Least Favorite Recent Developments

Save for the technology, little about film schools has changed since 1929. They are trade schools playacting as art schools and moonlighting in remedial business courses. Yet the market for these programs has grown insatiable. For a previous generation, going to film school was an uncommon decision that required real grit and determination.

Today, while film schools remain seductive, they have dropped the grit and doubled down on the glamour; their sharp edges have been carefully filed off and their values have been kid-tested, mother-approved. The still prevailing myth of the film-student-as-rebel obscures the banal truth: These are highly profitable institutions, buttressed by a wildly irresponsible student loan system preying on thousands of starry-eyed individuals all vying for “their shot.”

—I would write a pithy response about the Creative Writing B.A. Military Industrial Complex, but I never learned to read!