| Glenn Seaborg |
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Ed Brokaw
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what is it that makes a really great teacher?
an incredible knowledge of the subject? an eagerness to share? an effective communication style? i think a really great teacher has all this and the ability to believe in his students ed brokaw taught theater arts 154a, b & c “motion picture editing” at the ucla film school the first thing he told you was that these courses were incorrectly titled in the catalog that what he actually taught was “filmmaking— from the point of view of the editor” during the three courses ed spewed out countless bits of improbable industry minutiae a few years later i realized everything he’d ever described was actually how things worked and for some strange reason he always seemed so supportive of me he always seemed to think that i was so much smarter than i was sure i was i suspect he supported a great many students in this way |
still it was the most amazing thing he’d be lecturing about some new topic then gesture to me and say “you know what i mean” in addition to ed’s relentlessly illuminating lectures you spent countless days and nights in a tiny room, a closet on the second floor of the film school cutting some editing project i’d worked long and hard and put together a pretty cool cut the day i screened the thing was maybe the most gratifying day of my life as the lights came up on my cheering colleagues ed rolled down the aisle to the podium his normally rosy santa claus cheeks enhanced by his niacin vitamins perhaps and perhaps by the project as well ed was grinning from ear to ear his critique of the project consisted simply of the effervescent statement: “no doubt about it— movies are fun!” ed brokaw believed in me long before i had the nerve to do so myself |
| Film Professor |
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19 January 99
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