about the prospect of teaching at the
prestigious university.
"I had a lot of years of teaching
experience and a lot of confidence,
because if you can teach Shakespeare
to soldiers, I guarantee you believe
you can teach U-M students," he says.
"[The irony is that] when I first
started out, the last people I wanted to
teach were [people] like me. And now
all those years later, here I am.
"I'd never taken a screenwriting
course, but I had years and years of
people teaching me one-on-one. And
I learned all this stuff — "the steps of
the dance" — from where you get the
idea to the [final] screenplay.
'And I knew one key thing, which
is that the key to writing is rewriting.
From the moment I came in, I was
envisioning a rewrite course."
Rewrites
What Burnstein hammers into his stu-
dents over and over is that writing a
screenplay is just the beginning. The
hard part is rewriting, tearing a script
apart and putting it back together
again.
The screenwriting program started
with just one course, in which stu-
dents wrote an entire screenplay in
one semester.
It has since evolved into a multilevel
discipline and now includes visiting
screenwriters, artists in residence who
teach semester-lung writing courses
and a well-stocked screenplay library
[see accompanying story).
On top of his rewarding work at U-
M, the past few years have been good
to Burnstein on the Hollywood front.
He started writing with Schiff, and
the pair has had four screenplays and
pitches optioned:
Their first collaboration, 1997's
well-received AWOL, tells the story of
a soldier in the Vietnam War who
sneaks home and then returns to the
Pacific.
They also collaborated on Genius,
which was bought by Paramount, and
Naked Shakespeare, which revisited
Burnstein's favorite subject.
But it's their latest script that's made
the biggest splash.
The Quarterback's Tale, which
Burnstein describes as My Favorite Year
meets the National Football League,
has its young public relations flack
protagonist joining an aging NFL
quarterback on his farewell season
tour, only to discover his gridiron idol
isn't quite the hero he thought he was.
Legally Blonde producer Marc Plan
SCRIPT on page 58
aft
isit the Thai Restaurant that blends
atmospheric elegance with culinar9
DRFAMS from page 55
rewrite class.
"And that's all it is out here,
writing and rewriting. That was a
very valuable lesson that people
out here don't know.
Featuring the bubble
rink
Ca
Learning The Secret
Screenwriter Daniel Shere has similar
feelings about the U-M program and
Burnstein's teaching style. The North
Farmington High School grad sold
the screenplay he wrote in Burnstein's
class soon after graduating.
He was one of the writers behind
the hit 1999 short film George Lucas
in Love and is currently working on a
movie script for cable TV's Comedy
Central.
"I definitely loved the class from
the first moment," Shere says. "I was
pretty much blown away because I
had been in creative writing classes
before, and I enjoyed it. But I had
never really believed that you could
teach that much about writing until
that class.
"It was just amazing to me, the pas-
sion Jim has for writing and for
teaching. It's like hitting the jackpot.
Craig Silverstein, a 1997 U-M
crraduate from West Bloomfield who
now lives in Los Angeles, is a super-
vising producer on USA Network's
The Dead Zone. He credits the U-M
program — and Burnstein -- with
giving him the tools and motivation
he needed to succeed in Hollywood.
"I thought all the classes were
good, but it was really Burnstein's
class that was the crown jewel,"
Silverstein says. "In Jim's class, it felt
like I started to learn secrets — he
taught the class so passionately. It
was inspiring.
"It wasn't just about the craft; he
talked about the life of a writer."
Burnstein couldn't be prouder of
the response from the U-M commu-
nity and Hollywood at large.
While he can't take all the respon-
sibility for Film and Video Studies'
increasing number of graduates
(from 50 students in the mid-1990s
to 247 this year), it's the screenwrit-
ing courses that are growing at the
fastest rate.
"We just keep adding courses,
because the demand is so great and
the talent is there," he says.
"The Gindin Series allows us to call
and bring in the most unbelievable
A-list talent to work with these kids.
'And now they're calling us." ❑
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