Masters of Professional Writing Program

Alumni

Alumni Profiles

Daniel Beck (MPW '01)

BeckDan Beck (MPW '01) uses the lessons learned in MPW every day in his writing as a playwright, fiction writer — and Director of External Communications for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems.

 "Whether I'm writing news releases or talking to reporters or writing speeches for executives like the CEO of Integrated Defense Systems, it's all telling a story," says Beck. "Taking technical and arcane subject matter — space and defense projects — and telling it in a compelling fashion to lay audiences, I use the things I acquired from MPW every day."

Beck says he applied to MPW for the structure and expertise he knew he would gain. "I wanted to write. I knew I had stories in me," he says. "I didn't have the discipline, given my busy schedule, and this forced me to have to write and produce material. Plus I liked the idea that the program was multidisciplinary, as well has having accomplished successful writers on faculty."

While at MPW and studying with David Scott Milton, Beck found himself drawn to playwriting.

"I actually entered the program on the fiction track; my project was a novel. I took playwriting — I always liked theatre — but I really took it as a way to force myself to work more on dialogue. I felt that was one of my weak points in fiction writing. Once I started writing in the theatrical milieu, I never looked back."

Since then, his play "Exit Polls," a shorter version of which was first produced in the USC MPW One-Act Festival where it was directed by MPW Lecturer Lee Wochner, was staged as one of four finalists in the prestigious Ashland New Plays Festival in Oregon. Other plays, including "Nixon's Woody," "Double Indignity," and "The Picasso Code," have received staged readings or been designated as finalists at the Dayton Future Fest, Theatre J in Washington DC, Moving Arts in Los Angeles, and Long Beach Playhouse.

"MPW is unique in its multi-disciplinary approach that allows students to experience different writing genres and then apply that to their own specialty," Beck says. "The insight I gained from the veteran writers on the faculty and the feedback from my fellow students helped me to really know what I was writing."

Jennifer Cecil (MPW '93)

Jennifer Cecil (MPW '93) built her career as a successful screenwriter and television producer from the relationships she made at MPW — and the lessons learned from lecturer Sid Stebel.

Cecil, who is a writer and co-executive producer of the acclaimed ABC drama "Brothers & Sisters," was drawn to MPW because of its interdisciplinary focus.

"The thing I loved about MPW was that you could basically major in two different disciplines, so I focused all my studies on both fiction and screenwriting," she says. "A lot of the other graduate writing programs don't allow you to do that."

While in MPW, she took her first class with Stebel — and resolved to take every other class he taught.

"He's terrific," she says. "He is hands-down the best teacher I ever had, both as an undergrad and as a graduate student. Anybody I hear who is going into the program, I tell them they have to take a class with Sid Stebel."

The secret to Stebel's success with students, she says, is more than just his sharp analytic ability to dissect story. It's his sensitive approach to working with emerging writers.

"Sid demands you give respectful criticism. Anyone can take potshots; it's much harder to suggest ways to improve the story. He has this amazing ability to get right to the heart of the problem in a piece of work, which is a skill that a lot of people don't have."

Stebel is modest about his part in this star student's success. "She grasps things instantly. She is enormously talented." His own role, he says, was in helping Cecil see the story within the story.

"My own philosophy of teaching is that there's a secret story that you are subconsciously trying to tell, and it's all about finding that thematic statement. She got that instantly." Since leaving MPW, Cecil has had a string of successes, from the 1996 indie release "Cadillac Ranch" to writing (and often producing) television series like "Raines," "One Tree Hill," "Providence" and others, all of which began with a contact made while in MPW.

Without MPW, she says, she would not have made these contacts or gained the practical experience she uses as a working television professional. "MPW launched my career."

Matthew Waynee (MPW '01)

It's unusual for a writer to receive sole screenwriting credit on a feature film. It's even more unusual for that screenplay to come from a first-time screenwriter's first screenwriting class. But for MPW alumnus Matthew Waynee (MPW '01).

Waynee's film "Unknown," was released by the Weinstein Company in November of 2006. The writer is third from the left, above, with stars Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper, and Jim Caviezal.

"I got sole screenplay credit," he says. "The basic structure is mine, every twist and turn, every big major event. I started that script at MPW with Jason Squire."

Waynee, who is originally from Michigan, was drawn to MPW because of the program's interdisciplinary focus. Indeed, screenwriting was not his first calling.

"I felt I wanted to be a short-story writer mostly and was getting myself ready to go in that direction. I completed a novel, got a writing assistantship, taught composition."

Then he found himself in Squire's screenwriting class.

"It was great. It was my first screenwriting class. It was very fundamental. Basic structure. How to go from writing fiction to being economic and writing screenplay. You start listening to how people speak, rather than writing big expositional chunks.

"What I loved about his class was he created such a great environment. I felt he was really empowering students, as opposed to instructors who might dominate too much. There was a good core group of people four years or so after that who continued to meet."

Squire well remembers Waynee's time as a student.

"He was very deliberate in his work and quiet and unassuming. Over the weeks he emerged as someone serious about his craft. The results were really strong and admirable. He then became the screenwriter/seller, because that's something we teach in MPW — to get on the phone, to talk to people, to make connections, to put your work out there, to get it tested and evaluated in the marketplace. And this is what he did. Although the trail was typically bumpy and filled with reversals, he kept at it and was able to protect his sole screenplay credit.

"A typical creative instinct of a large company is to solve a creative screenplay problem by putting on another screenwriter. Matthew aligned himself with smaller companies and was able to get sole screenplay credit, which is a big deal, especially with a first project."

"Unknown" is just the beginning for Waynee, who has just finished an espionage thriller that's making the rounds. He's also developing a TV pilot that he's pitching to different networks. MPW provided a launching pad.

"MPW was definitely useful," he says. "Most of the writers I still hang out with I met through MPW. It's that network, people who have a passion, friendships and the meetings together. That's valuable."

Charles Harper Webb (MPW '82)

Charles Webb's published work includes a novel, The Wilderness Effect, a book of poetry and psychology, Poetry that Heals, and three books of poetry, Zinjanthropus Disease, Everyday Outrages, and A Webb for All Seasons. A professional rock musician for fifteen years, Webb earned his Ph.D. from USC and is now a Professor of English at Cal State University, Long Beach, as well as a psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in work with creative artists.

Q: What do you mean by stand up poetry?

CW: I saw that there was a lot of this certain kind of poetry coming out of LA--it was coming out of other places to, but it seemed central to LA. It was a kind of poetry well suited to being performed at readings. I first noticed it in the mid-seventies, and I came up with the title Stand up Poetry from a book called Stand Up Friend With Me, which was written by Ed Field in the early sixties. I think he was one of the first stand up poets. He did poetry that was accessible; easy to get in one hearing, and he often used a great deal of humor. So I thought of stand up as in stand up and perform it, stand up comedy, and, also, stand up as a phrase, like stand-up-person because I thought a lot of what characterized stand up poetry was an honesty and directness and a kind of basic decency as well as a willingness to make light of one's self.

Q: What were some of the qualities of this type of poetry?

CW: I eventually came up with about ten criteria for stand up poetry: Clarity, natural language, humor, performability, flights of fancy, strong individual voice, emotional punch, a close relationship to fiction, lots of urban and pop culture references. Wide open subject matter. Then I wrote an essay in which I looked at five poets that were doing that, and the essay tried to define what stand up poetry was. I delivered that for the Phi Beta Kappa lecture at Cal State Long Beach where I teach. The idea got kind of popular, and one thing led to another, and I ended up with this book [Stand up Poetry].

Q: Is stand up better read out loud than in print?

CW: The kind of poetry I like as stand up poetry is also good on the page. We had a little slogan: "It stands up on the page and on the stage." Some poetry you see at slams is good stand up, other poetry is more like performance art where it works well on the stage, but it doesn't translate well to the page. The poems in this anthology are poems I thought would work well for both. And this is a blatant attempt to popularize poetry, because I think poetry doesn't get the kind of recognition it should have and could have.

Q: Have you found that being a musician has influenced your poetry?

CW: I think it has in a lot of ways; though, they're not immediately obvious, because having been a musician, I expressed a lot of things through my music that many poets express in their poetry. I think that moved my early poetry toward a harder edge than it might have had. I'm writing more lyrics now, not surprisingly because I've been out of music for awhile, so I feel I have to use that more. But I think one of the most important things that being a musician gave me is a sense of performing, and what it is to actually entertain an audience in the best sense. I mean, not having them bored, not having them wishing they'd never come. When I was a musician, people wanted to come hear me because I was playing rock and roll. I think poetry should have that, too. Being a musician made me real leery of boring people. I don't think good art bores people. I don't care how serious it is, or how highbrow.

Q: It's hard to make a living with poetry. What did you do after MPW?

CW: I'll tell you, I got lucky. Though to say that in a way downplays what happened. But I had been playing music and writing for a number of years--that's how I supported my writing, playing rock and roll. Then I came to the MPW program, and I started teaching. I supported myself with TAs, and I taught writing here while I worked on my degree. And then, since I was living in LA, I wasn't likely to make a living as a musician because as a musician, you had to tour, and I was sick of touring. I toured all my life. So then, I thought I had to do something else. So I ended up in the counseling psychology department; it turned out I had an aptitude for that, so I got a Ph.D. in counseling psychology. I did that because I thought there was no way I was going to get a teaching job because they're so hard to get. But when I graduated, I got a one-year lectureship at Cal State Long Beach mainly on the strength of the poetry I had published before. A guy there knew my work, liked it--by the way that is the way you get jobs. You have to have connections. It's just a fact. This guy had known my work for years; he knew I was in LA, and he encouraged me to interview and helped me get the job. It's true, you don't make money off poetry, but there are ways to make a living so you can write poetry. I found teaching was a great way to do that. Other writers like T.S. Elliot and Wallace Stevens had professional jobs. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. You find other ways to do it. Once I got on at Cal State, I just made sure they couldn't get rid of me, made sure my teacher evaluations were top and just busted my butt. And finally, they hired me full time.

Q: You said stand up should be closely related to fiction, but it seems to be closely related to drama, as well?

CW: Yes, drama, too. The drama part would come under performability. The reason I said fiction is because in stand up poetry there's often a lot of dialogue; it's often narrative, and a lot of the stand up poets, me included, are also fiction writers. So they bring that fiction sensibility with them into the poetry. In fiction, you want to make people turn the pages. A novelist wants to write something that's a good read, which means, people can't put the book down. I feel that way about lines. I want every line to be so strong that you can't stop there. I think a lot of poets don't know that. They write poems that may have individually beautiful lines, but the poem itself is inert; it has no drama, nothing that makes it move.

Q: There doesn't seem to be much humor in most poetry?

CW: There is a very strong bias toward very serious poetry right now. If you look back to Chaucer or Shakespeare, there is a lot of humor there, but that tends to get overlooked. So there is a very strong prejudice against humor in poetry. Although there's a lot of it out there, that type of poetry tends to get overlooked. I think it's ridiculous, but you're looked at in poetry as kind of a renegade and somewhat less of an artist if you use a lot of humor. If you read Chauser, the guy's hilarious, and that was six hundred year ago.

Q: Where do you think that prejudice comes from?

CW: I think prejudice against humor in English poetry comes from poets like T.S. Elliot, Mathew Arnold--I mean these ponderous figures. Ezera Pound used a lot of humor, but he was such a crotchety old character that people were afraid not to speak Greek around him. So there's this whole sense that this is serious stuff, and I think that's one reason poetry is not as popular here as it is in Eastern Europe and Russia where humor seems to be more accepted.