Cut to: Claremont Men’s College, 1969.

A 30-year-old Riley, a recent addition to the literature department, enters the recently built Bauer Center, stepping around students who are protesting the Vietnam War who occupy the halls. George Benson, founding president who had "invented this college almost single-handedly, " in Riley’s words, has now been retired as president for more than a year. His replacement, Howard Neville, leaves within a year. Former assistant to the president, Jack L. Stark ’57, is running the school as its acting president. Anti-war protests have hit Claremont hard, and issues of diversity and gender equity, even—gasp!—coeducation—have been raised. CMC, less than 25 years old, finds itself at a crossroads, and Riley, originally hired as a graduate student to teach a few humanities courses, finds himself in the center of it all.

"It certainly began modestly, " Riley recalls of his hiring, "and with no expectation that it would set into motion what turned out to be my life’s career."

"I did arrive at a transitional moment," Riley says. "In some ways I didn’t know the College very well in the period before Jack. I came at the same time that [professors] Ed Haley and John Roth did. And I don’t think I thought of it as a young college then. It was fully functioning and sophisticated and complex and an ongoing enterprise. I only came to realize as time went by, that it was young."

Fade out. Fade in: Fall 1971.

Riley, now teaching literature, gets the green light to teach what will become his signature class, Film and Fiction, under the larger umbrella of film studies—a brand new field for the traditionally business-oriented CMC. Says Riley, "It occurred to me—here we were, sitting on the doorstep of the largest and most influential film industry in the world," he says, "and that it would be foolish not to capitalize on that proximity."

In coming semesters, Riley plans field trips for students to movie studios, and later makes a valuable friend in Oscar-winning director Delbert Mann (1955’s Marty) who would not only visit Riley’s classroom but prove instrumental in bringing in other industry guests. Among them are composer John Williams, cinematographer John Alonzo (Chinatown), director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid) and actor Richard Thomas, best known as John-Boy on The Waltons. "What I wanted students to know is that a film is made by people," Riley recalls.

"It’s a human artifact. It’s not something that just happens up there. I wanted them to talk with a director or a writer or whatever, to have some glimpse at what the actual human process is; something distinct from just the amusing anecdote or what you might read in a gossip column. I wanted them to talk with people about the kind of choices that were made, and the rationale behind the choices."