Thursday, November 02, 2006

Studying Sideways


In class today, we finish watching Sideways and begin our discussion of it. It's a good movie to teach to beginning screenwriters for several reasons. First, the published shooting script by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor is as close to "spec script" style that a shooting script is apt to get. So it's a decent model for students, which is something you can't say about most shooting scripts. And I love the film, as do most students.

There's also significant storytelling lessons to learn not only from what is in the script but didn't get to film but from profound differences between the storyline of the script/film and the (bad) novel on which it is based. I pass out a three-column story sequence chart comparing the plot of novel, script and film. This film reflects a story development process that worked: the film is better than the script, and the script is far better than the novel.

Winter term I am using the same books I used this term -- and this is the first time this has happened (!) since I've been teaching here. I may be close to getting it right ha ha. The books are:

  • Practical Screenwriting, my book
  • Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters
  • Casablanca, the screenplay
  • Sideways, the screenplay

One of the things that scares me about retiring from teaching is losing my office and the entire Tues-Wed-Thur routine of my professor's life. It gets me out of my basement office at home and into the city. This is the height of my social life and without it I'd be in danger of becoming a total recluse.

Primus St. John just stopped by, all excited about the upcoming poetry section in the upcoming Oregon Literary Review, with some major poets contributing and translations from the Swedish and Chinese that he's raving about. I like to see him so excited about this.

I think we're going to have a great Winter/Spring 2007 issue.

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