el‘
tJ 561-0 1
tia
of Nov i
really like to teach," he says.
and start shooting film," Peter
But most importantly, he actual-
Benedek says. "That's a very expen-
sive proposition, and there's no way , ly gets the joke. He understands
how it works out here [in
on God's earth in my lifetime that
Hollywood]. •
U-M is going to establish a film
"He understands what he needs
school that in any way shape or
to accomplish with people who
form can compete with USC, NYU
or UCLA, simply because of money know nothing about writing or
Hollywood to put them in a posi-
and location," he says.
"Robert Shave and I both came to tion where, if they're interested in
doing this as a career, he can help
a similar conclusion separately,
them prepare for that and put them
which was that U-M had a heritage
in
a position where it becomes a
involving excellent writing that
possibility."
came from the Hopwoods.
Burnstein and the rest of the Film
"The [best] approach was to take
and Video Studies program admin-
a position that U-M was going to
istrators completely buy into
become a place where the film
Benedek's
theory. And it has served
school was about writing.
them well.
"Most places don't even have stu-
dents write full-length screenplays,"
Getting The Joke
Burnstein says. "There's no school
Benedek believes that Burnstein is
in the country that on the produc-
the perfect person to coordinate the
screenwriting program. "Jim is actu- tionside is built around the writ-
ing.
ally a working writer. He seems to
"What you basically get at
Michigan is a graduate program at
the undergraduate level."
U-M grad and former Burnstein
student Josh Herman, a Farmington
Hills native, now attends graduate
school at the American Film
Institute in Los- Angeles, where he is
working toward a master's degree in
screenwriting.
He says he arrived at the school
far more prepared than most of his
classmates.
"I talk to the other people who
came to grad school and it's phe-
nomenal how little interaction they
had with their professors," the
Hillel Day_School of Metropolitan
Detroit graduate says.
"The best thing Jim taught me
was learning to -take criticism. He
made us criticize our own scripts
ourselves — no schools,have a
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Among the
lmmakers
Burnstein has
helped bring
to U-M are,
le ft to right,
Spike Lee
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Adam Herz
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Joe Stillman
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was Shakespeare," Burnstein recalls.
He took an experimental freshman
comp course taught by Russell Fraser,
chairman of the English department
and one of the world's top
Shakespearean scholars.
"It blew me away," says Burnstein. "I
didn't understand 10 words the guy
said — I just knew this was the most
brilliant stuff I'd ever been exposed to."
Burnstein also took several creative
writing classes on his way to a bache-
lor's degree in English, including a
course taught by Robert Hayden, who
went on to become the country's first
African-American poet laureate.
The first story Burnstein wrote in
that class was about attending Sunday
school, and Hayden liked it so much
he read it aloud.
"He said to me at the end of the
term, 'Did you ever think about being
a writer?' I said, 'Is that a job? Do you
get paid for that?' It had never dawned
on me. It was way beyond my think-
ing that you could actually make a liv-
ing at it," says Burnstein.
"But by the time I graduated, I
knew two things. I knew I loved
Shakespeare, and creative writing was
a hell of a lot of fun."
Early Successes
After dropping out of law school,
Burnstein returned to U-M and
earned a master's degree in English,
with an eye toward teaching.
"I had two goals," he says. "I wanted to
teach Shakespeare to [people] who would
never have [studied] it except For me.
And. I wanted to write my own stuff."
After finishing grad school,
Burnstein knocked around for a few
years, earning money by working in
advertising, journalism and starting a
Red Wings fantasy camp.
Then, in 1976, he began teaching
Shakespeare to soldiers at Selfridge Air
National Guard Base, north of Mt.
Clemens. His experiences there became
the basis of Renaissance Man. The film
tells of an unemployed Detroit adver-
tising man (Danny DeVito) who uses
Shakespeare's. Hamlet to teach "think-
ing skills" to eight hapless recruits at a
nearby military base.
But Burnstein had been writing plays,
teleplays and movie scripts for years
before Renaissance Man's 1994 release.
His first paying writing gig came
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jewish.com
12/27
2002
55