An unfortunate law
Neal Gabler’s essay on “Puttnam’s Law” [“The iron law that’s choking creativity,” June 3] is one of the most penetrating pieces I’ve read all year. I was an MFA student in film production at UCLA when David Puttnam was placed in charge of production at Columbia. I was thrilled, encouraged to see that a studio was brave enough to welcome a change-maker. But in the end, as Gabler points out, Hollywood wasn’t ready for what it deemed an outlier. By then, I realized that the only chance one could express an independent voice or vision was by joining forces with other outliers. Luckily, I found support at Film Arts Foundation and New Day Films, the still strong distribution cooperative where one can find numerous examples of daring thinking.
But what makes Gabler’s essay most provocative is that it reaches beyond the limited realm of the film world. In September 2009, our family (including my UCLA professor husband, 12-year-old daughter and me) became education outliers. Knowing what we knew about the flawed thinking behind standardized testing, hours of homework and non-nurturing schools, we decided to “skip middle school” and home school our daughter for two years. As Gabler warns about peer pressure, some ostracized us. In those moments, I was glad for the practice I had as a filmmaking outlier, or should I say a Tocquevillian?
Pamela Beere Briggs
Los Angeles