Professor of English Jim Shepard has always been interested in movies. So much so that he and Professor of English John Kleiner both came out of retirement to revive “Hollywood Film,” their joint course on the medium this semester.
“I grew up loving movies — I was the first one in my family to go to college, and there weren’t a lot of books in my house, so I saw a lot of movies as a little kid,” Shepard told the Record. “I would watch them on television, and that became kind of a storehouse of information for me. So when I became a fiction writer, I realized that immersing myself in movies was a really nice way of using a different part of my brain altogether.”
Shepard started teaching English at the College in 1983, and one year later, he took over a course called “Introduction to Film,” the predecessor for today’s “Hollywood Film.” When Shepard first taught the class, it focused mostly on non-American films, but eventually he shifted its content and altered the course’s name to reflect the change.
“As the years went by, we did more and more American movies because the prejudice against American movies more or less dissipated, American movies got better and better, and, of course, students responded more to American movies,” Shepard said.
When Kleiner first joined Shepard to co-teach the course in 2006, they decided to rename it “Hollywood Film” and focus the course more on the set of practices that defined Hollywood — rather than world — cinema. “Of course, we want a genre spread, but we also don’t just want to cover genres,” Shepard said. “We’re interested, also, in the way in which movies affect other movies in perpetuity.”
“We might, for example, teach The Godfather — because anyone teaching Hollywood film might want to teach one of the most influential and well thought-out Hollywood movies of all time,” Shepard continued. “But we also teach Goodfellas because it’s a sort of a wonderful renovation of The Godfather.”
The 60-person lecture is unique in its dual-professor approach: Kleiner and Shepard sometimes teach the course in tandem — lecturing together — and other times they switch off. “Really, the big advantage of it is to see somebody else’s mind in operation,” Shepard said.
“Not only are we hearing their very well put together takes on all of these movies, but we’re also just watching them interact and laugh at each other and laugh with each other,” said Sasha Tucker ’25, a student in the course.
“They are kind of in implicit competition with each other, and sort of switch off — one-upping the other and making fun of each other, and that is just entertaining,” added Sasha Synder ’25, another student in the course.
Each week, students in the course are assigned a movie, which they can watch on Sunday night at Images Cinema for free. “I think it’s important to see film as it was meant to be seen, as opposed to on a tiny screen,” said Charlie Nicholas ’25, another student in the course. “There’s this great David Lynch thing where he talks about watching movies on iPhones, and he, like, cusses you out for trying to do that and telling yourself that if you’ve seen the movie, you haven’t.”
“It is so special to be able to see classics like The Godfather and Casablanca on the big screen as they were when they were released,” Becky Walker ’27 said. “It’s so fun to see everyone embrace movie watching as a communal activity, bringing new friends and visitors every Sunday.”
“With watching the movies in a big group, audience reactions become a data point — the reactions of the audience become a part of the experience and an analyzable thing,” Ruby Lawrence ’25, another student in the course, said about her weekly experience at Images.
While students agreed on the value of viewing the movies at the theater together, they all disagreed on which film was the best of the bunch: Casablanca, Goodfellas, and The Godfather were all enthusiastically offered as answers.
Despite its long history at the College, the future of “Hollywood Film” is uncertain, as Kleiner and Shepard will both return to retirement after this semester.
“It feels like a special treat that Ruby and I got to sneak this into our English careers before they left and before we leave,” Snyder said.
Editor’s note: Emily Zas and Bea Larzul, both students in the “Hollywood Film” course and members of the Record editorial board, were not involved in the writing or editing of this article.
