Ann Cassin

In the 1950s I enjoyed the British Empire, mainly India, the Roman Empire, the American West, South, City and Country and anything with Stewart Granger at a movie house every Saturday afternoon for years. After I graduated from LSU, I worked at Science Service as a science writer and attended films with two other writers who were devoted to finding the worst movies in DC and experienced sheer terror with them on many nights. Then I joined the Peace Corps and went as volunteer to Thailand where I set up a film program in my town, showing American films on a sheet that was hung between two trees and had a two -way audience at night on the lawn. When I returned to New York, I worked at the American Museum of Natural History where my chores included proposing Museum exhibits that worked well for television programs and taking photographers to behind the scenes areas suitable for interesting Museum photos. At this time, I also took a course at Columbia U in film-making, a course in which everyone had to write, shoot and edit a short sound film. My film, “Seven Beers with the Wrong Woman,” (the song was the soundtrack too) was filmed in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art, and my friends acted out a man who was trying pick up girls there. It was well received by the class, particularly because I had created many “long shots” which were favored by the instructor. Then I had a long, dry period in which I went to graduate school in anthropology at Stony Brook University, did fieldwork in Iceland for three years, and got a postdoc in public health at UC Berkeley. Then I wrote a 500-page novel about Iceland. It got completely out of hand, so I decided I had to write a screenplay with this material to get the plot in order. I did write a screenplay and I rewrote the novel. Now I am rewriting the screenplay with the excellent suggestions I have gotten in two contests.