Remembering Steven Bach: Deadlines

I don’t ever remember getting a syllabus from Steven Bach. I’m sure I did, I just don’t recall one, not in the traditional sense.

I do remember getting the schedule in “Advanced Screenwriting,” which showed us having plenty of time in the four months in that term to write our movie. And then I remember being two months in and hardly having twenty pages and feeling doomed, and being three months in and being absolutely paranoid that every single other person in class was farther along. Then being three weeks from the deadline and not sleeping any more, and knowing there was no way in hell the script was getting finished with all the other shit that had to be done by finals. And then getting done a week ahead of time, and feeling like a burden’s been lifted, and all that stands between turning the damn thing in early and being free of those crushing chest pains was Steven looking at you just as you were about to hand over the 120 pages you crippled your ink cartridge to print out, and smiling, and asking you if you’re sure you don’t want to give it one more once over, sweat out just a little bit more before you hand it in.

I’m glad I got to do that with him more than once.