his work.
Joss embraced Wesleyan’s approach to film studies, which focused on theory rather than production. He wrote a paper on Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds
in which he identified four thematic elements: the Watcher, the Watched, Isolation, and the Role of the Viewer. He said of Tippi Hedren’s character, Melanie Daniels, “She has to give up her superficial life to survive,” and framed the horror she faces in existential terms: “Stop thinking of why the birds are attacking … they just are, that’s all that matters.” Basinger loved reading his work. “His papers seemed so natural, like they were improvisational,” she says. “And yet they were crafted to perfection, because the ideas that he had were delineated at a very precise level.”
However, his need to absorb film history couldn’t be quenched only by his time in the classroom, or even by Basinger’s extra screenings, which most Wesleyan film students attended. When spring came and his classmates would take advantage of the break from the long winter, Joss would be alone in the basement watching a double feature—and then he’d go home at 2 AM and watch whatever was on TV. He felt it was essential to watch films over and over again, taking time to dissect and truly understand what the filmmakers were trying to do. Anyone can learn where to point a camera, he said. But no one could truly be taught
how
. Before he could shoot, Joss felt it was more important to study the meaning of each move in a film—“where the simplicity is, where the complexity is.”
The film students ran and selected films for the campus movie theater. Joss’s choices were the westerns
The Bad and the Beautiful
(1952) and
The Furies
(1950); the film noir
Laura
(1944); and
The Scarlet Empress
(1934), which starred Marlene Dietrich as the German princess Sophia, who became the empress Catherine the Great. Basinger explained that her students felt so strongly about their film preferences that they’d sometimes come to blows, and that “while Joss is a very effective screenwriter, he is weak in the punching department.”
In his later years at Wesleyan, Joss became a teaching assistant. The first class he assisted with was Language and Film, with Joe Reed. It was an introductory course, with more than two hundred students, and Joss’s first TA lecture was on lighting in film scenes. Initially, things did not look good for the young man.
“I was terrified,” Joss remembers. “I was terrified until about thirty seconds after I got on stage, and then you couldn’t have pulled me off.” He was on a high from the quintessential point of teaching: “The best part was showing a clip while I was explaining something about lighting and hearing everybody laugh because they had figured something out because they had learned something.” For Joss, that was a feeling everyone should have.
Joss later became a TA for Basinger herself, and the two grew even closer. He helped select films for her film series and was allowed to grade papers and give lectures of his own. When he graded papers, Basinger took note of his succinct, pointed commentary. “When somebody didn’t get it, he’d nail them,” she says. “Never mean, but he could be very precise—one of his most distinct evaluations was quite simple: ‘This guy’s a puddle.’ And he was right; he said everything there was to say.” She was also impressed by his work in the classroom. “There was a melodious, meticulous perfection to his lectures,” she says. “He had a rhythm, and he had the ability to create the surprise little twist at the end.”
According to Basinger, Joss’s lecture on the infamous Joan Crawford vehicle
Johnny Guitar
(1954) was the best she’d heard. Joss discussed the gender politics in director Nicholas Ray’s view of the world and delved into which characters the audience identifies with at what time and why, who owns the space on screen, and, ultimately, whose movie it is and whom
Joss embraced Wesleyan’s approach to film studies, which focused on theory rather than production. He wrote a paper on Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds
in which he identified four thematic elements: the Watcher, the Watched, Isolation, and the Role of the Viewer. He said of Tippi Hedren’s character, Melanie Daniels, “She has to give up her superficial life to survive,” and framed the horror she faces in existential terms: “Stop thinking of why the birds are attacking … they just are, that’s all that matters.” Basinger loved reading his work. “His papers seemed so natural, like they were improvisational,” she says. “And yet they were crafted to perfection, because the ideas that he had were delineated at a very precise level.”
However, his need to absorb film history couldn’t be quenched only by his time in the classroom, or even by Basinger’s extra screenings, which most Wesleyan film students attended. When spring came and his classmates would take advantage of the break from the long winter, Joss would be alone in the basement watching a double feature—and then he’d go home at 2 AM and watch whatever was on TV. He felt it was essential to watch films over and over again, taking time to dissect and truly understand what the filmmakers were trying to do. Anyone can learn where to point a camera, he said. But no one could truly be taught
how
. Before he could shoot, Joss felt it was more important to study the meaning of each move in a film—“where the simplicity is, where the complexity is.”
The film students ran and selected films for the campus movie theater. Joss’s choices were the westerns
The Bad and the Beautiful
(1952) and
The Furies
(1950); the film noir
Laura
(1944); and
The Scarlet Empress
(1934), which starred Marlene Dietrich as the German princess Sophia, who became the empress Catherine the Great. Basinger explained that her students felt so strongly about their film preferences that they’d sometimes come to blows, and that “while Joss is a very effective screenwriter, he is weak in the punching department.”
In his later years at Wesleyan, Joss became a teaching assistant. The first class he assisted with was Language and Film, with Joe Reed. It was an introductory course, with more than two hundred students, and Joss’s first TA lecture was on lighting in film scenes. Initially, things did not look good for the young man.
“I was terrified,” Joss remembers. “I was terrified until about thirty seconds after I got on stage, and then you couldn’t have pulled me off.” He was on a high from the quintessential point of teaching: “The best part was showing a clip while I was explaining something about lighting and hearing everybody laugh because they had figured something out because they had learned something.” For Joss, that was a feeling everyone should have.
Joss later became a TA for Basinger herself, and the two grew even closer. He helped select films for her film series and was allowed to grade papers and give lectures of his own. When he graded papers, Basinger took note of his succinct, pointed commentary. “When somebody didn’t get it, he’d nail them,” she says. “Never mean, but he could be very precise—one of his most distinct evaluations was quite simple: ‘This guy’s a puddle.’ And he was right; he said everything there was to say.” She was also impressed by his work in the classroom. “There was a melodious, meticulous perfection to his lectures,” she says. “He had a rhythm, and he had the ability to create the surprise little twist at the end.”
According to Basinger, Joss’s lecture on the infamous Joan Crawford vehicle
Johnny Guitar
(1954) was the best she’d heard. Joss discussed the gender politics in director Nicholas Ray’s view of the world and delved into which characters the audience identifies with at what time and why, who owns the space on screen, and, ultimately, whose movie it is and whom
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