Alumnus F. X. Feeney recalls a screenwriting class "like no other"

January, 2013
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A course in Screenwriting like no other. Sandy Mackendrick’s Master Class

By F.X. Feeney

Imagine a well-lit, double-size classroom in the bowels of a still fairly new school building. The year is 1974. The place: the California Institute of the Arts, then a boxy labyrinth on a bare lunar hillside. “The sub-level,” a maze of hallways where daylight never reaches, is home at all hours to insomniac film students.

It is in here that the coming semester— January to May—will house a demanding new course: the Writer-Director’s Workshop. Four hours per class, twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. We were to arrive at 10, break for lunch at roughly 12:30, then return for another 90 minutes of intensive discussion, ending approximately three p.m.