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December 1994, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Jeremy Butler <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 12 Dec 1994 11:00:23 CST
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Author:  Cal <[log in to unmask]> at SMTP-LINK
Date:    12/12/94 11:39 AM
 
[This message was originally submitted  by [log in to unmask] to the SCREEN-L
list, and not Jeremy Butler.]
 
>Author:  [log in to unmask]
>Date:    12/11/94 5:02 PM
>
>                              I don't know much film theory. Right now, though,
>I am not required to know it to be paid. I load mags, pull focus, clap slates;
>not talk theory.
>
>I do continue to try to learn more about theory and things that will help me
>on a shoot. I have gotten tired of being knocked on the Internet for saying
>similiar things as Cal. Thank you for showing there are alternate routes
>to making it.
>
>Sarah Bowman
 
Not for the first time I failed to be as clear as I might have wished.
 
When I wrote about different pathways I was also writing about different
ambitions.  Stephen Spielberg never went to film school nor did he ever
load magazines or pull focus.  Francis Coppola did go to film school after
an undergraduate degree in something else.  I mentioned Andrew Bergman
without citing his credits as a writer and director.
 
Making films involves technical matters; it also -- importantly -- involves
ideas.  Where one gets ideas is irrelevant; for many people an organized
course of study at university is the best way for them.
 
Peter Bogdanovich used to boast that his "film school" was the Loew's
Paradise in New York.  For a while it worked for him.  Check his recent
credits.  I don't know that studying in a university film department or
any other university department would have helped him.  It certainly
would not have hurt.  This comment is not intended as a personal
attack on Bogdanovich, his was the first name that came to mind of
the generation of directors who could have studied film at a university
but decided not to.  There are even some of his contemporaries who did
graduate from film schools whose careers are as illustrious as his.
 
I guess my whole point is that there is no magic pathway but don't ever
denigrate the importance of knowing how to think about ideas.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Cal Pryluck, Radio-Television-Film, Temple University, Philadelphia
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