Michael Shayne. The Sun is the British Tabloid with the page 3 girls. You can read it online. I also like the Dear Deidre advice column with the saucey comic strip version of a letter, with real people posing in the panels.
I didn't go to film school and I think much of what is learned there is simply the wrong stuff. They learn all about the composition of photography but little about the composition of drama. I found my theatre training more valuable.
I agree with Panni, they make films about films...which is where their whole life experience comes from...It's all derivative and empty. She's right when she says you can teach mechanics, but you can't teach talent.
And that's where most of these people fall down. You have all these people who want to make filmakers, but they have absolutely nothing to say. They have no voice, no passion.
They just want to be in a glamourous business that they think is easy money and dine at the posh restaurants, hang out with the beautiful people, and go up to Hef's on the weekend. They don't really have any passion for the work; just a passion for the lifestyle.
True story. A few years back, I got suckered into teaching the first screenwriting course at LA FILM SCHOOL because the producer whose baby the school is, Thom Mount, appealed to my most vulnerable spot, my vanity.
I should have known from the get-go; they're putting cameras in the hands of these people without a screenwriting course. Or putting cameras in their hands before they know what to do with them...i.e. tell a story.
I had from various times 12-15 students. One, possibly two, had any real talent and a chance of succeeding. They were all supposedly college educated. They were also absolutely undisciplined, unfocused, and ill-equipped. You have to know how to compose a simple sentence before you can compose a screenplay.
Even simple things like format and presentation baffled them...I'd get scripts with drawings all over them, typos, mispellings. People wouldn't turn in their stuff in a timely fashion or present copies to their clasmates which made class discussion problematic and, as much of the class was my critiquing their work, I was thwarted.
I had one kid who, when I tore apart his incomprehensible script apart, proudly stated, " What do you want? I wrote when I was drunk overnight." "It looks like it," I said. "And I want it better. Some semblance of professionalism attached to it. I don't cotton to that tortured, drunken artist shit. "
He also had spelt "through" as "threw" consistently in his script. When I asked him to spell it in class when he was sober, he spelt it the exact same way. You can't write, if you don't read. And if you read, you can't go more than a page or two in almost anything without encountering that preposition. So, if nothing else, you should know how to spell that word by osmosis...just plain, simple, daily usage.
Their ignorance of film history was astonishing. The first part of my class, I always brought in about five videos of classic (usual black & white) movies and showed clips from them...usually around a certain theme...great openings, dialogue, etc.
I will say that when they were exposed to some of this stuff, they were sort of mesmerized by it and also took my Simon Colwell no-nonsense, often brutal critiques very well. I was told by the administation and some of my students that I was damned-near revered and they loved my class. Some invited me back for screenings of their movies. The Administration wanted me to stay on. I was inexplicably popular with the students.
But I really had no patience for teaching. And I think what is endemic in film schools is probably also rife in the regular Halls of education as well. I get down and praise God every day for my good old American public school education. Instead of spending all this money on voucher programs, it should be poured back into the public school system, so that kids today can get the quality education I got there. But I can see why good school teachers flee the system. I think most of it is not the school's fault, but the the parents' fault.
My Hallmark executive and I were trading horror stories today about the decline of cultural knowledge. She had mentioned Edith Piaf to some colleagues who didn't have a clue.
A few years ago, I was working on a Viking script and the producer and I were doing notes with his three development girls, all college-educated, I called them his Muses.
I had written a couple of lines: "I think you're an impudent lover." "I am an imprudent one." The producer looked at his Muses: "Do you know what impudent means?" They shook their heads no. "Do you know what imprudent means" They shook their heads no. So not only did they not get the play on words, they didn't get the words! Impudent, imprudent. I probably knew these words when I was ten. I probably learned them from the movies. Hell, earlier than that, how many times does your mother wag a finger at you and tell you, "don't be impudent, young man/young lady." I was dumbstruck. There was a mention of Charlemagne in the script. Producer asks the Muses: "Do you know who Charlemagne is?" The Muses shake their head no. I go: "Oh, come on, you surely encountered Charlemagne around eighth grade in Bullfinch's Mythology, if not World History. The answer came back from the Muses in unison: "What's Bullfinch's Mythology?" We had a long protracted conversation whether we could use the word "cur" or not. I said: "How can you do a Viking movie without someone being called "a cur"?
But the neglible thing about this was that instead of the producer using these girls' ignorance as an excuse to dumb down the script, he should have turned to them and said: Well, if you didn't know these words or these names, why didn't you look them up? I'm paying you to come in here and intelligently discuss a script! How can you do that if you do not have a complete understanding of what you're reading?" And it goes on, as Panni will tell you, all over town every day. What I call the Arrogance of Ignorance. "I don't know and why should I have to?" Pride in their stupidity and illiteracy, yet they are judging and nurturing literary work. When I started out it wasn't always this bad. There were still a few people who could actually read.
I've often wanted to teach a liberal arts course called, "Stuff You Should Know"...and it be nothing but exposing people to a selective personal overview of cultural touchstones...movies, music, TV, books, comic books, art, poems, historical figures, historical events, dates of things...things that should be in their grab-bag of knowledge and cultural lexicon...
We often play a game at my house where you throw out name like Ponce Deleon or a date like 1492 and just shout out as many different things as you can think of connected to it. Who is most vocal depends on what generation they come from.
As I say, I prize my old public school education of three "R's". End of Rant. Apres moi, le deluge...
