Jim Curtis

Jim Curtis is in the middle of his second career and enjoying it immensely. In his first career, he was a professor of…Russian, of all things. He received his undergraduate degree, the BA, from Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, where he majored in German. He went on to do graduate work in Russian at Columbia University, in New York, where he received his Ph. D. in Russian.

Jim taught for over thirty years at the University of Missouri, where he received three teaching awards, and was widely known as an innovative educator and inspiring lecturer. He published four books and numerous articles while a professor. And one of those books gave me a unique distinction: He is the world’s only professor who wrote a book on rock and roll: “Rock Eras” (1987). Jim is pretty sure that growing up in Elvis Presley’s hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi, made a lasting impression on him, and ultimately drew him away from scholarship to popular culture.

In 1999, Jim gave up his professorship and moved to the East Coast. He now lives in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the hometown of another American celebrity, painter Andrew Wyeth. Inspired by the Wyeths, he became an independent art educator and lectures widely on Russian, European, and American art.

Lecturing on art is his day job, though. Although he loves art, he loves writing movie scripts even more. This list of his scripts shows his interest in celebrity (Elvis again!) and the way women create identities for themselves.

Akhmatova. The life story of Ann Akhmatova (1889-1966), one of Russia’s greatest poets. In addition to being a poetic genius, she was also a charismatic woman and became a cultural icon roughly comparable to Georgia O’Keefe in America. Logline:
When the Soviet Union was filled with hate, Russia’s greatest poet could still love. Her name was Anna Akhmatova.” (This script has been optioned.)

Faithful. When beautiful mathematician Marina Vernaya came to American from her native Russia, she fell in love with movies and rock and roll—and an ex-surfer named Jeff Smith. Marina and Jeff are so love, so bonded to each other, that when Marina is kidnapped, and the bad guys let her leave brief telephone messages for Jeff, he realizes that she’s talking in code. Jeff and Marina’s love gets them out of this tough situation. Logline: “Separated lovers need secret codes. That’s why movies and rock and roll are for.”

Elegant Secrets. Few people know that Cary Grant was an agent for the British Secret Service from 1939 to 1942, when he became an American citizen. This script, which doesn’t contain a line of dialogue from any published source, imagines what it might have been like to be a rich, famous secret agent. Logline: “Spying is a lot like acting. That’s why Cary Grant was a great secret agent.”

Parking Lot Tango. Maryanne, an insecure computer geek, meets Frederick, a blind therapist. Complications ensue when Vivian, a glamorous ex-ballerina, begins therapy with Frederick. These complications force each of them to confront long-repressed anxieties, and create identities for themselves. Logline: “Sometimes wounded people can heal each other.”

A Few Days in Hell. Civilization as we know it came to an end in Berlin, during early May of 1945, The Germans call this the “zero hour”; there was no more war, but also no law and no government, either. In this zero hour, three people attempt to cope with life on the corpse-littered streets of a destroyed city. They are: Adam Whittier, an American photographer, one of the first Americans to enter Berlin; Eva Baeuml, an Austrian girl recovering from rape at the hand of Soviet soldiers; and Mstislav Stroganov, a Soviet tank officer horrified at the behavior of his comrades. Logline: “The war is over. Long live the war.”

The Missing Angel. This is a time-travel movie with a twist. When Shelly, a physician and a recent widow, decides to rent a house in the charming English village of Chipping Campden, she thinks that she’s getting away from old life, and especially her bossy older sister. Shelly touches a tombstone in the graveyard in Chipping Campden, and finds herself propelled back to 1651, and the social upheavals of the Cromwell era. In 1651, she finds love—and another version of her sister. The principal characters in this script appear both in the twenty-first century and in 1651. Logline: “No matter what century you wind up in, you can find love. Sibling rivalry, too.”

Shooting Stars. Actress-Singer Anne-Marie Chanteux, known to her millions of adoring fans as AM, has two children: Meredith, 14, and Danny, 10. AM and her children have experiences that at first seem threatening, and then turn out to be reassuring. A story about celebrity in the twenty-first century that’s full of unexpected twists and turns. Logline: “There are lots of ways to shoot stars.