Oscar, not grants, matter to visiting prof

Marc Lapadula's short film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Marc Lapadula is a rare find among University faculty members concerned with obtaining research grants and prestigious awards. Unlike his colleagues, the visiting professor's aspirations lie in film festivals and Hollywood "options." Now in his 10th year teaching Penn's only course on screenwriting, Lapadula, 37, has enjoyed an eventful term. Last month, he traveled to the Sundance Film Festival to see a film he produced featured in the short-film category. "Sundance was a smorgasbord of cinematic talent," Lapadula said. "I saw a lot of films. Some I was allergic to, but some I wanted a second helping of." The Park City, Utah, festival, which was founded by Robert Redford in 1981 and has become increasingly popular every year, "opened up doors" for the director and his former student David Langlitz, Lapadula said. Langlitz, 44, first chair trombone of the New York Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, said he met many interested agents and distributors from Los Angeles and Europe at Sundance. He added that Lapadula's seminar, which he took at the New School in New York City, enhanced his interest in screenwriting. Langlitz and Lapadula's film, Angel Passing, a 28-minute story of a once-famous pianist who attempts to gain forgiveness from a woman he has wronged, stars Hume Cronyn and Theresa Wright, who starred together in Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt. Academy Award winner Jessica Tandy, Cronyn's wife, was slated to play Wright's role but passed away before shooting was finished. Although longer feature films compete in several categories at the festival, short films are only eligible for an audience appreciation award, which the film did not win. Langlitz praised the producing ability of his former professor. "Marc's guidance and usefulness as a resource has been so valuable," Langlitz said. "His greatest strength lies in his ability to communicate with each student on his or her level. He will never tell a student to conform to his style." Several of Lapadula's students agreed that his teaching is engaging and constructive. "He just draws you in," said Creighten Rothenberger, who took Lapadula's seminar at Penn two years ago. "He explains everything about the business, from contracts and strategies to the all-important structure of the screenplay." A 1983 College graduate, Lapadula -- who said he was influenced by such directors as Stanley Kubrick and Hitchcock -- received a master's degree from the University of East Anglia in England and his master's degree in fine arts from the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. While Lapadula calls Washington, D.C., home, he currently teaches screenwriting and other theatrical classes across the Northeast, traveling from Penn to Yale and Johns Hopkins University. He has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution and has been a faculty member of Columbia, American, Fordham and Hofstra universities and the University of Iowa. Lapadula said that he does not regret devoting much of his time to teaching, rather than writing screenplays full-time. "My teaching experiences have allowed me to meet many people in different cities as well as compel students to see and write movies as they should be, as an art form," he said. Lapadula added that his vision of a good teacher was similar to that of a poet. "It becomes poetry to talk about theater and film," he said. "Students are moved if they are engaged and the presentation is powerful. That's what I try to do." But Lapadula hasn't completely traded in his creativity for office hours and grades. He has also written five full-length screenplays -- one, entitled Night Bloom, is awaiting production -- and more than 20 stage plays, which have been performed many times in the United States and England.

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