“Getting to Know You”: My UCLA Students and Me

This week I begin, once again, teaching my advanced screenwriting rewrite course through UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program. I invented this course a decade ago, putting to use the story skills I honed in my Roger Corman days. The course is taught entirely online: I communicate with my 12 carefully selected students solely through the written word. Do you think, since we don’t meet in person, that they lose out on my up-close-and-personal attention? Think again!

 Because this course, like many offered through UCLA Extension, unfolds online, I interact with students from all over the world. Their work often reflects cultures far different from my own, and introduces me to corners of the globe I would otherwise know nothing about. There’s something unique about encountering a sex scene—well, a near-sex scene—featuring a Catholic priest on a mission to Africa, as written by a Catholic priest currently back home in Dublin. I’ve had students from China, several from Australia, and a number from India. Some have been trained filmmakers who are looking to polish material they can eventually direct. In one case, several years after a class was over, I enjoyed discovering what an Indian student’s script looked like when blown up on the big screen: it was about (yup!) an aspiring filmmaker from India who faces challenges galore when he comes to L.A. to attend film school. In no uncertain terms, lived experience was part of the script’s strength.  Another Indian filmmaker, who had already won a prize for his short film at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, took my class several times, struggling to expand his drama about Tibetan refugees in Dharamshala into a full-length feature. I can’t wait to see what becomes of this powerful project.

 As you can tell, I like to follow my students’ progress, when I can. Of course, some students apply for my course mostly to challenge themselves, without serious hopes of starting a new career. A few are determined to put on screen some of the traumas they’ve faced in their own lives: this is a tricky business, because art requires a certain distance from one’s personal woes. But using life as the source of art can also make it memorable. Next time I’m in Ojai, California, I plan to go to the local library and take a gander at a certain mosaic armchair. The chair, made and donated by a prominent local family, reflects a tragic mother-and-sons story told, with great poignance, in the script of a student who lived it.

 Happily, my students tend to be interesting people doing remarkable things. Just days ago I checked in on a former student, originally from Texas, who now makes his home in Taipei. His scripts (I’ve read several) lean on his longtime experience working at local radio stations. I’m also in touch with an Hungarian who, when not writing charmingly eccentric screenplays, runs an eccentric café outside Budapest. And this past weekend I grooved to the sounds of a former student who, aside from winning a number of screenplay competitions, also performs around town as part of a very cool jazz and pop trio known as Guys & Doll.

 Ah, but you’re probably wondering if any of my students have made the big time. Some, over the years, have worked hard and found their own niche in the film industry. I’ve got to mention with great pride Shiwani Srivastava, whose  Wedding Season, was a Netflix hit in 2022. When I first encountered this romantic comedy with its Southeast Asian twist, I knew Shiwani had what it takes. And now – onward and upward! 

 Dedicated to Dominique Merrill, who knows as well as I do that (as Oscar Hammerstein once put it) when you become a teacher, by your pupils you’ll be taught.