John Goldsmith ’84, a man who helped bring film studies at the University to new heights, will be honored at the dedication of Goldsmith Family Cinema in the Film Studies building tonight at 8 p.m.
Goldsmith graduated from the University as an Art and American Studies major who studied film as a subdiscipline of the art department before it was an official major. He is currently the CEO of Metropolis, one of the largest talent agencies for animators, writers, and programmers in Los Angeles, Calif. He also serves as president of Metropolis Productions, an animation production company.
Goldsmith recently made a sizeable donation to the film studies department, but according to Jeanine Basinger, Corwin-Fuller professor of film studies and chair of the film studies department, money was the least of his donations.
“John was always generous, hardworking, and looking to see what’s the future for film studies and what do we need to do to make it happen,” Basinger said. “He’s been very supportive of film studies and me personally in my work, and he’s been a really dynamic force in all that we accomplished… helping us establish the cinema archives, hiring students, counseling students, helping to recruit students to come to Wesleyan, and interviewing high school students.”
Basinger first met Goldsmith when he was a freshman in 1979.
“He introduced himself during the first week of school,” Basinger said. “He took several classes with me, [and] he was one of the original people on the board of advisors that helped set up our cinema archives when I first founded it. He’s given a huge contribution in time and energy on the film series board, [and] he was a first rate ‘A’ student and involved himself positively in all aspects of film here.”
Despite the fact that film was not an official major, Basinger said that Goldsmith was a film major by the same definitions that are now in place. Goldsmith stressed that the film majors of his time are very much in touch with each other as well as with more recent film majors and graduates because they all share a common bond.
“What’s funny is that we all recognize we all have similar brain training and we want to help each other,” Goldsmith said. “I know a lot of people who got their jobs because they were Wesleyan film majors. That’s all that mattered. [And] when we kicked off the dedication of the archives, it was amazing how many people came back to campus. Half of the majors who ever graduated came back on a random Saturday in March.”
According to Goldsmith, there were very few strictly film professors at the University during his time as an undergraduate, and film studies was heavily interdisciplinary “because we were such a small, tight-knit group, we all remained together after college,” Goldsmith said. “We all really help each other out… We’re all the Mafia.”
And if members of the film studies are the Mafia, then Basinger is the godmother.
“We had a lot of fun and we had a lot of hopes and dreams for what film studies at Wesleyan could be,” Basinger said of Goldsmith and his classmates. “Film by its nature means working together and collaborating in groups… We shared a lot. We would cook together, go to the movies together… John and I are always in touch with each other and always have been. He was the first person to introduce me to the magic of the VCR… He came over to my house and hooked up a VCR [and] showed me how to use it.”
Goldsmith is fully aware of the innovations of modern technology, and he relates it to his work in preserving the cinema archives.
“It’s nice to preserve the actual scripts,” he said. “Now the films are a commodity. There isn’t a film you can’t just pull up on [the internet]. The idea that you could get a copy of any movie was a radical idea [in the early 80s]. We’re in a total visual media today. There’s not a piece of content you can’t get your hands on.”
The cinema archives are housed in the Center for Film Studies, which opened in 2004. Goldsmith said that the new facilities are a huge improvement over those that he studied in.
“The archives were basically rotting in a wet environment,” he said. “It was always just a dream to raise money to build [a new place] for the archives and the center for film studies. The old film studies building used to leak and smell of mold. [The] dehumidifier was on all the time… If you wanted to grow mushrooms, that’d be a perfect environment.”
The Film Center will soon be expanded.
“We’re about to break ground on a new CFA building with two screening rooms,” Goldsmith said. “It’s fireproof… a five million dollar facility, and we actually got 90 percent participation of film graduates in fundraising.”
Goldsmith’s memories of Wesleyan during his time as a student are still vivid.
“What I liked about it was that it was a post-Vietnam generation with a new sense of optimism,” he said. “We were excited about the future. That was fun. There was lot of energy on campus… The night Reagan got elected president, everyone was protesting.”
Goldsmith lived in the Butterfield and Foss Hill dorms as a student, as well as a house on Brainard Avenue. He remembers repelling down the stairwells in the Butterfields, and playing Dungeons and Dragons in their graffiti-laden tunnels.
“You could do anything you wanted down there,” he said of the tunnels.
Goldsmith, who feels that the University community has become more conservative since the early 80s, remembers the political discourse during his time as a student.
“It wasn’t so PC,” he said. “It was okay to have a different opinion. Now you gotta be so careful of everything. What I liked about that was that you could disagree with people but it was okay. People disagree and it’s not okay today. [Back then] you could take any opinion, but the one thing you couldn’t do was be anonymous about your opinion.”
This environment helped Goldsmith with his career.
“It’s given me the ability to talk to other people who think differently and be okay with it,” he said. “That’s very useful in the film business- being able to talk to different kinds of people… None of the people I work with think about the world in the same way. They’re concerned about very different things.”
According to Goldsmith, people working in the film business need to have good people skills, be smart, and have the ability to express themselves.
“I enjoy what I do,” Goldsmith said. “I like being my own boss. It’s fun to work for people for a while, and at some point it’s more fun to work for yourself… The most fun part of my job is no two days are the same. I never know what’s going to happen.”
Goldsmith currently resides in Los Angeles, and has two daughters, ages seven and two. This weekend, he will be on campus for the dedication with some members of his family, including his wife, brother, and seven-year-old daughter.
“I’m just really excited about it, and I’m glad that my family and I are able to do this,” Goldsmith said of the dedication. “One of the things very important to me is that everyone touches the cinema at some point in their career… That’s what I love is it’s a focal point for the community. I’m glad it’s a part of the University that’s accessible to all of the students.”
Many members of the film studies program, past and present, will be alongside him.
“I take great pride in our new building, in the fact that it was nearly 100 percent paid for by donations from alumni and their family, and here is one of my former students coming back to dedicate a structure that will bear his family name,” Basinger said. “Now we not only have the major, but we have the Center for Film Studies. The people I’ve taught are still here taking pride [in the program], helping with it.”
Tonight’s dedication, which is open to the Wesleyan community, will include a brief ceremony and a free screening of the Buster Keaton film, “Sherlock JR,” with live organ accompaniment.
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