To the Editor:
Over last weekend, John Hart '75 was here showing his film "Drunks," which he produced because it captured "the New England town meeting," a place where anyone could speak and expect the group to listen to their every word, scrutinizing and mulling over what was said.
Perhaps, as he suggested, "this [place] never truly existed" in old New England, but Hart's greatest accomplishment is that he managed to foster this community while he was here. While most celebrity guests are content to only talk about themselves, Hart opened up his Friday session to the students, asking Caleb Scott and Skye Gurney about their collaborative theater, inquiring about Amanda Jones' various drama projects -- talking about anything and everything that the students wanted to.
After the session was even more amazing; he accepted student scripts and resumes and spoke in even more detail about the drama and film work that goes on at this school. For most visitors (even Dartmouth grads) it seems that Dartmouth just represents a small college town out in the woods of New Hampshire to be used as a sample audience for your film. Yet Dartmouth seems to represent to Hart a home away from home, a community whose intricacies still interest him after these twenty years.
While it's always interesting and exciting to have celebrities at Dartmouth, I want to commend Hart for his interest in the students who attended his lectures; through this downplaying of his own importance, he opened lines of communication, and gave we students a feeling of optimism about the purportedly bleak industries of theater and film. And that's what I truly appreciated about John Hart.
