Well, it had to happen eventually: one student came right out in class and said another student's work was terrible, awful tripe and we should aspire a little higher at USC.
Which, you know, I happen to agree with.
I meant to write about this student's (I'll call him Hugh) first project in production class. We had to do a camera exercise to prove we could use the damn thing. In his exercise, he had a guy come into a dorm room, sit on a chair, get a beer out of the small fridge, and then lean back in the chair with the beer bottle placed...um...strategically. Then, a woman who's been in the bed the whole time gets out of bed, comes over to the guy, gets on her knees in front of him, and...drinks the beer.
I even scribbled something down in my notebook about it, but I forgot.
In the dialogue scene Hugh showed today, a guy is preparing for a showdown with a hitman -- loading the gun, etc. Then there's a knock on the door, and instead of the hitman, it's his girlfriend, who wants to know what's happened to him, because the phone's off the hook, etc. During the scene the guy tries to get the girl out of the apartment...and we get dialogue like "You want to smell my dick?", the guy shoving the girl's head towards his crotch, and then the guy hitting the woman across the face.
The class teacher made technical comments about the piece.
Finally another male student, in the back of the room, said, "Excuse me, I think we've been avoiding the real issue here," and he criticized Hugh's subject matter. Another student pointed out that it wasn't the subject matter as much as the way that part of the scene came out of left field. I guess the interaction could be justified -- but it would be hard, and I'd probably be just as disdainful.
I pointed out that with scenes like the one shown today and the camera exercise, we definitely get the idea that in Hugh's work, women are objects. Hugh was very unhappy with that interpretation and kept shaking his head and saying, "No, no."
Everybody had to say over and over and over again that we weren't trying to censor Hugh and he should feel free to do whatever he likes -- but he'd better be prepared to take the response.
As another female student said to me afterwards, she'd tuned out on Hugh's piece at the beginning because it was going to be more adolescent macho crap. I feel the same way. I remember being surprised by the sound of the slap, but I'd stopped watching during the crotch closeup.
If you want to make exploitation flicks, go work for Roger Corman, you know?
I think a way to cure people of doing these kinds of things is to swap a male character in for the female character. Would Hugh have treated a guy this way? Somehow, methinks not. He shouldn't treat a woman that way either.
Yesterday: I met with Sharon, the GSP coordinator to talk about D clearances and registration. I left more confused than when I went in, mostly because I'm not sure whether it's the D clearances or the registration that's first come, first served. In other words, on which day do I have to camp out over night?
We had a Very Special Episode of writing class, with Very Special Guest Star Lewis Cole, head of Columbia's Graduate Screenwriting Program. He talked about the Columbia program a little -- it takes 3 years instead of USC's 2, and some people stretch out the program to five years so that they don't have to start paying back student loans. (Shudder.) Cole and David Hollander, our teacher, argued about various approaches to writing and outlining -- Cole writes a first draft, then writes the outline, then writes a new draft. Oy.
After writing class I headed over to the editing suites with David, who'd reserved an editing suite for me, and edited the piece I'd shot on Monday in two hours. (The other students were not pleased at how fast I worked. But I've done this lots before and basically I'm doing a good job but not a great one -- I don't care that much, I'm not in this program to become a filmmaker.)
I drove to West Hollywood and met a couple of online friends at Jerry's Famous Deli. At this point I was exhausted, and one of the people there pointed out how tired I looked. (Thanks.)
This morning I overslept by two hours -- it was either that or chance my ability to drive, so I chose sleep. I showed up late to production class but I had my work done. I had a short piece (one minute) but people laughed and they got the point and yadda yadda yadda. Next.