Boston Film Festival collaborated with Warner Bros. in anticipation of the upcoming third season of “The Sex Lives of College Girls.” The event, which was a screening of the show’s season two finale, was held in the Bright Family Screening Room in Paramount on Thursday, Sept. 19. It marked the opening ceremony of the Boston Film Festival—as well as a potentially prosperous relationship between the festival and Warner Bros. Entertainment.
The screening was followed by a panel with some of the talent behind the show, including showrunner Justin Noble, co-executive producers and writers Caroline Goldfarb and Sarah Tapscott, writer Beth Appel, and casting director Liz Barnes.
Robin Dawson, who has been executive director of the Boston Film Festival since 2005, shared that the event was an initiative by Warner Bros. to expose college students to insider perspectives of the TV industry.
“Last year we had a program where [Warner Bros.] came into MIT, and they were very happy with it,” Dawson said in an interview with The Beacon. “We discussed broadening the program to what’s called the Warner Bros. College Day Series, which is what began this year at a couple different schools.”
The Bright Family Screening Room in the Paramount Theatre was packed for the screening, in what Dawson considered a big success for both the Boston Film Festival and the show. Students were laughing in response to jokes and seemed excited to listen to the writers speak on their work.
“The Sex Lives of College Girls” was the perfect show to appeal to a broad collegiate audience, since the show was designed to represent contemporary college students’ lives. According to showrunner Justin Noble, few popular comedy shows specifically focus on the college-aged demographic—nevermind the regional specificities of colleges in the Northeastern U.S.
“We went on a research trip where we went from college to college in the Northeast,” Noble said during the panel discussion. “I talked to so many current students to make sure we weren’t millennializing all the storytelling.”
Specifically, the show emphasizes diversity in its cast and crew. Some of the panelists spoke directly to Emerson students about expanding the demographics of the comedy field—still an upward battle, but more realistic nonetheless. Executive producer and writer, Caroline Goldfarb, claimed writing “The Sex Lives of College Girls” is the most inviting job she’s ever had and should be emblematic of more comedy writers’ rooms in the future.
“You don’t always feel necessarily safe in a work environment, right?” Goldfarb said during the panel discussion. “This one is just very unique—I personally haven’t been in a room with so many support staff and queer people.”
One of the goals of the afternoon was to display the changing attitudes in the TV space—especially around comedy. Dawson believes that events like these, and film festivals at large, are paramount for students to learn how the film and TV industry operates. She hopes that the event created a sense of optimism for students interested in working for a TV show.
“We have worked hard to bring students into the film festival, to provide a way they can begin their careers with some experience in Boston—it’s a smaller market and there aren’t as many opportunities here,” Dawson said. “We’ve been able to really grow our student base by programming for both college students and recently graduated students.”
