UNF professor juggles multiple careers

Juggling is a hard enough task when the objects in the air are merely balls or chainsaws. Allan Marcil has chosen to metaphorically juggle different jobs in the movie business.

Writer, producer, professor, husband and father are all titles Marcil can claim. He teaches about the movie business from his personal experiences, and he experiences new things
every day.

His role at UNF is teaching screenwriting along with some lower level literature courses as an adjunct instructor in the English department. Movies like “Easy Rider” and books like “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” are what students study in his classes.

Molding young minds is just what he does with part of his day. He is in constant contact with Los Angeles, he said.

Traveling there twice in the last two months, Marcil lives a life quite different than most professors you’d meet around campus.

“I’ll probably be there in another week, where we gotta do our tap dance and pitch the show,” Marcil said.

The show Marcil is currently working on is geared toward children and will hopefully be picked up by a network like the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon.

He looks to others like Stan Lynch, the original drummer for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, to help him with different aspects of his work. Lynch is involved with this project to help with the music.

Marcil graduated from college with an English degree and decided to enter the University of Southern California School of Cinema. He began working full-time in the world of cinema before he could finish his graduate degree at USC.

Throughout the years, Marcil has worked on and completed numerous projects.

One of his successful projects was the TV show “Key West.” The show was set in the Florida Keys and ran on the FOX network in the early ‘90s starring Fisher Stevens and
Jennifer Tilly.

The show was shot in the Keys and Marcil enjoyed spending time living under the Hollywood radar while still being able to produce things he was passionate about.

Writing and producing on location is a life that seems fit for a rock star, but family always comes first for Marcil.

“There’s nothing lonelier than a Sunday in Vancouver when you’re kind of by yourself,” said Marcil. “Nobody’s really hanging out.”

Wanting to spend more time with his family, Marcil decided to settle down. He and his wife chose the city of St. Augustine to call their home and Marcil decided to become a
full-time writer.

The city was perfect for their family, and Marcil calls it a “funky little weird place still
under the radar with the Fountain of Youth.”

Producing kept him away from his family and writing kept him close, but teaching was the next challenge he embraced.

“They just throw you in the deep end of the pool,” Marcil said about his early days in the classroom at UNF. “I had no pedagogical training.”

But after getting his feet wet in the classroom, Marcil began to understand his role at the university.

“I really started liking it,” Marcil said. “I’ve still only been doing it for two years. Everyday is a new day for me. I haven’t gotten jaded by it yet.”

His one-semester screenwriting class allows students to write a full 120-page screenplay. Former students have gone to places like The University of London and The University of Miami to study film in graduate school.

Other former students have written such accomplished scripts that Marcil is helping them get agents in Los Angeles.

He doesn’t expect Oscar-winning scripts from his students, but he does expect them to write a complete script that can be changed and tweaked in any number of ways after the class is over, he said.

“This class is How to Build a Dog House,” Marcil said. “I’m going to give you some two-by-fours, some ply wood and a hammer and nails. At the end, it’s going to have four sides, a roof and a place for the dog to get in, and it’s not going to fall down if I touch it.”

E-mail Joe Daraskevich at features@unfspinnaker.com.