2022 and Optimism

Almost immediately after my wife and I were vaccinated early in 2021, we booked a trip to the Yucatan peninsula for the end of the year: feeling that the pandemic would definitely be waning by then, and travel would no longer be a concern.

The joke was on us, of course. Delta. Omicron. We got our boosters the second we were eligible. And maybe the best way to escape Omicron after all was to head to the jungle in Campeche.

Optimism.

Visiting Professorship, Year 1

Ringling College Studio Labs panel: L-R, Dylan McDermott, Andy Armstrong, Terry Borst.

The academic year is coming to a close and that means I’m wrapping up my visiting professorship at Ringling College Art+Design’s Film department. I’m honored to have participated in the mentoring of a number of senior thesis films, along with senior thesis screenplays and one documentary. Additionally, I moderated a Ringling College Studio Labs panel featuring actor/director Dylan McDermott and legendary stunt coordinator Andy Armstrong, and racked up up a lot of frequent flyer miles ping-ponging between Florida and New Mexico.

Faculty colleague Damon Maulucci and I discovered we shared the identical fashion coordinator.

As the adjacent photo shows, there were moments of levity during the academic year, and perhaps as a consequence, the College has been kind enough to invite me back as Visiting Faculty next year. Since I know my way around Tampa International Airport pretty well by now, I’ve accepted. You can’t have too many frequent flyer miles.

Meanwhile, my feature film 2-WAY moves forward, and in case you haven’t already liked 2-WAY’s Facebook page … your ‘like’ would really be appreciated, as it helps us with potential investors and marketing opportunities. My co-producer and I have moved forward on fundraising, attachments, and distribution, and if all goes well, we’re hoping to shoot in the Fall. Another feature screenplay I’ve written is in “active development”, and I’ll be working on another feature over the summer.

Stay tuned…it should be an interesting rest-of-the-year…

Joining Ringling College of Art+Design Faculty – F’18

Very happy to share the news that Ringling College of Art + Design has appointed me as full-time Visiting Faculty in Film, beginning Fall 2018.

This is a very exciting opportunity, as Ringling’s Film department has been ranked #16 in The Hollywood Reporter‘s latest scorecard of American film schools, and Film Head Brad Battersby was recently named by Variety as “mentor of the year.” Visiting artists to the program have included writer/director Kevin Smith (Clerks), actor Justin Long (dozens of screen credits), actress Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation), actor Dylan McDermott (dozens of screen credits), cinematographer Wally Pfister (Inception) and many more. (Just FYI, Ringling’s Computer Animation department ranks #2 in the country!)

One Office, Two Views

(Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ readers: click through to the original WordPress blog post so you can use the WordPress 360° photo viewer: you’ll be glad you did!)

This marks the wrap-up of my time at The Film School at Santa Fe University of Art and Design (which is closing — lock, stock and barrel — on June 30, 2018). I moved into this office in 2010, when hired as full-time screenwriting faculty for the University. Our high watermark — as a department — might have been in 2016 when we were named by trade publication Variety as one of the “entertainment schools on the move.”

Certainly that was our goal.

You can check out any time you like…

Because of course.

L.A. Traveling

Always the preferred airport if you’re flying in and out of L.A. Easy to navigate, lots of history, and these days with Peet’s as its official coffee purveyor in Terminal A. Wouldn’t mind a Vino Volo inside Terminal A as well; a nice addition when catching the last flight home… (I think about airports more than I should.)

July in California, Two Views

Morning view from the porch of a guest cottage on a vineyard in the Valley of the Moon. Viognier grapes ripening on the vines.

Morning view from the balcony of the Carole Lombard/Clark Gable room in a charming, timeless Central Coast hotel that takes you back to the 1940s. Lombard and Gable actually did stay in this hotel, and it’s reasonably likely they stayed in this room, a nicely hidden hideaway a few hours from L.A.

Perceptual Abstraction

Quick trip to LA last weekend, which included (as it usually does) a visit to LACMA. Picasso-Rivera, check (great and revelatory).

But the unexpected bonus, one of my favorite painters for decades: John McLaughlin (in, surprisingly, his first major posthumous retrospective). To get all art-theory (from the LA Times): “[his] negative space allows consciousness to blossom and manifest itself.”

And you can’t get any better than that.

UFVA 2013, part 3

Yep, I’m in there somewhere… (Not too far from the center, actually, donning a Written By baseball cap.)

UFVA 2013, part 2

UFVA 2013 @ Marion Knott Studios

So, my first attendance at the University Film and Video Association (UFVA) conference and it was a privilege, of course, interacting with my professional colleagues (many of whom, like myself, have 2-3 decades of experience as screenwriters in the entertainment industry — and a good number of whom were fellow UCLA Film School graduates), and quite illuminating touring the state-of-the-art Marion Knott Studios, the home of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts (7th best film school in the country, according to The Hollywood Reporter.