One Week To Go

I did my final tweaks to my Thesis Script today. I will print it out, make Darin read it this weekend, get it copied next week, drop it off. It's good, I know it's good. It's almost too polished, you know what I mean? I've tried to make it tighter than Nancy Reagan's smile.

I choose not to focus on how Rob Petrie started reading it while he was here...and then just walked away from it at page 19 to cook supper, never to return.

Yesterday class went until 8pm. Remember, class starts at 1. Len said he has no idea how the administration expects the class to get done in the 3 hours originally assigned to it. We told him how: the other classes don't meet. Either the teacher meets with all the students individually (and not every week) or everyone meets for an hour--if they show up. Our class rocks--we're always there, and we hang in for the long haul.

He told me, as we returned from coffee, how the Thesis Committee meets. All of the professors on all of the thesis committees meet together in a big room. A list of students, with the names of their thesis committee members, is on the wall. They go down the list and ask the particular professors what they think of the student's script: "Pass" or "Rewrite." That's it. If all 3 say, "Pass," the student gets honors. It only takes 1 to say, "Rewrite," and the student has to rewrite during the 4 week period after graduation, the script gets considered again, and the student either ends up on the script list or fails entirely.

Evidently there was shit last year because 2 of Len's students got honors. Only 1 other student in the program got honors, and the other thesis advisors thought honors should be passed around a lot more. If they hand out honors that way, I don't want them. I know Len's students deserve them more: he puts us through hell to get a good script out of us. The other classes sound like the teachers are screwing around.

I told Linda about the other teachers getting miffed that Len gets all the honors students and she thinks there will be a backlash against Len's students this year. I said, There had better not be.

Today I went to USC to meet with the Rewrite Prof, Rob G., about the Rewrite Script. We proceeded to reoutline the script, mostly focusing on the second half. I have two weeks left in which to rewrite that and get his feedback. I shouldn't have any trouble getting his attention, however: all of the other students in his section have dropped off the face of the Earth, mostly focusing on thesis.

However, he did tell me about one fellow student, Aaron, who reportedly is getting the script he's rewriting produced. I read an early draft of the script and I said, "Really?" Because I didn't see anything special in it. But I'm not a producer.

When Aaron brought in the outline for the page-one rewrite he had already done on the script, I took notes as he talked and realized I could not follow the story of the revision, even in so far as who the main character was. That's a bad sign, by the way.

Rob G. could not get a hold of Aaron, who moved in with his girlfriend this semester, for 2 weeks after getting the revised script. Finally Rob G. got a hold of Aaron, who said, "Oh, I've rewritten twice since the draft I gave you."

Twice? In two weeks? In my not-so-humble opinion, you cannot do two substantial rewrites in two weeks. Or if you can, they won't be anything more than shit. Because keeping the story in your head is hard, dammit.

Rob G. told Aaron bluntly what he thought of the script, which was: it needs a lot of work, and I don't believe for a moment anyone gave you financing for this. Aaron did not appear receptive to Rob G.'s comments. What a shocker.

I told Rob G. that Aaron's teacup is pretty full. My personal belief is that Aaron's not open to any kind of feedback that doesn't start with the words, "This is the single most fucking brilliant thing I've ever read."

So Rob G. doesn't know what's going on with that script, only that Aaron needs to do a lot of work on it, but not the kind of furious rewrites-without-rethinks work he has been doing.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

3.5 miles in the afternoon. It's warming up here in the Southland--not unbearably warm as of yet, but definitely mild and pleasant. Which means the brutal death rays of summer sun are just around the corner.