Prolific local screenwriters, authors share tips with new creative writing students

This week, Professor Sari Fordham’s Living Writers Series students were visited by two famous screenwriters, Professor Juliet Giglio from the English and creative writing department and Keith Giglio, where the pair gave a lively presentation on their individual career trajectories in relation to the semester’s theme of artificial intelligence versus artistic intelligence. The first powerpoint slide aptly depicted a movie star background with their full names. While people were filing in, Professor Juliet Giglio made use of her student connections to inspire engagement before the show began, affably inviting them by name to sit closer to the front. 

The class began with an official introduction delivered by Professor Fordham’s teaching assistant and Oswego student, Molly Johnson. In her introduction, Johnson made sure to mention the pair’s “meet cute” in an elevator at their undergraduate university and their come up to writing advisors for big name projects like Disney’s “Tarzan.” 

The screenwriting couple joked around before Professor Juliet Giglio began speaking on her family’s ancestral connections to the Mayflower, which brought the first English colonists to the United States. Keith Giglio then proceeded to mention his family’s upbringing in Staten Island, New York before diving into talks about artificial intelligence in relation to creative work. He opened the more serious topic by saying that “if AI predicted [him and Juliet’s relationship] compatibility it would be 0.4%,” then posed a question to the audience as to why artificial intelligence would predict something so blatantly false. One Oswego student, DeAndre Acevedo, suggested that it was because AI can not understand human emotion to which Professor Juliet Giglio agreed, loudly decreeing, “AI has no soul!” 

Professor Juliet Giglio posed the question of what AI has actually contributed to the world artistically and concluded that it has added nothing in that realm. She segued this topic into a conversation about a recently cancelled book deal worth over $2 million for “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body” over accusations that the author’s book was written using generative AI. 

She discussed the way people use AI in school to get by with less effort, but how publishers will not accept any work that has any type of AI ties, stating that “it doesn’t work in the real world, with writing, at all.” Keith Giglio backed up this claim by enthusiastically supporting students to share their real selves in their work, saying “no one else can be you… what you did, what you grew up with, put it all on the page.” The pair used multiple AI generated photos throughout their slide presentation to depict the laughability of such work as serious. Professor Juliet Giglio went on to describe her illustrious career which began as a small script consultant for the actor, Robert DeNiro. She mentioned that during her work script reading, she was inspired to submit her own work after seeing how “bad” the scripts that came in were. Describing the experience succinctly by saying “reading a bad script can make you a better writer.” 

Keith Giglio followed up by sharing his own experience working a day job with the underground subway system to support his script writing, mentioning that the “reality is you gotta work.” Professor Juliet Giglio supported his statement by saying it “takes a while to get [a script] sold and longer to get paid.” Their initial co-written screenplay project “Verona” was unable to get sold at first look but it offered the couple a doorway into the movie industry through an agent, and was eventually sold nearly twelve years later, proving the value of tenacity for writing careers. She mentioned that there will be a screening of this movie in another professor’s class next week. 

Professor Juliet Giglio aired out some concerns about how the industry can take advantage of new writers and for many of their initial works the couple faced being pushed out of projects they were signed on to, or had their scripts rewritten in ways that clashed with their creative preferences. This subject led into her history of being a part of one of the most disruptive labor strikes in Hollywood, which were led by the Writer’s Guild of America during 2007 and 2008. The strike culminated in a win for writers around the country as they gained further labor protections through a renewed contract with Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers Trade Association. Wrapping up with some final questions from the audience, the visitors successfully explained the ins and outs of becoming professional screenwriters and published authors while juxtaposing their relatively glamorous career track with the reality of the gritty work life needed to maintain their positions.  

Tagged:Creative WritingThe Oswegonian

Jasmine de la Vega Rodriguez