PRESQUE ISLE – Have you ever wanted to write your own screenplay or get involved in making a movie?
The University of Maine at Presque Isle is giving students and community members the chance to do both this fall when it offers the course “Screenwriting and the Filmmaker’s Life,” taught by acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Cathie Pelletier.
The 10-week course, to be offered on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:25-5:55 p.m. starting Sept. 3, will help to launch the University’s new Film Studies Program.
Pelletier, an Allagash native who has written nine novels and had two of them turned into movies, will connect her students with several professionals in the movie industry. Her students will talk by phone with: producer/director George Stevens, Jr. (“Separate But Equal”); producer Caldecott Chubb (“Hoffa”); actress Lolita Davidovich (“Blaze”); writer/director Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham”); Academy Award-winning production designer Paul Sylbert (“Heaven Can Wait” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”); producer Mitchell Galin (“The Stand”); composer Janis Ian (“The Bell Jar”); and screenwriter and teacher Will Akers (“Your Screenplay Sucks: 100 Ways to Make It Great”). Pelletier will bring to campus for a face-to-face visit with her class producer Gabrielle Tana, whose new film “The Duchess,” starring Ralph Fiennes and Keira Knightley, will be released next month.
Students also will read screenplays that have been made into successful films; study the fundamentals of screenwriting—character and plot development, dialogue and conflict; learn the basic three-act structure of screenplays—the setup, the main conflict, and the resolution; and begin work on an original screenplay with the hope of polishing a first act and outlining a second and third act by the end of the course.
As the culminating experience of the class, students will create a short film based on an original screenplay with the help of Zoran Popovic, the cinematographer for the 2008 film “War, Inc.,” which stars John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Hilary Duff and Ben Kingsley. The finished film created by Pelletier’s class will receive a public screening in Wieden Auditorium at the end of the semester.
“The class goal: That students never watch a film again without appreciating and understanding all the components that have gone into its making,” she said.
Last spring, Pelletier served as the University’s writer-in-residence and taught two eight-week courses on writing and novels. Because she is turning her attention more fully to film and the art of movie-making – she has spent the past few years writing original screenplays and is currently creating a Web site that caters to film directors and producers – Pelletier and University officials felt it was a perfect fit for her to return and offer one of the first classes offered this semester in connection with the University’s new Film Studies Program.
“Cathie’s other film projects dovetailed perfectly with our efforts to expand our English Program and create Film Studies offerings for our students,” President Don Zillman said. “We are thrilled Cathie is returning to Maine and that she can help us to present the first of some exciting new courses here at the University of Maine at Presque Isle.”
The courses within the Film Studies Program were developed by English and art faculty members to provide students the opportunity to study film as an aesthetic art form as well as its commercial, educational and political implications. Professors Richard Zuras and Clifton Boudman will be directing the Film Studies Program under the English and art degrees.
In delivering this class, Pelletier will apply the experience she has gained over the course of more than 20 years of writing. She wrote her first novel, “The Funeral Makers,” in 1986. She made international literary news in 1998 when Doubleday paid her a $1 million advance for her novel “Candles on Bay Street,” written under her pen name, K.C. McKinnon. “Candles” eventually became a Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions film starring Alicia Silverstone.
Her other McKinnon novel, “Dancing at the Harvest Moon,” has been translated into 18 languages and, in 2002, became a CBS movie starring Jacqueline Bisset and Valerie Harper. Her latest novel, “Running the Bulls,” won the 2006 Paterson Prize for Fiction. Coming full circle, Pelletier has adapted her first novel into a screenplay for director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”; Mr. and “Mrs. Smith”). She is currently working with actor Donald Sutherland who has optioned her original screenplay, “The Luna Christmas,” with hopes to begin filming in January.
In other forays into the publishing world, Pelletier has written “The Christmas Note” with Grand Ole Opry star Skeeter Davis and “The Ragin’ Cajun” with fiddler Doug Kershaw. She has acted as a literary agent for country singer Tanya Tucker; restaurateur Dan Tana; actors Lolita Davidovich, James Woods, Dixie Carter and Hal Holbrook; and artist Don Bachardy, whose work encapsulates his 30 years with Christopher Isherwood.
For information about Cathie Pelletier, visit her Web site at www.kcmckinnon.com. To register for her class, contact the Office of Student Records at 768-9607 or e-mail ingrid.allen@umpi.edu.
Photo Courtesy of UMPI
Officers of the Student Education Association of Maine pose with the four awards SEAM received during the National Education Association-Student Program’s Summer Leadership Conference, including the Outstanding Local Advisor Award given to University of Maine at Presque Isle Education instructor Wendy Ross. Officers are, from left: Jessica Crouse, UMaine SEAM Chapter president; Iris Guimond, Saint Joseph’s College SEAM Chapter co-president; Amber Blackstone, UMPI SEAM Chapter president, holding Ross’s award; and Jaime Dorion, statewide SEAM president.