make it work!

I realize it has been almost two weeks since I last posted an update. I'm sure you're all eagerly waiting to here what adventures I have been getting up to. Oh, and adventures there have been! Since my last post I've rollerskated (disaster), learned to play blackjack on a haunted cruise ship (surprisingly fun), been to the beach (where a small child on a bodyboard nearly took me down), and visited what must be the world's cleanest mall. But more on all that later. I want to talk about my actual classes first.

Having now successfully completed almost two weeks of school now, I can safely say that this is gonna be hella fun. I think the program can best be described as "writing boot camp." Their strategy is to break screenwriting down into its most basic elements and really teach you to strengthen each one of those elements before doing so much as writing a line of dialogue.

Everyone has two writing classes with different teachers, and I really like both of mine.  In both these classes we spend most of our time doing writing and storytelling excercises. While games like "Two Truths and a Lie" might seem a bit elementary for an MFA program, it's actually been incredibly helpful. I have taken a lot of writing classes, but it's been a really long time since any teacher forced me to break down screenwriting into its most basic elements. It's kind of like the Project Runway of screenwriting: each week there is a new challenge, usually with many restrictions placed upon it. The exercises might seem easy, but after class usually everyone has found things they can improve in what they wrote, even if it's just a two-page non-dialog scene.

I must pause to share a really funny story from Braun's class. In the first class, we each had to tell a story about where we grew up. This woman Alice, who has a very strong Southern accent, was talking about growing up in Columbus, GA, which sounded very familiar to me for some reason. Then she said "Oh, and there's also a huge military base there, Ft. Benning." And I was like "I TOTALLY GOT ARRESTED THERE!!!" And she started laughing because she knew it was for the School of the Americas protest and when she was little her family used to be a host family for foreign nationals (mostly Saudis) studying at the School of the Americas. I hadn't been aware there was a host program. I guess I'd assumed that these people stayed on the base. In any case, the idea of Saudi generals and princes sitting down to eat fried chicken and grits with Alice's family in between lessons on counterinsurgency was somehow the most weird and hilarious thing I could think of.

In addition to our two writing classes and one critical studies class, everyone in our year has one four-hour marathon uberclass together with the singular Nina Foch. Nina is 84, swears like a sailor, and will shame you to tears if you are so much as a minute late for her class--to the point that almost everyone now shows up 10 minutes early. Her class is called "Directing the Actor," and so far has involved equal parts directing, acting, and skin-thickening. Nina's criticisms (which are frequent) are always blunt and sometimes unclear. Luckily her random stories about working on some-or-another famous movie are also frequent and often hilarious. It seems the best strategy for this class is to keep your head down, not get defensive, and hope to come out of it with a tiny percentage of the vast knowledge about acting and directing she has amassed over the years.

More to come shortly!