When Steve Desmond was just 5 years old, his babysitter introduced him to a VHS camcorder to keep him entertained. He made a movie starring his dinosaur figures.
“I was so enamored with the fact that I could make a movie that I legitimately thought it would play in theaters,” Desmond said. “When my mom got home, I was making a poster for it. … It just felt so empowering that I could do this.”
The passion never left him. As Desmond grew up in Palos Park, he continued to make movies with his neighborhood friends and later the football team at Sandburg High School. There were mafia movies, a riff on “Mortal Kombat” — basically, imitations of existing films. At Sandburg, he learned about film school and ultimately found himself at the University of Southern California.
This year, Desmond’s childhood fantasies became a reality, with his name adorning not only the movie poster but also the billboards for Universal’s “Knock at the Cabin,” after he and frequent writing partner Michael Sherman sold the screenplay that ultimately became a film directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
“It was truly surreal,” Desmond said. “It was just bigger than I ever anticipated.”
Desmond, who was born in Homewood and also lived for a time in Olympia Fields, was hooked on film ever since he was young. “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” is his all-time favorite, and he always gravitated toward the “big popcorn movies” such as “Jaws,” “Indiana Jones” and “Jurassic Park.”
“Spielberg was and is my hero,” Desmond said. “I was a huge Star Wars nerd. … I think I loved the big escapist films the most growing up.”
Classmate Leah Coleman did speech, theater and daily announcements with Desmond at Sandburg. By that point, Desmond was already writing movies. And when they did pep assemblies together, he would script the whole thing as a live action show.
“You knew that he was just destined for it,” Coleman said. “He was just obsessed. It was ‘Steve the movie guy.'”
Raj Vasnani is another longtime friend of Desmond’s. Vasnani said Desmond always enjoyed film “more than the average kid” and liked to entertain. But in high school, Desmond’s interests notably matured.
“He became more drawn to how he could create a parallel world with film to tell stories, create experiences and evoke emotions,” Vasnani said. “I think he carries that original interest with him to this day with his work.”
Desmond’s family had no Hollywood background. His parents, Steve and Maria, worked as an accountant and school principal, respectively. The elder Steve said he worried film was a risky career path, but Maria wanted to see her child pursue his dreams. They both supported their son through film school and beyond.
“We believed it,” Maria said. “It’s been such a long journey for him. He never gave up.”
Desmond said the first 12 years out of film school were a struggle. He worked as an assistant to a manager and to a reality TV producer. He also edited on a night shift for reality TV shows and wrote commercial treatments, staying in the industry to pay rent while he pursued his dream.
Desmond said he faced “more rejections than I could possibly count” — though he knows all too well that he wrote 17 scripts that effectively went nowhere. But it never made him cynical or jaded about show business.
Vasnani said people often celebrate success but forget what it took to achieve it. Vasnani is proud of how his friend showed grit to power through the tough years.
“He kept his head to the grindstone for years when so many others would have — and have — given up,” Vasnani said. “He took no shortcuts in refining his craft slowly every year. He surrounded himself with the best of people and ultimately broke into one of the most competitive fields in the world, all without personal wealth or a famous last name.”
That perseverance paid off for Desmond. In November 2017, he and Sherman got the job to write “Knock at the Cabin” and three months later sold “Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers” to Warner Bros.
“That was actually the break moment,” Desmond said. “‘Harry’s’ was a dream scenario where we wrote this script and it sold in four days. That was really the moment that allowed me to quit my day job and do this professionally, full-time. I cried. It was so shocking and so sudden. You send out a script on a Tuesday and on Friday evening you find out that multiple studios want to buy it and basically change your life overnight. It was overwhelmingly incredible.”
While “Harry’s” may have been the game-changer for Desmond, all attention has been on “Knock at the Cabin” since February, when the film dethroned the top weekend box office run of “Avatar: The Way of Water.” For Desmond and Sherman, that project started as an adaptation of horror novelist Paul Tremblay’s “The Cabin at the End of the World.” They originally thought it would be a relatively low-budget film, but then Shyamalan’s company got involved.
“Suddenly, this indie horror film became this M. Night Shyamalan Universal theatrical release,” Desmond said. “The scope of the movie’s reach and potential drastically increased. You go through a lot of bad luck in the industry for a while, and then every so often good luck comes your way. It just took off.”
Desmond’s parents got to come along for the ride when “Knock at the Cabin” premiered in New York City. They said it was a thrill to be part of the event, and they saw the movie a second time with friends when they came home. They both expressed pride in their son’s accomplishments.
“He is a very, very hardworking young man,” his father said. “For him to have worked at this craft for as long as he did, we were very happy to see him get his day in the sun, so to speak.”
Coleman similarly said it was a joy to see her friend find such success in Hollywood.
“It was really cool to see it actually come to fruition and his dream become a reality,” she said. “There has never been someone I have met in my life that is more disciplined, more focused, more determined and also more humble than Steve.”
Desmond said he now feels like he is entering a new phase of his career and life, as he and Sherman have some momentum in their corner. Desmond wrote two new unannounced movies expected to be released in summer 2024 and 2025. And later this year, he is hoping to achieve his ultimate goal of directing.
But the most gratifying part of finding some success in Hollywood, he said, is how many doors it reopened back home. Long out-of-touch friends, teachers and neighbors in the Southland sent emails, texts and Facebook messages following the success of “Knock at the Cabin.”
“This outpouring of support was amazing,” Desmond said. “That’s really always who I’ve been doing it for. I always imagine my audience is friends and family back home. It reaffirmed my belief that the struggle would be worth it.”
Bill Jones is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
