Linda Who ?

So, we had just gotten back to Toronto. We now had amassed 6 hours of tape. The doc was beginning to take shape. I’m famous for irritating people with my metaphors, but I’d like to call this the “moment of conception”. We had found our “egg” and we were in phase one of making our “baby” ; but our cell phones bills were high and our pockets were empty. We needed help. (and I continue to need “help” for my over/misuse of quotation marks).

The next interview we were excited for was with Linda Schyler. Many of you might say “Linda, who?”. Linda was the creator of the original Degrassi Junior High.  As the story goes, Aaron Spelling was interested in buying it and revamping it to take place in a school in Los Angeles, but Linda wasn’t interested in glamorizing high school, instead wanting to accurately reflect a high schooler’s life. (can you see the tie in to Hughes?). Spelling ended up making his own series set in high school that never really took off , 90210…

Another tie into our doc, is that Kevin Smith (who gave us an awesome interview) is a gigantic fan of the original series and when it was brought back with a new class a few years ago (and a huge hit), they did a MOW with Kevin and he has since returned to direct a few episodes.

Unfortunately, Linda’s interview didn’t make the final cut, but she had amazing things to say about stories for teenagers, Kevin Smith and of course, John Hughes. And now, through this blog, you can watch it here . * You’ll see that I was still figuring out the aesthetic of how the key interviews were shot. It was after this shoot I realized that how I was shooting wasn’t working and I then changed my approach to have them framed a certain way and ON A TRIPOD.  My bad. Lesson learned. Best film school ever.