Then and Now: John Schimmel

Welcome to the second installment of our new series on TCR’s blog, Then and Now, a column in which writers reveal and dissect earlier literary attempts which have helped form their current work. This week, John Schimmel takes a look back at an unfinished screenplay from 2006:

By John Schimmel

EXT. STANFORD UNIVERSITY – LATE AFTERNOON 

ESTABLISHING – The glorious campus of one of the more interesting, forward-thinking institutions on the planet. Sprinklers water the ample lawns. 

EXT. STANFORD PHYSICS BUILDING – LATE AFTERNOON 

White, three stories, topped with Spanish tiles, wrapped in semi-Spanish arches. 

INT. PHYSICS BUILDING – JANE GLEIZE’S OFFICE – LATE AFTERNOON 

JANE GLEIZE (35), fit, focused, Stephen Hawking brain in a healthy female body, stands at her whiteboard. Clutches a black marker as she stares at neatly written if indecipherable equations. 

A knock on her door. No reaction. 

TCR Talks with Janet Batchler

By Billy Minshall

Janet Scott Batchler is the author (with her husband and writing partner, Lee Batchler) of Smoke and Mirrors, Batman Forever, Pompeii, and My Name Is Modesty. Most recently, they have written Jack and Dick, a behind-the-scenes look at the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election, set to go before the cameras in 2019 with Hyde Park Entertainment. She is a graduate of the prestigious Directing Workshop for Women at the American Film Institute and served on the Board of Directors of the Alliance of Women Directors from 2004 to 2010. Batchler is currently a screenwriting professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.

The Coachella Review talks with Batchler about writing, teaching, and the film business.