The Screenwriting Course

I was sort of dreading the first class for this screenwriting course I'm taking this fall. My friend Ben Kaplan took it last year and he made it sound really great, and then a couple of weeks ago I read something online about the stagnating book business in New York and I got into this mood where I was thinking that maybe the entire reading public OF THE ENTIRE PLANET EARTH was me and like a handful of my more intellectual friends and the trouble with those Continuing Education courses that colleges offer is that they're really easy to Google and find and then, once you've filled out the form, actually pay for, so that 20 minutes later, once I recovered from my impulsive doomsday declaration for the entire state of the book industry, once I had swung back to my normal contrarian self who feels that I'll always write books and magazine articles even if everyone else on Earth would rather play Guitar Hero—Well, by that time I had put a couple of hundred bucks on my credit card and committed the following 12 Thursday evenings to this screenwriting course. 

The first one happened last night. I arrived in the class feeling a little frazzled. Typically in classroom situations I revert to my high school self and think malevolent thoughts about everybody else in the room. Except I found this really difficult to do in this particular course. Part of it was the instructor, this little Polish lady, Nika Rylski, who buzzes around our desks like a caffeinated honeybee. She not only really likes to talk about screenwriting and movies, she also really likes to teach. You can tell. She regards teaching like it's a form of performance. She's got lines you suspect have been used for years and yet her delivery is so good you laugh anyway. 

What really made it difficult for me to hate everybody else in the class, as, you know, I did back in high school, was that this wasn't some math course taught by a troglodyte with coffee breath, or French taught by an aspiring Lothario who liked to give the girls back massages. (Riverside Secondary School teaching staff circa 1990: You know who you are.) 

Naw, this was a screenwriting course. In fact the name of the course is something like, Write Your Own Screenplay. And bear in mind this is a Continuing Education course. It's full of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s. And better than that: The class is full of characters. Great characters! One of the guys came in when everyone else had already sat down, just striding into this cluster of desks arranged in an approximate circle. He was wearing a City of Toronto labourer's jumpsuit, complete with the reflective silver tape all over it. To start the class, Rylski went around the room and asked everyone to say something about themselves. And when it came time for his turn, this guy piped up in this wicked French African accent, he said, "I am a garbageman." He said it in this really dignified way, like he was saying, I'm a heart surgeon, or, I'm a biochemical engineer. No attitude or anything: Just, this is what I do, and I'm cool with it. And as the class went on it became apparent he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of French African cinema. How can you not love a guy like that?

The thing is, the class is full of such characters. There's a security guard who works on his screenplay as he mans his security desk. There's a manager of Canadian rock bands and a woman who owns a film transcription service and a landscaper and an insurance underwriter, and all of them you could tell were the sort of people who, when they saw a great movie, they couldn't wait to talk about it with someone, and if that someone happened to be the guy who worked on the other side of the waste disposal truck, well, then, so be it. This was a class of people who, by their entry into the class, were stepping toward the achievement of a dream. Of creating a screenplay. And how can you dislike someone who is working to achieve a dream? We ended up talking movies for three hours. The class flew by. It was great. 

As things wrapped up, Rylski gave us the first assignment, which is to think up a premise for a movie. She gave us a set of stringent criteria for the premise—hopefully you can read some of the details in the grainy photo that starts this blog entry. I'm toying with pitching something about the random collection of humanity who congregate in screenwriting classes. It'd be a feel-good flick about people uniting thanks to the power of cinema. Yeah, I think I'm going to like this class. 

Comments

[S. Kelly]

Hello Christopher:

You're an excellent writer.

I stumbled upon your blog, as I was googling for Nika's email from one of the user groups.

When I read:

"...this little Polish lady, Nika Rylski, who buzzes around our desks like a caffeinated honeybee. She not only really likes to talk about screenwriting and movies, she also really likes to teach. You can tell. She regards teaching like it's a form of performance. She's got lines you suspect have been used for years and yet her delivery is so good you laugh anyway. "

I just had to comment.

I too am a fan of Nika!

When I came here 10 years ago to go to U of T, I took her screenwriting course at George Brown college. I actually threw up because she caused me so much stress in the first class.

I often thought who gives a damn about writing. I never told people that I wrote screenplays. It was something I kept to myself.

In my first class back then, Nika asked me for my premise. I choked.

She said, "If you can't tell me what your screenplay is about, then what the hell are you writing for. The industry will eat you up and spit you out!"

I remember those words to this very moment.

Since that time I continued writing and making films and docs while still keeping my day job.

I script doctor in 'online communities' and privately and keep my hand in promoting screenwriting though a film festival I work with-

I just signed up again on Wednesday nights with Nika as I want to finish a feature I'm on (of the 8 I have revolving) and I thought "damn it" I'm going to see if Nika's teaching and too signed up online for night courses that started on Wednesday September 17.

She's still that 'wonderball' of screenwriting science and I can't fathom ever getting taught or 'schooled' by any one other than Nika.

Would love to compare notes sometime...

Enjoy your classes!

[Misir Doobay]

I would like to enroll in a screenwriting course.

[CH]

I too have survived Nika... 3x!! We've had some knock down, drag out fights and I adore her! She's almost always right, and when she's not - she'll ALMOST always apologize! She knows her structure, and she doesn't care about the genre. I guess you' re probably almost done now, hope you're still in one piece!

[Retro Jordan]

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