Fellow Meets His Match
My friend Pothead got booted from our experimental screenwriting class, which is unfortunate but sort of inevitable. For that class, she was my first reader, so I was pretty excited at the outset. The first reader is a concept that I admire in theory but not in practice, since I usually end up partnered with people whose writing I don’t care about and vice-versa. But since Pothead and I are friends, we mutually admire and care about one another’s work, so we actually put a lot of thought into the critiques, and for the first portion of the semester she helped me quite a bit.
Then she got booted, and I got fucked.
Another person I know is in this same class with me, Fellow. He was absent the day first readers were assigned, so, for lack of anybody else, we were partnered as a threesome. Since Pothead dropped, we’re back down to a twosome, which would be awesome, except for one thing: Fellow doesn’t like to do any actual work.
He respects and values my opinion; he just hates this class, loathes the assignments, and puts it off beyond the last minute. Consequently, I’ve read roughly four pages of work from him over the course of the semester, and two of them were a review of The Passion of the Christ he wrote for another class. All of this is fine with me: if he doesn’t write anything, I don’t have to read anything, and I don’t have to do a critique. It’s a “get out of jail free” card for the first reader system, and since, while I like and respect Fellow, I’m not necessarily entranced by his fiction. His review of The Passion was quite good, however.
Something else you need to know: I’m friends with Callie, the professor who teaches this class. She taught me last semester, and I really dug her style and criticism (which mostly involves comments like “Where’s the conflict?”, “When does this get funny?”, and my personal favorite, “???”), so I started bothering her until she decided to stop fighting it and now pretends like we’re friends.
Now, Callie hates Fellow. He doesn’t like her much, either, but she’s not a fan of people who don’t do the work and don’t read the assignments. And she’s especially not a fan of people who attempt to B.S. their way through the discussion of our reading assignments, seeing as it wastes everybody’s time.
The thing about Fellow, though, is that he’s really surprisingly good at B.S. He used to be an acting student, so he’s got that whole “articulate” thing, and he’s good at faking like he’s really sincere despite not having a clue what he’s talking about. In fact, he even had me fooled (except for one thing that made me suspect him, where he pointed out a random line from an assignment, read it, and said something like, “For some reason, this line really spoke to me” — that’s pretty much a giveaway that he didn’t actually read it) until he whispered to me once, “I did a pretty good job considering I don’t even own the textbook.”*
Unfortunately, he’s not good enough to fool Callie, who’s been teaching long enough to know all the tricks. One day after class, when I was fighting to keep Pothead in the class despite another absence, Callie asked me, “Could you tell Fellow not to participate in discussions when he hasn’t read the assignment?” I was sort of stunned into silence that she had him all figured out, but then I realized that she’s a lot smarter than I am, so obviously she would’ve figured it out. I smiled and told her I would, but I haven’t yet, and I probably won’t because I find it more amusing watching him try to bullshit while I’m looking at the exasperated look on Callie’s face.
But that’s clearly not enough for me to believe that she hates Fellow. The real key came the week after we had turned in our first treatments for a 10-page script. The treatments were short, but Fellow’s somehow managed to be completely, confusingly incoherent. I read it three times, but I had no idea what was going on. For our class discussion, we basically went around the room pitching our first readers’ treatment to the class. I made the “I’m not sure I understood this” disclaimer about 40 times as I stumbled through the pitch.
My summary went like this: it’s a story about a man who has lost everyone he’s ever loved — friends, family, his wife — and he finally is unable to take it, so he commits suicide.
Not surprisingly, I got it all wrong. Fellow seemed kinda pissed that I didn’t get it, but hey — he’s the one who didn’t make it clear. He explained to the class that it’s about a man who has visions of other people’s suffering, and he can’t take that anymore and ends up dying of a heart-attack.
After class, Callie approached me in the hall and said, “You did a good job trying to explain Fellow’s piece today.”
“Yeah,” I said, “sorry I screwed it all up. I really didn’t get it.”
“Neither did I,” she said.
“I read it, like, three times, and it totally confused me,” I continued.
“Me too,” she said and grinned like this was the funniest thing in the world.
But that grin said something more. It wasn’t that she found it funny that we both didn’t understand it after multiple readings — that grin told me that she thought Fellow was incompetent and arrogant, and he probably wouldn’t do better than a C in her class. She already had that determined, although that’s not to paint a horrible picture of her. From his behavior in class so far, that’s all he’d shown to her. And really, it’s sorta true. I wouldn’t call him “incompetent,” but he’s certainly prouder of his work than maybe he should be. If he spent as much time revising and clarifying as he did resting on his laurels, I’d be much happier with him.
But if he turned around suddenly, realized that his script was confusing to the point of incoherence, and really worked hard on rewriting, he’d probably end the class with an A. That’s not likely, though.
Why do I say that? Because he doesn’t get the work done. The week before spring break (the week that all this treatment confusion and Callie’s subsequent eye-mockery occurred), our first-draft scripts were due. I was hoping his fleshed-out script would be different (and clearer), but he had nothing. He said his computer told him he was giving the wrong password and locked him out, but once he got it figured out, he’d e-mail the script to me.
He didn’t e-mail it. Then, he didn’t show up for the third and final class I have with him, on Thursday. He didn’t e-mail it all through spring break. I was surprised by none of this.
Finally, Monday, we’re back in school. He apologized for not e-mailing the script, saying his grandmother had a heart-attack, so he spent two weeks in Georgia and didn’t have access to his computer. He promised he’d e-mail both the script and his feedback for my script on Monday night, so I could hopefully read it and give feedback for Tuesday.
He didn’t e-mail it. I was shocked.
Then, he didn’t show up for class on Tuesday. “Stunned” is the only word I can think of to describe my demeanor.
And he hasn’t e-mailed it since, not surprisingly.
It’s not that I really yearn for his feedback, or to give him feedback. Sure, I’m interested in what he thinks about it (he has a lot of strong, but overall valid, opinions about everything, so I doubt he’d hold back), but I won’t live or die if I don’t ever hear what he has to say. And, yeah, to some degree I’m interested in reading his script, although it won’t exactly make my day if I think it’s crap and have to say as much in my feedback.
My beef, mostly, is that he knows that I don’t really give a shit, and he knows that I know that he doesn’t give a shit, either. So I wish he’d just be straight with me and admit that he said “Fuck it” to this class long ago and probably is going to half-ass every assignment from now on.
During the break yesterday, Callie asked, “Have you seen Fellow at all?”
“I saw him yesterday,” I said.
“Did you read his script?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “He said he’d e-mail it to me, but he never did. Why, did he turn one in to you?”
“No,” she said, with that “oh-man-is-he-ever-fucked” grin spreading across her sunburned face.
“I don’t believe it,” I said sarcastically, and she was very amused by that comment.
“Your friend Pothead wrote a great treatment, and she had a lot of interesting things to say,” Callie said. “I wish she was still in class.”
“Yeah, me too,” I replied. “Hey, you could always fudge her attendance and let her come back, if she promises never to miss again.”
“Didn’t she already promise not to miss again?” she asked.
“Well, yeah,” I said, “but there are circumstances —”
“You’re putting your ass on the line for her again, and you’re going to get screwed,” Callie said bluntly. “I’m not going to do the same thing.”
Touché.
Sigh…I miss Pothead.**
*That annoyed me because, the second week of class, he asked to borrow the textbook from me so he could read the assignment. He said if I gave it to him Monday, he’d give it back in class on Tuesday. Then he didn’t show up for the rest of the week, so I couldn’t read the assignment for the following week. And then he didn’t read either assignment. [Back]
**Yay for melodramatics! Don’t worry, Pothead’s alive and well and full of vim and vinegar and THC. She just can’t really handle full-time school right now, for reasons that are private. [Back]
Posted by Stan on April 7, 2004 2:18 PM | Permalink | School Rants | Digg It
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