The Justice

Media Credit: Rebecca Ney SunDeis 2008 featured panel discussions in addition to film showings of student work.

A panel consisting of documentary filmmakers Ann Carol Grossman '69 and Jane Paley Price '69, Andrew Slack '02, a viral video mastermind, and Brandeis parent Michael Jacobs a writer and producer, discussed the experience of filmmaking in a variety of settings.

In addition to being a documentary filmmaker, Price also had a brief career as an actress. Jacobs wrote and produced the television show Boy Meets World and other popular children's series after a short stint as a Broadway playwright. Slack is also the founder of the political action network Harry Potter Alliance, a job Slack described as "sort of like a rabbi of Harry Potter, with Harry Potter as the Good Book." Despite their diverse backgrounds, the panelists shared a common chagrin at the low caliber of today's broadcast offerings. Price said she was "distressed about the crap that is on television...Where's your Taxi? Where's your Cheers? Where's your Seinfeld?"

To counteract this decline, Jacobs instructed the audience to "Have thoughts that are not boring." He joked that aspiring writers should "get pneumonia and have a mother who's a drug addict," referring to the life experiences that inspired Eugene O'Neill's play Long Day's Journey Into Night.

The other panelists also played up self-examination as a useful source of inspiration. "While training is important, and it is almost essential, the best training you can have as an artist is learning about yourself," Slack told the audience. "You have to know about something, or else what are you going to make films about?" Grossman confirmed.

The panelists encouraged those interested in film careers to take advantage of the resources at their disposal. Jacobs described the undergraduate experience as "four years where your parents have never been rooting for you so much." Price and Grossman contrasted their student experiences in the 1960s with the Brandeis film scene today. "You guys have all the bells and whistles, and you have brainpower in the form of Alice [Kelikian] and some of your other professors," Price said. However, she noted, the importance of willpower and self-discipline in filmmaking has not changed.

Continued...

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