Notes from Overboard: Roll Model

By Tom DiCillo
URL: http://www.moviemaker.com/blog/item/tom_dicillo_notes_from_overboard_nyu_film_school_20090516/
When I was 23 I moved to NYC and started classes at NYU Film School. As the months went by I kept waiting for the day when I would actually learn something. I knew the art of directing could not be taught. I knew the faculty was doing their best to provide the basic fundamentals of filmmaking but still, something was missing.

Some of it had to do with my classmates. They were mostly guys, all with goatees and backwards baseball caps. One freaked me out by coming to class one day with his hat so far backwards it was actually forwards. The cutting-edge spirit was reflected in their films, which were strictly divided between stories of film students trying to get pizza delivered to their dorm rooms or lovesick, guitar-playing mimes in Washington Square Park.

After three years I walked out with an MA in Directing and the profound sense that I had no idea what I was doing.