Rubin underscores the importance of the need for practice to perfect the skill of screenwriting. Even without taking a class on screenwriting, learning how to write not only leads to creative thinking, but also simply to better storytelling. “To some extent I’m giving them tools and pointing out different ways people approach screenwriting, the process, the ideas, and how you articulate it… some of that’s useful. Some of it isn’t. I don’t care, I want them to be writing,” he says. “It’s really just writing experience. If they had the gumption to just sit down and just write, they’d get just as much out of it.”
For Rubin, the best screenwriting is accessible and meaningful to the writer and the audience. “You can leapfrog over a lot of student projects where there’s a lot of flash and maybe even a lot of great intellectual ideas, but ultimately the stories are terrible,” says Rubin. “They’re not anything we care about, and when I say we, I mean the writer himself doesn’t even care or know what it’s about.”
Similarly, Marcus Stern, Associate Director of the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) at Harvard and the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, has also taught screenwriting classes at Harvard in the past. He stresses the need for students to find a personal vision in the shadow of the monolithic image of the television industry. “Connecting life experiences to an artistic idea is a necessity to give it truth and relevance to both its creator and its audience,” Stern says. “In some way you have to have a personal connection to a story. If not, then you’re merely chasing the idea of the story. Without a personal connection to the material it’s nearly impossible to write or direct something that has true resonance for an audience.” To Stern, the journey of self-discovery in experience is what truly sets the best in the TV industry apart.
Yet, Rubin adds, students still have much to learn about the television industry and its collaborative structure. “If I recall how I thought about things when I was twenty, and hear the kind of questions I get from students when I’m speaking, I didn’t want people to mess with my vision and I saw anybody else’s creative input as being an imposition because I saw it the way I saw it and I wanted to make that happen,” says Rubin. “I’ve grown to appreciate the collaboration of very talented people, and it’s good for a person. It’s a little bit difficult for an artist to compromise, but it’s not really compromise. It’s bringing together different ideas to bring together the strongest script, the strongest characters, and the strongest scenes.”
DOWN TO “THE WIRE”
William J. Wilson, the a professor at the Kennedy School and the director of its Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program, does not usually have time for television. In fact, it was not until it had been running for several seasons and had been recommended to him that Wilson decided to sit down and watch “The Wire.” Today, he teaches the undergraduate course African and African American Studies 115: “HBO’s The Wire and its Contribution to Understanding Urban Inequality,” in which he uses the show as a context for dealing with social issues.
Like Rubin and Stern, Wilson emphasizes the need for personal experience when it comes to developing a vision for television. In particular, he notes how the knowledge of the show’s head writers, David Simon and Ed Burns, has shaped the production. “The reason that ‘The Wire’ does it so well is that David Simon and Burns worked well together. Burns used to be in the police department in Baltimore. David Simon was a former beat writer who focused on the Baltimore police for the Baltimore Sun.”
To Wilson, what sets the creators and those involved with such a critically acclaimed drama as “The Wire” apart from other shows are their constant efforts to stay informed about the relevant social issues. “I don’t think you can expect all producers and directors to be that sophisticated,” he says. “Not only did they draw on their own experiences, but I was thrilled to learn that my book, ‘When Work Disappears,’ published in 1996, was the inspiration for season two. Simon read social science literature and combined that with his own real-life experiences.”
“It’s really unlike anything else on TV,” says Elizabeth L. Greenspan, a current preceptor for Expository Writing who will teach the class this spring. She emphasizes that students hoping to go into a similar area of television should understand major societal issues, such as urban inequality, racism, and the drug economy. She encourages students “to take advantage of their time here to get as strong a foundation and understanding of these issues, even if it takes them a bit away from narrative, and the craft of writing.” This work may be tangential, but it is ultimately helpful, according to Greenspan. “Having that background can only make the story that you tell all the more provocative,” she says.
Wilson and Greenspan would urge students hoping to deal with real social issues in their television work to take a similar course of study. “I would think that for students who go into film writing and directing and who also took social science courses, I would hope they would put what they learn from social science courses into their storyline,” Wilson says.
Intimate knowledge of societal issues gives dramatic power to a script, and all aspects of the education Harvard students receive give them an edge in storytelling and thus in screenwriting. Undergraduates who are able to synthesize their own academic and artistic narratives will find themselves well prepared for the challenges of a television career.
—Staff writer Thomas J. Snyder can be reached at tsnyder@college.harvard.edu.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
CORRECTION: November 16, 2010
An earlier version of the Nov. 16 arts article "Escaping the Static" incorrectly reported that Benjamin W. K. Smith ’12 is the president of On Thin Ice. In fact, the president is Molly O. Fitzpatrick '11.