My first screenwriting teacher at the Nyu film school was Patricia Cooper, who'd served as the highest female executive at a major studio at that time, overseeing big movies at Paramount in the '70s. She marched our class up to the Gulf & Western Building at Columbus Circle and sat us down in a screening room that resembled what I imagined a first-class airline compartment looked like, then showed us Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation."
As we gushed over it afterward, she praised the film but confessed to disappointment with the script. This was my first glimpse of major-league Hollywood story development.
My second teacher was Venable Herndon, co-author of Arthur Penn's "Alice's Restaurant." Venable's class was like some Reichian encounter group, but to get out of it in one piece, you didn't have to bare your primal wounds, only write a screenplay.
My third teacher was once-blacklisted Ian McLellan Hunter,...
As we gushed over it afterward, she praised the film but confessed to disappointment with the script. This was my first glimpse of major-league Hollywood story development.
My second teacher was Venable Herndon, co-author of Arthur Penn's "Alice's Restaurant." Venable's class was like some Reichian encounter group, but to get out of it in one piece, you didn't have to bare your primal wounds, only write a screenplay.
My third teacher was once-blacklisted Ian McLellan Hunter,...
- 1/27/2010
- by By Tom Silvestri
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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