Letter from the Faculty Adviser

The Listening of Others

During these pandemic days, what do you miss the most? For me: I miss teaching in the classroom. I miss writing in coffee shops. I miss in-person book launches. I miss parties stuffed to the gills with family and friends, the music so loud it hurts my ears, the bodies and conversation so alive my heart bursts. I miss hugs. I miss pubs. I miss the subway car packed as I travel to and from work. No joke. I sincerely miss this. Maybe it’s just because I grew up on a farm, but I still get a thrill zipping underground on a train filled with strangers, a whole metropolis miraculously balanced right above our heads.

More than all of this, though, what I miss most is going to the movies. I miss sticky floors and fake-butter-drenched popcorn with watered-down pop. I miss packed houses on a blockbuster’s opening night, and I miss the theatre I share with a lone retiree as we catch an arthouse matinee. I miss the trailers with their promise of more to come before the show has even started. I miss that hush when the movie begins, the hush of our talking and our chatter, yes, but the hush of something inside us, too, the hush of our inner noise as we open ourselves up to listen, to truly attend.

I miss the way you can feel that—that listening, that opening up, not just your own but the listening of others. I miss the way you can feel all those gathered with you give themselves over to live with the lives the light rouses on the screen. I miss screaming with glee, driven face-to-face with a stranger by a horror movie’s jump scare. I miss laughing so hard at a comedy with my dad we can hardly breathe. I miss weeping beside a stranger, our arms pressing hard against one another’s on the armrest, the closest we can get without outright taking one another’s hand. I miss those times when we hear it all, or as much as is possible, and we are transformed.

What is gathered in this journal is this very listening. This is why I have dedicated my letter to reflecting so intimately on what I miss. Reading Screenwriters’ Perspectives, in the winter of 2021, has reminded me to cherish what we do have right now to sustain us until we can gather together again. We have works like this in which a collection of talented writers has listened deeply to movies—movies that inspired them, challenged them, troubled them, and edified them—and put in the work to eloquently share their listening with us. These articles offer critically and artfully imagined possibilities of these movies’ imagined possibilities. They help us see these films, and our world, anew.

In the spirit of this journal, then, and in the name of nurturing the togetherness we need right now, I would like you to do three things for me when you are done reading Screenwriters’ Perspectives. First, I would like you to share a line or an insight from this journal that struck you as you listened. Share it with a friend in conversation or with followers on social media. Maybe you can even reach out to the article’s author and let them know how you were struck and why. Second, I would like you to re-watch your favourite movie, listen close with all your sense and senses, and then write down what you heard. Maybe something about how and why this movie moves you, or how it works and why we should listen. Finally, I ask you to share what you have written. Nurture more listening with your listening.

Maybe, if it’s not too much trouble, when we’re all back in the world together and you see me at a coffee shop, or on the subway, or at a gathering of friends, you can even tell me about your favourite movie and what you heard. As I get caught up in everything I miss, I am grateful for the relief of every little imagined possibility, the hope stirred by these reminders of what we have and will have—not again, but anew.

Daniel Tysdal

Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Toronto Scarborough Faculty Adviser, Screenwriting at Victoria College