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What One Class Can Do

From horror to Hallmark holiday feel-goods, Jenna Brister ’06 has the catalog to do it all. The comedian, actress and screenwriter graduated from ÃÛѨÊÓƵ with a degree in mass communications and is now thriving in Hollywood. In 2023, her movie “A Perfect Christmas Pairing” became available on video-on-demand platforms.

To date, Jenna has written the screenplay or starred in more than a dozen productions. The Renton, Washington, native credits a January Term course with sparking her interest in Hollywood.

With very little background in the entertainment industry, she decided, on a whim, to sign up for a screenwriting course offered during January Term.

“Anytime someone asks me about my origin I’m like, ‘I went to ÃÛѨÊÓƵ, I took screenwriting for one month and this course changed everything,” Jenna said.

Building a Strong Foundation

She also credits Info-Gathering, a required course for her major, with much of her success.

“At ÃÛѨÊÓƵ, taking Info-Gathering with Brad Thompson, hammered into you to pay attention to every single detail, check every single source and that made me this kind of hypervigilant with format and that has served me very well in this town,” she said.

Between the two courses, she developed skills that allowed her to excel in the entertainment industry and understand what types of scripts thrived.

“A lot of scripts are floating around, and everyone wants to tell a story,” Jenna explains. “But unless it’s in a format that some stranger can read, nobody cares and no one will want to make it.”

Getting To Hollywood

Even with an interest in screenwriting, Jenna never thought she’d end up in Hollywood. After graduating, she moved to New York City to work for a public relations firm. Ironically, she put together media kits for the same parent company she now produces scripts for – the Hallmark Channel.

While she dabbled in improv and standup – even winning "Best Live Act" at the 25th Annual Los Angeles Comedy Festival in 2019 – her passion lay in screenwriting.

“Part of my job while doing all of the media kits, was watching made for TV Hallmark movies on repeat, and as I’m watching all of these, I’m like, ‘I get the formula,” she said. Her experience in classes like screenwriting at ÃÛѨÊÓƵ had taught her how to write movies like that.

Jenna’s first produced film was “Killer Twin,” a thrilling drama, released in 2018. Since then, she has written scripts in many different genres, one of which being holiday romantic comedies.

“It’s fun to have a lot of different genres, coming up I always loved comedy and always saw myself as doing just comedy, but it is really fun to dip into those other genres,” Jenna said.

“I’ve found as I get older, that it’s nice to have the balance. I can write a Hallmark movie like Planet Christmas, knowing that some network wants to make it because it's wholesome and it will sell, but then in my heart of hearts, I’m writing “The Rodeo Clown and the Sundance Kid”, based on my senior year at ÃÛѨÊÓƵ, when I met a rodeo cowboy. Almost like an homage to that time of life, to being 21 in small-town Oregon, and falling in love.”

Jenna said she loves the diversity of being able to produce scripts for multiple different genres. She can continue being creative while expressing herself through different genres.