May 25, 1997
In a steady, light rain President Fergusson awarded the bachelor’s degree to 577 members of the Class of 1997 at Vassar’s 131st Commencement. In his commencement address Alan J. Pakula—the producer of To Kill a Mockingbird (1963), the director of All the President’s Men (1976) and the writer, producer and director of Sophie’s Choice (1982)—recalled his father’s warning that filmmakers always had to “start over every time.” “I told him,” Pakula said, “that was the very thing that made me feel alive…. Each film is a new life, a new beginning…. With each film I enter a new world.” Graduating senior Joshua Weinstein appreciated the speaker’s message: “It was about following your passion, and about the fact that what’s important in art is the process, not just the product.”
The New York Times