"In movies the story is over before it begins," Yale filmmaking professor and award-winning independent filmmaker Michael Roemer told the Storytelling for the New Millennium audience. "The actors are no freer than images in a painting," he added, expounding on his theories of plot and character development. Theories that he blended through touches of Greek drama, moviemaking, Biblical themes and characters; and allusions to Melville's Moby Dick, all with a post-McLuhan twist.

Roemer is renowned for seeding the careers of leading filmmakers through his highly disciplined, one-on-one filmmaking course. Students in the course must rely on basic filmmaking equipment, and avoid using high-cost gear. They are forced to focus on the content of their projects, rather than the technical aspects - a discipline that parallels the trials of budding new media creators who lack funds for massive hard drives and computer systems.

Roemer brought a classical perspective on plot and character development to the seminar series, balanced with a look at the modern theory that a story doesn't have to have a plot, order or chronology. Roemer backed up his theory by quoting Napoleon, who once said "nothing is the reason.² He emphasized that characters in storytelling traditionally haven't changed, and that plots always repeat, with the same themes constantly coming up.

As a storyteller, Roemer said, he pulls ideas from his own, ongoing personal identity crisis, and sees change in his life throughout each day. His theories and teaching have been proven through the success of his students. Roemer's understudies have gone on to head up major Hollywood enterprises, like Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and to produce and write a surprising number of successful movies.