I was at Skidmore before your time, arriving with a decent gpa from Columbia's School of General Studies at the beginning of my sophomore year and then the following year spending my Junior Year in Paris with Smith College and returning for my senior year at Skidmore. (I lived in Rounds when it was brand new and quite elegant.) I've heard that Skidmore has its own program in Paris now -- how great! At the time I went, Smith took five guest women students a year, and I was one of them in 1971-72. My memories of Skidmore are mostly excellent. I was also deeply nourished by the visual arts courses and ambiance at Skidmore.
I was an artist before college, but I had to take an income-producing job immediately afterward -- i.e. I didn't know how to arrange entry to Yale Drama or Julliard -- so I went to work as a journalist and eventually -- after my first master's at Columbia Univ. in journalism -- a foreign correspondent in -- where else? -- Paris, for a major news organization. Living in Paris gave me the opportunity to re-discover the great cinemateques that had changed my life during my junior year in Paris some years before. Seeing Bertolucci's "The Conformist" in theatrical release in Paris in '72 had planted seeds in the brain and body that would eventually germinate.
My determination to expand spiritually, academically and artistically eventually resulted in my obtaining the personal confidence it took to leave journalism and -- after writing speeches for Fortune 500 CEOs to earn the fees -- go back to Columbia: this time for the M. F. A. in filmmaking. I graduated at the top of my class with two short films running in the festivals. One of those festivals was the one in Montreal where Marguerite Duras had previewed all of her films. I eventually visited her in Paris. I was especially thrilled that audiences at that festival found some meaning in my earliest work. Festival audiences especially responded to a short piece entitled "The Blue Veil" about an 80 year-old woman and...desire. Shortly before shooting my thesis film, a French friend of mine in New York told me that he'd read in a French paper that Bertolucci was shooting in Seattle of all places -- he almost never shoots in the U. S. I sold my video camera to pay for the retail ticket that enabled me to fly immediately out to Seattle. Having had a difficult shoot in Nepal just prior, he was disinclined to let me observe ('hell shoots' are draining). However, I sat down and wrote a three-page understanding of his work and his deconstructionist take on the French New Wave, gave it to him; and he called up a little later and said the Italian equivalent of 'Okay, you're in. Be at the location at 9 a.m. tomorrow.' It was great fun and very instructive -- half of his team is French, the other half Italian. (I am half Italian and have dual citizenship and also know and love the French, so I was right at home.) Observing his shooting procedures, honed over 30 years, confirmed some of my naissant shooting habits, and that gave me confidence. He treated me as a senior film student, quizzing me -- with a lift of an eyebrow -- on which take of a particular scene I liked best and why -- perhaps as Pasolino had done many years before when Bertolucci was his assistant. I liked his 'never hurry, never rest' atmosphere with an continuous undercurrent of laughter. Wryness on a shoot is a good thing. He would say to the actors after most shots, "bene," and after shots that he knew weren't as good, he'd say "molto bene." The experience, just prior to shooting my thesis and graduating, was a wonderful 'coincidence' bringing me full circle to the moment when I had many years before found my love of film -- in Paris.
The story gets a bit darker after film school, as it was discovered that I had a life-threatening case of Lyme Disease, a malady with which I imagine you're all familiar up there in Saratoga. I battled it for some years, but the time it took to do so delayed the shooting of my first feature, an indispensable benchmark for all independent filmmakers. I did get to spend some time in London and Paris writing and optioning a feature screenplay. And finally I am well at work on the feature I plan to shoot, the working title of which is "Beyond Recognition." Not surprisingly, it will be shot partly on location in Paris.