Professor Douglas's bio says that her book, Writing the TV Drama Series, "has been adopted by network mentoring programs at NBC and CBS, and foreign language editions have been published in Germany, China, Korea, Spain and around the globe." As I studied her book for class, I felt like Professor Douglas was standing next to me with heartfelt admonitions. Her writing is stern, authoritative and funny. She loves television, she loves what she does, and she loves teaching.
One week in class we studied a clip from MASH. The clip is only a few minutes in length and each of the main characters is being interviewed for a documentary. What brilliant acting and writing; while being filmed talking about their experiences taking care of the wounded, the depth with which each character understands themselves (truthful, evasive, kind, broken, exhausted) and the real psychological impact of their experiences is revealed by their expressions, layers revealed between words; with each pause. The reality for each character is often different from the words they are speaking and is visible and clear. If I learned this lesson well, my character's words will never be generic. Each character truly is "unlike anyone who has lived, or who will ever live."*
The class was the first time I considered television drama to be literature. As the weeks went by we were exposed to increasingly complex themes. One of the final dramas we studied was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the episode we screened, vampires had descended upon the town, stealing the characters' voices and leaving them mute; that was one story that was woven into the episode. We also saw Buffy's attraction to one of her classmates and his to her; their experience mirrors the other story; on a deeper level both he and Buffy are struggling to be able to use their voices so that they can talk about their feelings for each other. It's just as frightening and almost impossible for them as battling the vampires to regain their ability to speak. A couple of weeks ago, I made a presentation about storytelling to a group of writers and mentioned this episode; a friend who recently earned her degree in literature mentioned that there are college courses where many episodes in the Buffy series are studied. Another person in the group mentioned an episode that tells the story of Buffy's mother's death; after watching it a hospital chaplain told him that it's the best study of grief that she has ever seen.
Many if not all of the clips and series of clips, and full episodes we screened in class had won awards. As I rode the train home after the final day of class, I wondered if the students' expectations had been raised too high. Not every episode of every show is close to the quality of the episodes we had studied.
On the final day of class, Professor Douglas told us that she was going to give us one of her top pieces of advice for beginning writers.
She said that beginning writers can often find work writing for shows that aren't the top shows. She said that at the beginning of her career she decided that no matter what project she had been hired to work on that she would honor her craft, and always give it her best.
For some of the early shows she had worked on she told us, episodes where she had done this received the only awards those shows ever received. She said she'd had a friend long ago who refused to do this; he said he would give his best someday, when the project merited it. Tragically he passed away at a young age, before he had the opportunity.
We covered so much this past semester including an entire lecture on working with composers and music in film. I've saved my notes and will write more about the class as it impacts what I'm working on or struggling with (these are the most fun posts for me to write).
