This fall, the Film Studies Department, in collaboration with the Writing Center, will offer students the opportunity to learn about film criticism in the new class “Writing About Film for Modern Media.”
“This is something I’ve wanted to do for 20 years,” said Film Studies Department Chair Jeanine Basinger. “It’s about building on the knowledge that our students have on what makes a good film, how you look at films, and how you evaluate them, not just in terms of academic, theoretical or narrative issues, but for the general entertainment.”
The new class, to be offered as a cross-listing between Film Studies and the Writing Certificate, will be taught by Wesleyan Alum Sam Wasson ’03, a “rising star in journalistic writing about film,” according to Basinger.
Interested students must submit a one-page film review on a film of their choice to jbasinger@wesleyan.edu by 4 p.m. on Friday, April 8.
According to Director of Writing Programs Anne Greene, the Writing Certificate was conceived with the intention of cross-listing it with other classes such as this one.
“We hoped it would be the kind of arrangement that contributed to the generation of courses that everyone has wished existed, and here is one such course,” she said.
Wasson, who holds a Master’s degree in Film from USC as well as Bachelor’s Degrees in English and Film Studies from Wesleyan, said that he hopes to appeal to “students who care deeply about the movies and who have a personal, almost intimate relationship with the form.”
“The idea is to prepare students to write about film for commercial media like books, newspapers and magazines,” Wasson said. “We’ll examine many forms of criticism, watch a lot of movies, regard them from many angles, probably argue, and ultimately translate our highly-informed film-literate analyses into a kind of popular writing that’s fun to read.”
Wasson is the author of “A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards,” “Fifth Avenue, 5AM: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman,” and “Paul on Mazursky.” According to Basinger, he is currently at work on a major critical biography of the film and theater choreographer Bob Fosse. Wasson’s work has also been published in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
“He is a terrific guy, very funny, very smart, very much a cutting-edge person whose own writing has taken off,” Basinger said. “He’s the ideal person to teach this course.”
Basinger said that despite the great professional success of many of the Film Department’s alumni, it has been her long-term goal to put Wesleyan’s stamp on film criticism.
“Our alumni are totally dominant and successful in film and television, and many are successful as academics,” she said. “We have people in all of the museums and archives, and I always say, ‘but why have we not produced a great film critic?’”
Basinger said she hopes that the class will build upon the skills, especially in writing, that the Film Studies major already emphasizes.
“The film major stresses writing all of the time—not just screenwriting and writing for television, but all of our classes have multiple writing assignments,” she said. “Now we’re going to have a class to develop someone who wants to write for a wider, broader audience—for the mass market that films and television reach. Somebody who is going to write film criticism, do blogging, articles for magazines and journals.”
According to Basinger, the class will likely be very small, probably only 8 to 12 students that will be selected by Wasson based on an evaluation of the writing sample.
Basinger said she is grateful for the support of President Michael Roth and Greene in the realization of this project.
“It’s a delight to be able to offer this class,” she said.
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