Muleskinner

Issue date: 9/3/09 Section: Life & Leisure

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of Google Images Documentary director chooses janitors from presitgious universities as subjects for new film.

When you think of successful university careers, you might think of presidents, provosts and deans; when you think of the wisdom to be found on campus, you're likely to think of professors sharing the fruits of their decades of research on chemistry, classics, or quantum mechanics. You almost certainly won't think of the folks cleaning the bathrooms, washing the floors, and changing the trash bags. Might you be missing something?

Patrick Shen thought so. While working on a previous film, Shen-who works at Transcendental Media, the independent film company he founded, as a director and producer of documentaries-interviewed Sheldon Solomon, a professor of psychology at Skidmore College. During one conversation, Solomon remarked-Shen told Inside Higher Ed-"that he is often mistaken for a homeless person because of the way he dresses and wears his hair long."

"That got me thinking," Shen said, "about what wisdom we might find from the people on the fringes of society." So, along with his co-producer, Greg Bennick, Shen set out to make a film about the wisdom of people whom we rarely think of as wise. The two called colleges and universities across the United States to ask if they could interview the janitors.

Why universities? Because, Shen said, "these are learning institutions, and it's important to point out that learning isn't exclusive to classrooms-learning can happen just about anywhere, in any area of our lives."

After numerous inquiries and telephone interviews, Shen and Bennick narrowed the candidates down to the eight custodians who appear in "The Philosopher Kings": Melinda Augustus of the University of Florida, Corby Baker of Cornish College of the Arts, Luis Cardenas of the California Institute of Technology, Oscar Dantzler of Duke University, Jim Evener and Gary Napieracz of Cornell University, Josue Laujenesse of Princeton University and Michael Seals of the University of California at Berkeley. They were chosen from a much larger pool of willing participants-nominated as potentially good subjects by directors of human resources or facilities maintenance at the institutions that agreed to take part-because Shen and Bennick felt that each of them had a particularly compelling story to tell and a gift for communicating effectively.

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools