A Paris Secret – Reid Hall

So there you are in Montparnasse dreaming of the heady days of Left Bank writers and artists as you stroll down the streets they frequented. You’ve seen the spots Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald lived and/or drank in and paid your respect to some of the literary lights buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. Maybe you’ve had a drink or dinner La Coupole, the capacious dining and dancing hall of the 1920s Montparnasse scene that is still going strong today – minus the dance floor. La Coupole has always been quite the place to celebrate: At its grand opening in 1927, the 2,500 guests including Jean Cocteau, Foujita, Kisling, Vlaminck and Josephine Baker downed twelve hundred bottles of Mumm champagne and the story goes that even that was not enough.

So many places to visit in Montparnasse, the cradle of bohemian Paris. But – unless you have a reason – there is one you will not enter and that is Reid Hall at 4 Rue de Chevreuse near metro Vavin. Built in the 18th century, the complex has had many lives – as one of the largest porcelain factories in France, a Protestant school, and the American Girls Club of Paris founded by philanthropist Elizabeth Reid. In 1964 Elizabeth’s daughter-in-law, Helen Reid, who continued to own the property gave it to Columbia University which is now the headquarters of a dozen American graduate and undergraduate universities for their programs in Paris. Lucky students!

I have lived in the City of Light for fifty years and spent a lot of time in Montparnasse but, amazingly, knew little to nothing about this very special Parisian landmark. That changed when I signed up for a Masterclass on Screen and TV Writing at the Paris Writers Workshop organised by WICE (Where Internationals Connect in English) which was held at Reid Hall from June 2 -7. The Workshop included five days of intense writing and critique in different disciplines plus optional literary walks and panels on subjects of interest to writers. (I skipped the walks since I live in Paris, and opted out of some of the panels because it was impossible for my 70 something old brain to complete the classwork and do the rest.)

But hey – I was there to learn how to write a script! And I couldn’t fallen into better hands. The masterclass I attended was taught by the brilliant scriptwriter Diane Lake whose film, Frida, opened the Venice Film Festival and won two Academy Awards in 2003. She has been commissioned to write films for Columbia, Disney, Miramax so it’s an understatement to say that she knows the ropes. A personable and no nonsense instructor, Diane managed in one short week to drill some of the basics of the difficult craft of writing for screen into our eager minds and collective heads. The basic I retained – and the one that is so very hard for novelists – is that a script contains only what the characters see and hear. In other words, you do not have permission to get into their brains and their thoughts. You can’t even let your characters mutter to themselves, as I did in one of my attempts.

Learning a new genre was a revelation. And the week was an unqualified success thanks to Diane and my fellow students who were open-minded, cooperative and sympathique. Reid Hall, that place I had never been and now know, played a big part. It is a dream of a setting, both for serious classwork and leisurely conversations in the garden.

And now it’s no longer a secret place to me – nor to you!