This Teaching Life

 Wendall -- every other Thursday

As many of you know, I’ve been teaching since 1981. I started as a teacher and dorm master (it was mistress at the time. . .) at the all-male boarding school Deerfield Academy and taught at the Hotchkiss School in the summers. 

 

The students at my first ever teaching job.

 

The students living on my "hall."

 

Then I worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Film Criticism course at the University of North Carolina from 1983 to 1986, started teaching Screenwriting in the Graduate Film School at UCLA in 1996, and since 2000, I’ve also lectured and run various courses in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

 

Of course, the international jobs have always been the most fun, as they include travel, hotels, working with wonderful, creative people, and lots of other perks (including meeting my husband). 

 

My "classroom building" on one teaching trip to Italy.

Doing one of my "Living Room Lectures" in San Francisco.

Teaching in Brisbane.

The Sofitel Melbourne, where I stayed during my first years lecturing at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

 

I was lucky in Melbourne to be working beside the most knowledgeable film person I know, Adrian Wootton, head of Film London.

 

And wound up next to Geoffrey Rush at dinner in 2015.

 

Here James and I are with our now "forever friend," script editor extraordinaire Claire Dobbin.

They are also the most stressful, as they require the most prep and can be marred by many things out of my control, like typhoons, cancelled flights, incompatible or non-working equipment, bureaucracy, miscommunications, and fear that my work visas won’t come through in time, etc.

Our bed when I am prepping for lectures.

 

The long search for an Australian, NTSC compatible VCR/DVD player is finally sucessful!

I’m recently back from Melbourne, where I am lucky enough to be running a year-long initiative to develop genre-friendly feature films for the State of Victoria’s film agency, VicScreen. https://vicscreen.vic.gov.au/news/genre-at-the-forefront-of-vicscreens-latest-originate-initiative

 

At the beginning of the course, I presented eight hours of Zoom lectures on film structure and characterizations, with a specific emphasis on thriller, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and comedy films.

 

A few of the films I reference.

I am now in the second portion of the scheme, working directly on eight projects chosen out of 146 applications. I can report that we have chosen well and that my week-long workshop with the writers was an absolute delight, from beginning to end. They were smart, funny, diligent, attentive, worked well as a group, and were a general joy to be around. 

Official photo by the wonderful Daniel Mahon.

The view from our workspace.

Writers hard at work.

 

Teaching is very hard and often underpaid work. Almost everyone I know who does it for a living is currently trying to get out.

Every once in a while, though, all the work is worth it, and this was one of these times. If you’d like to read about the initiative or the projects, you can find an article here:

https://if.com.au/vicscreen-advances-eight-genre-films-through-originate/

 --Wendall

Filling The Well

Wendall--every other Thursday

I turned in a book on Monday.

 

I don’t know whether my experiences in the days after a submission are common or not, but this is what it's like for me. I ping back and forth between relief, exhaustion, hope, and panic, as I wait to see whether my editor likes it and how much additional work, whether incidental or monumental, will need to be done.

 

Once I press "Send," I feel free and lucky for a moment or two, or maybe even an hour.

 

Done and dusted!

 

Then  I remember all the things I’ve put off and all the promises I’ve made to myself and others in the run up to the deadline. And feel more like this.

 

Total collapse and denial.

 

Within hours of making the mistake of announcing the book’s submission on Facebook, my inbox is full of reminders about dinners, drinks, Zooms, and walks with friends I’ve neglected, PDFs of books I agreed to blurb, a million questions and requests from students and consulting clients, and in this case, since the book had an April deadline, an email from our accountant, asking if we are, in fact, planning on using them for 2023?

 

 

Suddenly, all the things I promised myself once the book was done—sleep, exercise, time with my husband, time to hit the cinema or watch thirty-five streaming shows I’ve missed, a joyful reread of all of Raymond Chandler, healthy eating and drinking and a de-cluttering of my desktop—now seem impossible. 

 

Sometimes I feel I’ve lived my whole life thinking, “if I can just get through.. (fill in the blank)...I will be okay.” But somehow, the “fill in the blank” part never ends.

 

I know that, ultimately, I'll be thrilled to see the friends I’ve missed so much, that seventy-five percent of the shows people have told me to watch will be, as my English husband would say, bollocks, and that my new ‘to-do’ list will not be as daunting as it appears in the first twenty-four hours after my deadline. I will navigate and negotiate all the requests and reminders, as I always have in the past.

 

But the bigger question remains—when you have spent a year creating, not only an entire book, but all the guest blog posts and one page synopses that must follow, and you have put out the psychic energy necessary for all the obligatory book store appearances, panels, interviews, and Zooms required, how do you reignite the energy and inspiration to do it all over again?

 

Reading and watching films can inspire me, but because almost all of my personal and “day job” work for the last forty years has been either writing films, television scripts, or novels, and evaluating other people’s writing, at this point, I’m most inspired by other kinds of artistic expression.

 

So for me, one of the answers is museums—the art and the physical spaces themselves. I’ve written posts about MONA in Tasmania and the Cast Iron Gallery in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London because, those are places that spark new ideas or perspectives, that make me want to write again.  

 

This week, I wanted to share a few images from museums on the South Bank of Brisbane. These spaces have “filled my well” when I’ve been in between projects and I visit them whenever I’m lucky enough to be in Queensland—The Queensland Museum, the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG), and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). All of them are bunched together, and look back at the central business district.

 

View from the Southbank of Brisbane

The Queensland Art Museum welcomes you with a fountain guarded by pelicans, seen here from outside and inside the museum.

Looking toward the bridge in the picture above.

Seen through the downstairs gallery.

There is more water inside, in a central gallery which changes exhibitions frequently.

 

The gallery during my visit in 2019.

The gallery in 2018.

The museum holds some older pieces, but primarily focuses on modern and Aboriginal art. 

 

I'm equally inspired by The Queensland Museum, which focuses on both science and natural history. I love the way this museum is laid out, as many items are encased in glass or suspended in liquid and the whole natural history floor is an art installation in itself.

 

 

So, taxes, coffees with friends, and museums, that's where I'm headed, at least until I get my editor's notes...

--Wendall