Todd Drezner, an English major from the class of 1994, delivers the convocation address tomorrow. He will be discussing his documentary film Loving Lampposts: Living Autistic and his own experience as a father of a child with autism. He will also participate in a career panel with Erika Drezner, and Erika Leemann Price–also ’94 alumni (4 pm, Laird 212). Here is a brief interview of Todd conducted over email by Miscellany co-editor, Isaac Werner.
Q. Why did you become an English major? What skills have you gained from studying literature? How have those skills influenced your career in film?
I wish I could share with you a grand strategy that began with my choosing an English major and led to a successful life and career. But it really wasn’t like that. Rather, I had always enjoyed reading and writing, and I enjoyed it at Carleton. The major had some connections to film, which I was also interested in. And I was fairly good at the skills required by English classes. And finally, many of my friends also chose to be English majors. It just seemed a natural thing to do.
Happily, though, the skills that I learned as an English major have been essential to me since then. Most obviously, making documentary films involves constant writing. I have to write to potential film subjects, explain my goals, and persuade them to appear in my films. I write grant proposals in order to raise money. I write publicity material to promote my films. I write a lot.
Less obviously, other skills that I learned as an English major are also useful to me. Analyzing literature is at least partly about understanding form and structure. It’s about looking at a text, considering the culture it comes out of, thinking about the other texts that are like it, and synthesizing all of that to begin to understand its meaning. And if you consider the various pieces of footage that could go into a film as “texts,” then the task of the documentary filmmaker is to synthesize them into a coherent whole. I don’t think there’s much better preparation for that than being an English major.
Q. What is your most memorable moment in an English class?
The memory that comes to mind now is actually from my comps group. Those of us who were writing an essay met with each other and a comps advisor to talk about the process. I was in a group with Tim Raylor, which was at first meeting two days a week for 90 minutes, but which was planning to meet less regularly as the term progressed. Tim asked us if we had developed a schedule for when we would write. I said that I was planning to write during the time when our group would have met but would not now be meeting. I meant that that time would be a starting time; not that it would be the only time. Tim didn’t realize that, though, and he very nicely suggested that if I wanted to write a good essay, I might need to spend more than 90 minutes twice a week on it. Needless to say, I took his advice.
Q. What is one piece of advice you wish you would’ve received after graduating?
I guess the one thing that might be helpful to hear is, “You have time.” I went to film school immediately after graduating from Carleton, and it worked out well — I found a job at a company where I still work making corporate training videos, and where I can take time off to work on documentaries. I don’t wish that I had wound up somewhere else. Nevertheless, it strikes me as a good idea to take a little time after 18 years of schooling to take a breather and really think about what you want to do next. I don’t know if I would have done anything differently had I done that, but I think it might have been a useful exercise.
Q. If you could have one Carleton related “do-over,” what would it be?
Well, it would have been nice if my intramural basketball team had won a game. Beyond that, I can imagine going to Carleton again and devising some sort of academic program that is perfectly tailored to my current interests. In addition to English, it would involve film, American studies, history, political science, and disability studies. There’s a lot I’ve become interested in through my own experiences, through making documentaries, and just by being a relatively engaged American citizen in a big city. It would be great to bring the rigor of a Carleton education to all of those things. But one of the ironies of college, you may find, is that it ends just at the time of your life when you start figuring out how to most benefit from it.