SST: The People in Your Neighborhood

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

I wrote in a previous post that I had wanted to take a screenwriting class, but after the first class I felt like I was in over my head so I didn't end up enrolling. However, I have continued to attend every class so far this semester and I have learned so much. I was originally intimidated by the other members of the class because they are mostly juniors or seniors in the screen arts and culture department and this is my very first film class ever, but after reading some of their work I feel like I can hang with just about anybody in the class. I was surprised to see that a number of people in the class have trouble stringing words together, let alone assembling a coherent story. I have been doing all the same assignments as the rest of the class, but it's kind of nice to just be observing so that I can work at my own pace.

I may be just observing the screenwriting class but I am officially registered for another screen arts and culture class: TV Writing. Through the first month of class I can honestly say that it is the most fun I've ever had in a college class. During the second week of class we watched an entire episode of Lost and analyzed its structure. I thought to myself, "How come it took me eight-plus years of college to discover that there are classes like this?"

I have always watched an excessive amount of TV, but now I can legitimately say as I'm watching that I am doing my homework. In the first week of class the teacher opened the class with a discussion of the various shows that class members had watched that week. The class discussed a half dozen shows and I had missed all of them. I felt for the first time in my life that I actually needed to watch more TV. Or rather, I need to spend less time watching things like Gilmore Girls reruns, Sportscenter, and Top Chef, and watch current scripted TV instead.

The difference between the two writing classes is really striking. Writing a film is a really solitary experience; you keep your ideas to yourself lest someone steal them. Writing for TV, on the other hand, is done by a staff of writers that all work in a room together, bouncing as many ideas off each other as possible. Our TV writing teacher has real industry experience and he strives to make our class as much like a real writers room as possible, so we all get to pitch our ideas and riff on other people's ideas. I personally find the TV model a lot more fun and I feel like I pitch well and throw out good ideas to the other writers in the room.

My final project for TV Writing is a full-length script for an original episode of 30 Rock. I've spent a couple of weeks working out the various storylines that the episode will feature, and as a teaser I will tell you that my episode (at least at this stage, it may change) incorporates this classic Sesame Street song:



Final anecdote: Last Friday we had a special guest speaker - a U of M alum who is now one of the directors from the show The Big Bang Theory (which I had never seen before). He was a Lakers fan and he made a basketball analogy saying that every show he has worked on has a flashy Kobe Bryant figure, but more importantly, every show needs a Derek Fisher. Derek Fisher is the glue that holds the Lakers team together, he explained, and the Lakers suffered when Derek Fisher was playing in Utah. I happened to be wearing some Utah Jazz apparel that day, and I mentioned that as Jazz fan I felt fortunate to have had Derek Fisher on the team, if only for one season. The two of us had a little bonding moment, which was cool because earlier in his lecture he had talked about how to break into the television industry, stressing the importance of making personal connections with established members of the television community. Gotta love any class where my obsession with both TV and the Utah Jazz is an asset.