The First Director

I've been in film school for 1.5 years and finally I've seen my first director...a real director. I dropped by Jeremy Kagan's class tonight - he is touted as the top directing teacher at the school and I was sure he had to be overrated. Boy, was I wrong. This guy knew his shit backwards and forwards, about acting, camera, editing, film history, how film ties into the social fabric. It was truly ridiculous. Disgusting, really. Like watching Zidane play soccer, it almost makes you puke how good he is - this was the real deal. I've never seen or interacted with a real director before. Now I have.

Update: Oh no! I just linked up his IMDB page and it turns out he directed "Katherine" one of my least favorite examples of work I've been shown in film school. Good god. Our 507 teacher, Jerry Isenberg showed us some clips of this TV movie with Sissy Spacek, which was god-awful, Reaganist propaganda...it showed no understanding of the radical. It was just a truly bad piece of work in the mid-70s when all this amazing work was happening in cinema.

Regardless, you live and learn, I wouldn't want to be judged strictly on one single film...and he's directed a ton of stuff if you check out the link.

At USC there is a class of really great teachers and then all the rest. The rest range from being decent, nice folks, who are barely qualified to teach MFA students, but may be good colleagues one day - to completely inept, don't deserve to even be in the same room as the students. But there are gems: Jean Pierre, Eugene, this Kagan guy, I think Marsha Kinder, who is in the critical studies department, Bob Jones -- all older faculty, who seem to really have a ton to offer and who like to teach. I just need to find all of them and stick to classes they teach.