Oscar-nominated filmmaker Celine Song (SoA ‘14) speaks out about the life of a writer.

Last Thursday, Columbia’s School of the Arts hosted screenwriter, director, and playwright Celine Song at the Lenfest Center to discuss her start as a struggling artist, the differences between theater and film, and a host of other topics. Although Song began her career in theater, she rose to global acclaim for her Academy Award-nominated film Past Lives (2023).

The Speak Now series hosts well-known artists who display the school’s “adventurous creativity.” Past artists featured include Claudia Rankine, David Henry Hwang, and Leigh Silverman. For the Celine Song event, around 150 people crammed into the Katharina Otto-Bernstein Screening Room, with guests arriving well before in an attempt to secure standing-room tickets.

Song was introduced by the Dean of the School of the Arts, Sarah Cole. Then she entered the theater to rapturous applause before sitting down to discuss her work with Anne Bogart, her former theater professor at the School of the Arts.

Speaking to a room full of eager creatives, Song advised audience members to shun how-to books on writing and various workshops, especially ones that conform individual style to industry norms. Instead, aspiring artists should “write a lot,” complete their pieces, and not apologize for mistake-ridden first drafts. According to Song, they should also find “high stakes” environments, safe spaces to show their work where “when it sucks…[they] can feel it.” Artists, she explained, must overcome the humiliation of producing bad art. Writing is the one job where they can’t hide. By showing up, they display the “bare minimum” of courage.

Song touched briefly on her time at Columbia’s MFA program, where she learned under teachers who truly nurtured her individual voice. Moving into her post-MFA experience, Song reflected on how the struggle to establish oneself as an artist is deeply entrenched “in the material.” Whereas graduates with parents taking care of rent possess ample time to attend auditions or write, those who have to balance miscellaneous jobs, such as Song herself, face the “brutal” struggle of working by day and honing their craft by night. As arts grants shut down, spaces for upcoming artists vanish as well, heightening the competition for elusive opportunities. Song drew up the example of a theater that hosts four plays a year, explaining that one of those plays will inevitably be filled by Shakespeare, a second by Chekhov, and a third by some Pulitzer winner trying their hand at theater. That leaves a single spot for five thousand nameless playwrights to vie for.

After years in such an environment, Song realized that not being able to afford the rent at 30 wouldn’t “be cute,” so she moved to Los Angeles. There, she found a job writing for the high-fantasy show The Wheel of Time. Her next project was Past Lives. Song also spent some time discussing her latest film, Materialists, and how it was inspired by her six-month stint as a matchmaker in New York City. When asked why she had quit matchmaking, Song confessed with a laugh, “It was too much fun! I wasn’t writing.”

Although Song started out as a playwright, she is best known for her films. When describing the difference between the two, Song reflected on how Bogart taught her that in theater, space and time are figurative. On the stage, an actor transports an audience to Mars simply through a passing comment about life here on Mars. In film, however, the world of Mars must be meticulously created as a set. Time and space harden into what is literal.

The event closed with a series of audience questions, where several attendees took time to praise Song’s work and ask about her artistic process. In her responses, Song reflected on writing kindness into her characters and cited Children of Men as her favorite film. She also commented on how artists often make an audience cry for the same reason, such as the Spielberg-ish reunion between a little boy and his puppy. They tug heartstrings through obvious and simple ploys. More difficult is making an audience cry for distinct reasons, drawing upon each individual’s memories and backgrounds to coax unique sadness.

Although writers often struggle to communicate the fullness of their experiences to an unknown audience, Song gave the following encouragement: “As long as you tell the truth, it is understood.” After all, despite the infinite complexities and distinctions between any two people, they share a common humanity that is nourished by the mirror of art. All that the artist must do is speak now. 

Celine Song by Matthew Dunivan, via Lenfest Center for the Arts