This Savage Art

I think I’m a pretty smart guy. Not a Mensa member by any stretch but I have commons sense, can change a flat tire, know how to order a bottle of wine, can talk my way out of a traffic ticket and can count to ten in four languages. So I put this question to you fine readers, what is an MFA worth out there in the film industry with the state of things as they are?

I have been wrestling with the thought of going back to school and getting a Masters in Fine Arts. There are only two schools I’m applying to and I couldn’t have picked a better time. The deadline for both is December 1st. There’s the NYU Graduate Program — Tisch School of the Arts. World renowned. The film world elite have been students or have taught there — Spike, Marty, Jim and Oliver.  It’s a big program and the price tag is just as big. The other obvious New York City choice is Columbia, a school that has always been know for a solid screenwriting program and beyond. When I was taking some Continuing Education courses at NYU way back when, the general consensus was that if you wanted to direct you went to NYU and if you wanted to write you went to Columbia. Not sure how true that was then and how true it is now.

There are a few concerns here, money being one of them. There’s no way I could afford NYU on my own without any financial assistance and that doesn’t include making films, that’s out of pocket. Going through the bursars website I found out that a three year program, at about $20,000 a term, comes to approximately $150,000. That is including a modest budget for student films. Very modest.

The Columbia University MFA cost is slightly less. The first two years are all coursework, no film production at all, and it’s approximately $50,000 followed by thesis years which are about $3,000 a semester for a Screenwriting concentration. Big difference from the Tisch program but I know that NYU has invested a lot into their film department. I’m not sure how the Columbia Directing Program really stacks up.

I guess a big reason why I’m applying is maybe because I’m craving the need to be immersed in something I deeply care about and still want to improve at. I’ve spent the last year and a half caring for my son while Linda toils away in the coal mines. I feel out of loop and this could be a way to get back in. Besides, the film industry is in a complete state of panic and flux. Maybe now would be the time to do this.

I’m definitely applying to both. The decision of whether I go or not will be made when the time comes. The decision might be made for me for all I know. I would appreciate anyone who wants to leave a comment about their MFA/Film Program experience at either one of these two schools or any film school for that matter.

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After five years of being MIA the conference returns March 7th and 8th. Get your pass now.

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September 14th-19th kicks off the meeting of the minds in independent film. I will only be attending this Sunday of the Conference which in my opinion looks like the better day to go.  Panels. Networking. You know the deal. A good week to get reenergized and bump into some old friends and hopefully make some new ones. The schedule can be viewed here. Anyone going? Drop me an e-mail.

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Being a lazy Labor Day weekend I thought this was worth sharing for a laugh. I found this article on the Pro Video Coalition website on how to read between the lines and interpret crew listings on Craigslist.

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If you’re in the city this weekend and want to see what looks like a very inside view of the American male in the midst of an emotional tailspin, check out Momma’s Man from filmmaker Azazel Jacobs, it opened yesterday at the Angelica. Here’s a snippet from Karina Longworth’s review on SpoutBlog:

When a filmmaker casts his own parents as parents––in a film about an adult and his relationship to his parents upon returning to his childhood home, a film which said filmmaker shoots *in* his childhood home––you’d expect (or maybe fear) that the result would be meta-personal to the point of solipsism. But what’s really surprising about Azazel Jacob’s Momma’s Man, which stars his experimental filmmaker father Ken Jacobs and mother Flo Jacobs and was shot in the Manhattan loft in which the family has lived for decades, is that it feels completely universal. The story of a 30-something husband and father of a newborn who extends a stay at his parents’ ramshackle New York apartment indefinitely, it’s an incredible portrait of the final phase of coming of age, the transition from being parented to parenting.

I couldn’t wait to see this when Linda was on the verge of giving birth to the boy because, well, it described everything I was going through at the time in a little capsule. The panic, the responsibly, the desire to crawl back into the womb myself. I’m going to try and check it out next week myself but all of you should give this film a little weekend box office love. Check the trailer:

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One of my concerns when I was planning on having a child was time. Am I ever going to finish a book? Am I ever going to see a film again? Will my tradition of attending the Tribeca Film Festival for the last five years fall to the waste side? Hell no.

I just snagged a pair of tickets for my baby’s mama and I to see The Caller. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to really go through the guide and do my usual research I cut my search short and found this cool looking neo-noir crime drama by return filmmaker Richard Ledes. Even though festival screenings are hit or miss I usually walk away with something whether it be a daring performance, stellar photography, the name of a producer to add to the personal database (note: film festival websites are a good source to find contact info) or just inspiration. Either way it’s a chance to keep the tradition going and in the time between now and next year I’ll have a year under my belt as a parent and maybe the festival can get a grip on its own identity crisis, again.

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If you missed the recent NYC screening of Frownland you have another chance. [via Tully] Matt Zoller Seitz gives a review at The House Next Door.

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