Every conference has its pitches. As a professor you’ve got an elevator pitch for your awesome book, or your brilliant research project, or — worse yet — for your brilliant self. Ugh.
At the Austin Film Festival (which will obviously be this week’s topic du jour) there was a pitch contest, where people got up on stage and pitched their movie ideas to an entire bar full of people. I’m sorry, those still in the Tower, but the pitch for a movie featuring Robert Johnson’s ghost was a helluva lot more exciting than any academic tome on the history of the blues. And of course, if it got made, it would probably inspire a lot more interest.
When I claimed I was going to pitch an FX-style-show about professors I was only half kidding. It’s true that academic life is often fucked up enough for FX, or at least dramatic enough for TNT. And now Educlaytion has given me great idea — let’s crowdsource this thing!
I know I’m not the only one with some rage to sublimate. Let it out — just like the Burn Book in Mean Girls. Think of your sleaziest and most un-inspirational stories, the people who have acted horrible to you for stakes so low, we’re talking the zillionth decimal place. The students with the worst motives you can think of and…well, you get the picture. Then give it a thin veneer of fiction to prevent anyone from suing you. (By the way, I learned that this was why Everybody Loves Raymond was so good, because it was the sum total of everyone’s real-life stories.)
So c’mon, throw your hat in the ring. We need names, plotlines, dialogue, whatever — and a name for our show, especially, since I’ll be the first to admit Professors On the Edge sucks pretty hard — too soap-y, not scary enough. On the heels of PostAcademic’s post, we’ll even let people suggest actors (a big no-no in the world of scriptwriting). And this should be obvious, but please, let’s get thinking outside the Stand and Deliver box on this one.
Count Post Academic on board here, Worst Prof! Our grad school friends always thought that our dept drama would make for a TV melodrama, though maybe more WB or ’90s Fox than FX. When you first mentioned FX, I was thinking something really f***ed up, like “The Shield” x academia. But now I’m imagining something along the lines of “Damages”…
I wouldn’t be surprised at all surprised if a dead dog made its way into the storyline. But I think you could go either way!
I tried to purge a few memories on paper a while ago … I’ll see if I can dig them up and send you notes.
Whatever title you choose, try to wedge “deconstruction” in there somewhere!
Hmm, I’m not sure “deconstruction” would go over in Iowa. But maybe you should do NaNoWriMo with the notes?
I’m all for Professor’s on the Edge (or some other equiv.). I love the idea!
Some of the characters in my grad department really were/are the most extreme personalities I’ve ever met. I actually started a file a couple years ago writing up all the different personalities. The interactions of these whacky people would make for a pretty crazy show, and certainly made for a surreal grad school experience.
I found myself asking, multiple times, “do I really want to end up like so and so?” The answer was almost always, NO!!!
See — every tormented academic has notes, you should totally write that roman à clef! I’m not classy enough for that genre myself…and I too have a list of “anti-examples” in my head.
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While this is a little off-topic, a friend just posted this little video cartoon on facebook about pursuing graduate education in the Humanities that has all of my professor/grad school friends laughing (and sort of crying on the inside): http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7451115/
Yes, I posted this on the Facebook page, and it’s totally going viral in the disgruntled PhD community!
Obviously, the show should be called Academentia. I know I’m late to the party, but I felt it had to be said.
Nice! You win, and not just by default. I really think you’ve captured that FX ethos. If you’re ever in Austin we should write the pilot.
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