Page 14 of Director's Cut

It’s definitely more of a “feeling good in my Zara suit” than anything about my teaching, but I’m actually optimistic going in to meet with Maeve before the second week of class. Thirty minutes. There’s also a certain change in the air as I enter her office. Unlike Ty, I have no interest in knocking. I’d imagine it’s illegal to be touching yourself in your office in a school anyway.

“Morning, Maeve,” I say, sliding on my best pleasant-but-not-too-eager smile.

She’s got a blouse-skirt getup today. Just a button lower than I was expecting, but the tightening in my gut isn’t going to distract me. And—fuck you, Charlie—high heels despite her being about my height. She keeps her expression neutral, hands folded together on the desk between us, even as she gives me a once-over. My heartbeat picks up.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” she asks.

I pull a syllabus still sitting on her desk over to the space between us. She watches my hands as I move. “I don’t understand why we switched The Sound of Music for West Side Story, and I’d love it if we could actually go down the list to explain the changes…”

It’s like I’m acting. A little distance, hold on to the core emotion the character is feeling. This is my class. Hell, even if it’s our class, I’m not going to be treated like a first-year grad student because I haven’t been in this grind as long as she has. I wrote a fucking dissertation on twentieth-century music and pop culture. I’m here to impart my expertise to these students, and no way in hell is she going to stand in my way.

Maeve folds her fingers tighter. She has these really delicate hands: slim fingers, nails that come to a perfect stop before they reach her skin, which looks soft—like she moisturizes often. “I figured we were introducing cult classics and specifically working with stage adaptations. West Side Story would be more familiar.”

“They’re not necessarily adaptations.” I point to a spot on the syllabus. “You let me keep Rocketman.”

“I think it serves a different purpose and expands on the jukebox musical.”

I scan the list again. “Okay, then why have two movies dealing with Oscar bait? I put Tenacious D there on purpose.”

“You wanted to show a success and a failure, right? Les Mis wasn’t an Oscar darling, but La La Land was. And Tenacious D is barely worthy of being called a movie.”

“It’s an actual cult classic of the modern age. Do you think Rocky Horror has any value as a film? Of course not. But I’d rather talk about a complete flop that has music that’s endured enough to still be on tour. It’s a different conversation than establishing two musicals that were made for the Oscars. I live and breathe the Oscars; it’s really not that profound. We can study Les Mis, and I can show clips of La La Land to show a contrast in one class.”

Maeve takes a deep breath. Her hands unclasp, just enough to lightly slap the wood. “Look, you can combine the two into one Oscars-bait lecture. That’s fine. But I refuse to be a part of a class that shows a film that has an entire scene of Jack Black getting an erection. We can show a bad movie if it’s at least trying to be a good movie.”

I have to stop, even though I have a response to that one on my lips. Maeve Arko, whose dissertation—which I have now read—was about analyzing voyeuristic violence versus liberation as violence in early nineties American art house queer film, actually watched Tenacious D. It sparks something inside me. “You really saw Tenacious D?”

She looks away a moment, blinking rapidly. “I’m not putting it on in my class.”

So much for Maeve having an open mind about the movie selection. “I need one ridiculously bad film to work with.”

“Isn’t Mamma Mia! bad enough?”

I have to win something on this syllabus. Even if she’s right about Tenacious D. “Cats. The one from 2019. I want that on the syllabus instead of In the Heights.” I pause. “That or Dear Evan Hansen.”

Maeve looks up at me like she’s gone through a lifetime of not experiencing religious blasphemy—until now. “People pay money to attend this school.”

Five minutes until class starts.

“Look, Cats would provide a ton of material for the students to analyze for final papers. I want them to have a wide range of different topics and angles to talk about. If we just do classic adaptations or relatively okay adaptations or Oscar-winning adaptations, the papers are all going to come out the same. We’re trying to pick unconventional movies so they can pick different things out. In the Heights was great, but it didn’t do anything new filmmaking-wise. Cats tried to fucking take a movie that was only going to be good as an animated film and make it live action to bring in bucks from stars’ faces only for it to go completely and utterly wrong. Even Dear Evan Hansen showcases the Icarian results of hoping an out-of-context Tony performance will trump the needs of casting in film. There’s so much to dig into with both of them, and the students will be more engaged.”

For a moment, Maeve is silent. Her hands have retracted to her lap, out of my view. Her jaw is tensed, but there’s a certain unsureness in her eyes. She’s still refusing to make eye contact with me. And she’s almost tucked in, making me realize I’ve leaned forward while talking. I scoot backward, my back pressing against the wood of the chair. She reaches out to turn the syllabus to her, a pinch of a frown on her lips.

“We’re not doing Cats. Do you want to switch out Mamma Mia! for Rock of Ages to work with the rock musical?”

It’s been so long since I’ve had this searing burn of anger inside of me. It feels like an old feeling dug up from somewhere in the past, when Steven was representing me and explained really obvious themes in movies I was doing when I mentioned a role was difficult to crack. I’m being spoken to like I’m a child instead of an actual published scholar of the genre and someone with years of practical experience in the art we’re discussing. I didn’t study this shit for nearly ten years to be told I’m doing it wrong by someone with the exact same fucking degree as me.

“Is this my class or not?” I snap. I wait a few seconds, hands clenched in my lap as we wait to see if this wave curls and crashes down on us.

“I don’t think you get this,” she says, voice even. Like she’s heard this exact blowup a million times. “I already wrote out my lectures based on the syllabus I was under the impression you created. Ty and I worked out his section outlines so they’d be ready so he can focus on his full student course load and research. Even if the students don’t care what movies they have to find on streaming platforms at a moment’s notice, we aren’t flexible on the teaching side. We don’t have time to change anything.”

There’s no winning with someone who’s already ended the argument. Less than five minutes, and we still have to make the walk to class.

I push out of my seat, my arguments spent. “Fine.”

I step out of the room before she can say anything else. The burning has shifted into something with more teeth, an edge of uncertainty to it. But it doesn’t do much to stop me.

The declaration of war is very simple. Twenty-three words.

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