy review. I didn't realize at the time, but that was sort of the blueprint for my career: I just decided to do things for myself."

The flexibility that Ball developed as a writer in the late 1970s has translated well into his career as a triple threat in stage, television, and now film. That diversity, it seems, will stand him in good stead in Hollywood for a long time.

"The diversity of the writing that I've done is one of the things that I have going for me. There's this notion in Hollywood of a three-act structure, and what a good movie is, and how it builds," explains Ball. "And while that paradigm certainly applies to a lot of movies that are unquestionably works of art, I think that slavish adherence to the paradigm has also resulted in the reason that 95 percent of what gets produced by the majors feel like the same movie."

The success that just recently has attached itself firmly to the 43-year-old Ball came late enough in life to give the writer an ironic perspective on the notion of the Hollywood conqueror. The most important aspect of such seemingly instant celebrity, says Ball, is the balancing act that one must do between maintaining a personal values system and buying into the Hollywood mystique.

"I worry about [striking that balance] a lot," muses Ball. "It was interesting this past year with the whole awards scene. It was like an acid trip, like a Fellini movie. If this had happened to me 20 years ago, I would be so insufferable. I would buy all the hype.