I grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick. After graduating from high school, I went to McGill to take an Honours BA degree in English. Although my professors weren’t all famous or extraordinarily well-published, several of them were very inspiring.

At the time, Montreal had a very cosmopolitan film culture and McGill had a thriving student-run film society. This was very important in the early 60s, especially since pre-home video it was very difficult hard to get to see any films that were not currently in commercial theaters. My extracurricular activity with the Film Society become very important to me. The McGill Film Society ran three series and showed over 30 films a year. I prepared the sound tracks and wrote program notes for a silent film series.

At the start of the 60s in Canada, universities offered no film courses, and very few books on film were published. I read all that I could find and as a film scholar was basically self-taught.

I made the move to Toronto for my MA. I took a course with Marshall McLuhan, who was just starting to become famous—I didn’t know much about him before I took the course which was about literary criticism—and then a second course at his Centre for Culture and Technology, as well as three courses with Robertson Davies. I completed an MA thesis on John Osborne in 1966.

Since there was no film society at the University of Toronto, I had started one when I arrived. It involved a great deal of work—ordering films, reserving the screening rooms, getting hold of and setting up the equipment, writing the program notes, publicizing the films. And I also continued to write program notes for the McGill Film Society.

Peter Lebenshold, a friend from the McGill Film Society, started Take One Magazine in 1966. He invited me to join the magazine. I wrote for Take One for several years, and it became an important part of my life. After three issues I became Associate Editor.

While a PhD student, I continued to expand my work as a writer about film. I also started to teach courses involving film in the Extension Department and then at Innis College. I believe I taught the first pure film course at the U of T. I had been assigned as a T.A. to teach English at the Architecture school and they asked me to create a first year arts course to replace the English course.

I was creating and teaching film courses, writing for Take One and other publications, appearing on CBC Radio and writing my dissertation on the rise of naturalism in nineteenth-century English drama under the supervision of Robertson Davies at the new Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama.

One day walking across the campus I ran into my friend, the Czech writer Josef Škvorecký, who told me that the staff of the Drama Center had wondered why I was not writing on film. I hadn’t thought that they would let me. I talked to the Head of the Department who told me that yes, I could in fact change to a film topic.

Škvorecký himself became my supervisor, and, in 1975, I defended my doctoral dissertation, which was on the illusion of reality in film. I received my PhD from the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama.

It’s important to know that things were different then. With my PhD in hand, I just stayed on as a teacher at the U of T, cross-appointed in Architecture and at Innis College, not in the tenure track, but full-time and with all the rights and responsibilities of a regular member of the faculty.

In 1979, Ivan Reitman (whom I had met when I saw a short student film Ivan had made while an undergraduate at McMaster) invited me to Hollywood to be his “director of development.” I didn’t jump at the chance, but took a year-long leave of absence from the university. Then I took a second year of leave. Finally I resigned from the university after acting as a producer on Ghostbusters.

Though I’ve enjoyed my years in Hollywood I do miss the intellectual stimulation of the academic life. However the film business has its creative and challenging side too. (And there are more PhDs in Hollywood than you might think.)

Also by the time I left for Los Angeles I had been teaching for 12 years. The students weren’t the same as they’d been when I had started in the 60s and there was a growing generational distance between me and them. (I was only a few years older than the students when I began teaching.)

While I had been an academic I had always done a variety of other things: journalism, a small film distribution company, radio and TV work for the CBC and TVO, but until I wrote my PhD thesis, it was my extracurricular activities rather than my formal academic studies which led to my film career.

I grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick. After graduating from high school, I went to McGill to take an Honours BA degree in English. Although my professors weren’t all famous or extraordinarily well-published, several of them were very inspiring.

At the time, Montreal had a very cosmopolitan film culture and McGill had a thriving student-run film society. This was very important in the early 60s, especially since pre-home video it was very difficult hard to get to see any films that were not currently in commercial theaters. My extracurricular activity with the Film Society become very important to me. The McGill Film Society ran three series and showed over 30 films a year. I prepared the sound tracks and wrote program notes for a silent film series.

At the start of the 60s in Canada, universities offered no film courses, and very few books on film were published. I read all that I could find and as a film scholar was basically self-taught.

I made the move to Toronto for my MA. I took a course with Marshall McLuhan, who was just starting to become famous—I didn’t know much about him before I took the course which was about literary criticism—and then a second course at his Centre for Culture and Technology, as well as three courses with Robertson Davies. I completed an MA thesis on John Osborne in 1966.

Since there was no film society at the University of Toronto, I had started one when I arrived. It involved a great deal of work—ordering films, reserving the screening rooms, getting hold of and setting up the equipment, writing the program notes, publicizing the films. And I also continued to write program notes for the McGill Film Society.

Peter Lebenshold, a friend from the McGill Film Society, started Take One Magazine in 1966. He invited me to join the magazine. I wrote for Take One for several years, and it became an important part of my life. After three issues I became Associate Editor.

While a PhD student, I continued to expand my work as a writer about film. I also started to teach courses involving film in the Extension Department and then at Innis College. I believe I taught the first pure film course at the U of T. I had been assigned as a T.A. to teach English at the Architecture school and they asked me to create a first year arts course to replace the English course.

I was creating and teaching film courses, writing for Take One and other publications, appearing on CBC Radio and writing my dissertation on the rise of naturalism in nineteenth-century English drama under the supervision of Robertson Davies at the new Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama.

One day walking across the campus I ran into my friend, the Czech writer Josef Škvorecký, who told me that the staff of the Drama Center had wondered why I was not writing on film. I hadn’t thought that they would let me. I talked to the Head of the Department who told me that yes, I could in fact change to a film topic.

Škvorecký himself became my supervisor, and, in 1975, I defended my doctoral dissertation, which was on the illusion of reality in film. I received my PhD from the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama.

It’s important to know that things were different then. With my PhD in hand, I just stayed on as a teacher at the U of T, cross-appointed in Architecture and at Innis College, not in the tenure track, but full-time and with all the rights and responsibilities of a regular member of the faculty.

In 1979, Ivan Reitman (whom I had met when I saw a short student film Ivan had made while an undergraduate at McMaster) invited me to Hollywood to be his “director of development.” I didn’t jump at the chance, but took a year-long leave of absence from the university. Then I took a second year of leave. Finally I resigned from the university after acting as a producer on Ghostbusters.

Though I’ve enjoyed my years in Hollywood I do miss the intellectual stimulation of the academic life. However the film business has its creative and challenging side too. (And there are more PhDs in Hollywood than you might think.)

Also by the time I left for Los Angeles I had been teaching for 12 years. The students weren’t the same as they’d been when I had started in the 60s and there was a growing generational distance between me and them. (I was only a few years older than the students when I began teaching.)

While I had been an academic I had always done a variety of other things: journalism, a small film distribution company, radio and TV work for the CBC and TVO, but until I wrote my PhD thesis, it was my extracurricular activities rather than my formal academic studies which led to my film career.