a.k.a Still “Could’ve Been”

June 1, 2009 — Alias, College, J.J. Abrams, Screenwriting, Star Trek, Writing

Inspired by seeing the new Star Trek movie with my adorable nephew Azden and by replacing my empty DVR schedule with “Alias” on DVD, I’m re-running this blog post. This story still elicits “You did what?!” responses to this day. Here goes:

“Alias” was one of my favorite TV shows. It had its weak points (or, ahem, years) but it makes for darn good DVD viewing. I would even postulate series creator J.J. Abrams made “Alias” for those of us who’d spend 24 hours glued to the TV, consuming an entire season in one weekend. 



But “Alias” was not the first time J.J. Abrams entered my life – and it wasn’t dear Felicity who introduced us. This was a different college campus, far away from New York City. 



It was the small campus of Colorado College (CC) where yours truly was a theatre major. Being that us CC students took only one class at a time, we were lucky to have guest instructors on a regular basis. 



One particular guest instructor was a screenwriter whose greatest achievement to date was a 1991 movie starring Harrison Ford. The class description noted that the guest instructor was young for having a big movie credit to his name. 



The cocky male instructor I met wasn’t so impressive, with his red baseball cap and wrinkled frat boy look. On the CC campus, granola was in, frat was out. Strike one against him. I was a young college feminist and he talked sports, bonding with the boys the first day of class. Strike two. I naively believed theatre was far superior to film and, besides, “Regarding Henry” was a mainstream movie my mother liked. What could he possibly teach me? Strike Three. 



Believing I had nothing to learn from this guy, I dropped his class in favor of “The Dada Movement” with another visiting instructor. My Dada instructor was deemed instantly cool. He had worked on the controversial movie “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” where they had shaved a plastic Barbie doll to play the anorexic singer. 



About a week, the young screenwriter with the red baseball cap came running up to me on the campus quad. “Jennifer! Jennifer!” he called. 



Finally catching up to me (he’s 5’7″ and I’m 6’0″), he caught my attention. “Hey! You dropped my class.”


“Yeah, um, I needed a class that counted towards my theatre degree,” I said.

“Well, we missed you, Jennifer.”

He misunderstood the look on my face.

”Are you surprised I remember your name? I remember everyone’s name.”



“My name is Jesaka,” I said and walked away. 



Although I’ve told the story of dropping out of my screenwriting class several times over the years, I never gave a second thought to the instructor’s name. 



Until the last season of Alias, when I was mourning its cancellation and funneling my angst into a cleaning frenzy. Sorting through a pile of dusty papers from college, I found an old schedule. Noting that one of the classes was screenwriting, I curiously looked for the instructors name. 



J.J. Abrams. 



I was young. Now I’m using my smarts to write for a coffee company while J.J. is celebrating his new Star Trek movie. Any time I complain about my work, one of my favorite former co-workers loves to shake her head at me and mutter, “You dropped J.J. Ah, just imagine what coulda been…”