Jeremy7211
11-08-2003, 06:01 PM
I'm wondering about applying to the USC graduate program in screenwriting, and wanted some feedback before I made a decision...
Screenwriting's something of a hobby, I've written a bunch of shorts and two feature-lengths:
1) Grand Guignol - kind of Altman for kids; about a group of teenagers trying to make a werewolf- themed 8mm film on the weekend before their star and friend moves cross-country. Decent, but very much a first script and a little schmaltzy, contrived, and too sentimental.
2) Mere - A dumb thriller about two deaf brothers living in a haunted WWII-era Red Cross facility in Northern England. Too weird for its own good: i.e., a ghost B-52 buzzing the house and crashing into the yard every few days, a hot-spring sinkhole growing larger and larger and threatening to envelop the property...
And I'm writing another one now, a more traditional road-movie; a roller-rink DJ and a 14 year old runaway head from Vermont to Montana with a Boston Whaler in tow, trying to transform themselves into cowboys. Kind of a non-mythic, blue-collar, modern adaptation of Peter Pan.
But what I want to know is if this type of writing, (which I'm presuming isn't very commercially viable), is (a) tolerated, (b) encouraged (c) would gain anything from a program like USC's. I don't want to suggest that what I'm producing is too artsy or intelligent - it's most emphatically NOT - just that I'm wondering what [besides connections] $35,000/year will provide to me?
Screenwriting's something of a hobby, I've written a bunch of shorts and two feature-lengths:
1) Grand Guignol - kind of Altman for kids; about a group of teenagers trying to make a werewolf- themed 8mm film on the weekend before their star and friend moves cross-country. Decent, but very much a first script and a little schmaltzy, contrived, and too sentimental.
2) Mere - A dumb thriller about two deaf brothers living in a haunted WWII-era Red Cross facility in Northern England. Too weird for its own good: i.e., a ghost B-52 buzzing the house and crashing into the yard every few days, a hot-spring sinkhole growing larger and larger and threatening to envelop the property...
And I'm writing another one now, a more traditional road-movie; a roller-rink DJ and a 14 year old runaway head from Vermont to Montana with a Boston Whaler in tow, trying to transform themselves into cowboys. Kind of a non-mythic, blue-collar, modern adaptation of Peter Pan.
But what I want to know is if this type of writing, (which I'm presuming isn't very commercially viable), is (a) tolerated, (b) encouraged (c) would gain anything from a program like USC's. I don't want to suggest that what I'm producing is too artsy or intelligent - it's most emphatically NOT - just that I'm wondering what [besides connections] $35,000/year will provide to me?