STEP 4: A Screenwriter is Born

One morning I awoke with the first four scenes of Fruit of the Tree in my head. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I saw images, heard snippets of dialog. I went straight from bed to the computer, bypassing for once my morning mug of café con leche. I opened up Aaron’s script for Gettin’ Grown (to borrow the proper formatting for a screenplay) and wrote the scenes down.

They flowed relatively easily from my fingertips. Suddenly I was experiencing what creative writers recount: the characters speak for themselves, develop themselves, and sometimes take you in surprising directions. Again, this was something completely new for me: it had never happened in a lifetime of expository writing.

I sent the scenes to Aaron, saying “Please don’t laugh.” He wrote back to me, “I think we’ve found our screenwriter.” With some trepidation I shared my writing with the other members of our team, and they too encouraged me to continue.

Now I felt the terrifying weight of the responsibility to write this screenplay appropriately. How could I, as a white woman, write in the voice of a black man, a man of a different generation? Did I have any right to attempt this?

I first asked Aaron if he would be willing to co-author the script. I needed his experience in storytelling and scriptwriting, as well as his excellent ear for dialog. I also needed his guidance and vision as a black man. He agreed to collaborate with me by long distance and bought me Final Draft, the screenwriting software he used.

Then I called a local Milwaukee filmmaker, Brad Pruitt

Brad Pruitt, Consulting Producer

, who had spent some time observing our team at work on the set of Gettin’ Grown. He and I had had some other brief occasions to get to know each other over the years, and I trusted he would not mince words. Brad’s three responses were: “Go for it! It’s in your DNA.” “You have Aaron’s perspective to count on.” and “I’d be happy to consult on the project and do whatever needs doing to see the movie made.”

A book! I needed a book about screenwriting to help me get beyond the first four scenes. Aaron sent me one. I read it and bought several more. I learned about film treatments, a sort of long synopsis, a fleshed-out outline of the script. I learned about the 3 act structure and getting beyond the 3 act structure. I learned about the dramatic arc, hero’s journey and character development. I learned about proper formatting. But still, I needed to practice, to get immediate feedback and mentoring.

So I went to the wonderful (and inexpensive!) Shake Rag Alley’s Stage and Screen Workshops Week in August of 2006 and took a screenwriting class from an experienced Hollywood screenwriter and playwright, Bill Svanoe. Several people in the class were experienced creative writers, so it was a bit intimidating to share my amateur scene writing assignments aloud – but oh so helpful! And I discovered that not only did I enjoy this kind of “visual writing” a great deal, but that I might actually have some talent for it. Bill encouraged me to continue to write Fruit of the Tree and to send a completed draft to him for “coverage,” screenwriter lingo for feedback.

Suddenly I had a new goal in life – and a new identity to go with it. I had only barely incorporated the idea of myself as a producer of films (despite the many I’d helped produce over the years for Family Development Resources). Now I had a newborn – a screenwriter – to incorporate and nurture in the family of characters that lives in me.

STEP 3: Desperately Seeking Screenwriter

Late in the Fall of 2005 I found myself with the opportunity to produce a feature film about the extraordinary life of James Cameron , an unsung hero of the civil rights movement and the only known survivor of a lynching in America. (See a short video at http://www.fruitofthetree.info/promo.html)

I called together the creative team from Gettin’ Grown. We launched a new production company, Fruit of the Tree Productions LLC. Our object was to produce a narrative film inspired by Cameron’s struggle after his near-death experience to reconcile with and redeem the town and country that tried to kill him. We asked Dr. Cameron, then 91 years old, and his son Virgil, who serves as his power of attorney, for permission to tell his story, and were fortunate to receive the formal rights to do so.

We then embarked on six months of research: traveling to Marion IN where the infamous lynching took place; filming interviews of key informants in Indiana and Wisconsin; reading Dr. Cameron’s gripping memoir, A Time of Terror, and other books about the event. (This “spectacle lynching” was memorialized in the world’s most famous lynching photograph and included in Time/Life’s 100 Photographs That Changed the World.)

Dr. James Cameron

Most importantly we were able to film interviews in their home of Dr. and Mrs. Cameron on the weekend of their 68th wedding anniversary. Dr. Cameron would pass away exactly one month later.

Now that we understood and documented the story, our team needed to look for a screenwriter. We solicited scripts as writing samples from screenwriters we had met through IFP/Chicago (the Independent Film Project, a national organization with regional offices, at http://www.ifp.org).

I called the national Organization of Black Screenwriters in LA; the head of the organization was enthused about the project, but he found that writers he approached were reluctant “to be depressed for two years.” (They thought of it as a lynching film, not the inspiring story of a man who chose forgiveness over revenge.)

Where were we to get a writer? We read the nine scripts submitted to us. We talked to some additional writers who wanted thousands of dollars to draft a script on spec. Our team had invested our own money and solicited money from friends and family (as indie filmmakers everywhere do), but we didn’t have the kind of money demanded by screenwriters who had one or two scripts optioned or produced.

What to do…?

STEP 2: Gettin’ Grown

In 2003 Aaron Greer planned to shoot his first feature film, Gettin’ Grown.

He’d written the script while in grad school and had planned to return to shoot it in Philadelphia from Tuscaloosa (where he was teaching at U of AL). However he realized he had a better support system in Milwaukee and decided to produce the movie here. A high school friend and graphic artist, Anthony Ferraro, and I volunteered to help produce it.

Aaron Greer, Writer-Director

Anthony Ferraro, Producer

I thought I didn’t know anything about producing movies, but in fact I had produced several live action parenting videos in Spanish for an educational publishing company for which I consulted, wrote and translated. I was never called a producer, but I did the kinds of tasks producers do on a small crew and budget: getting locations, casting, arranging for food, lodging and transportation for cast and crew, finding props, set dressing, etc. I also had to direct both adult and child actors in some cases, because the official director spoke no Spanish.

As it turns out, being a producer is basically being an administrator, something that I’d done many times in my career(s). In the case of Gettin’ Grown, we had a shoestring budget, so I was also a volunteer coordinator.

Distributed by Film Life / Warner Home Video

At first I did this (unpaid) job just to help my son, but as I began to feel fair competent in it, the job became a pleasure of its own. Aaron, Tony and I worked well together, and I enjoyed being part of the creative decision-making. I’ve always taken pleasure in making something beautiful and useful, and experiencing the positive response of both children and adults to the movie at film festivals, the sense of accomplishment was wonderful.

I also felt fulfilled as both a social activist and a mother. Aaron’s goal is to make films depicting African Americans as real people – complex, nuanced and diverse – as opposed to the limiting and limited Hollywood stereotypes. (Aaron is well-equipped to do this, as he grew up in a large extended family that is both African American and Jewish, and in integrated neighborhoods and schools.) Gettin’ Grown has an almost entirely black cast, providing African American actors an opportunity to get work and get known. In addition, GG’s crew was very diverse. These things fit my long-time agenda of creating access to resources for people who are marginalized by our society.

I was hooked!

STEP 1: How did I get here from there?

The only movie I can remember seeing as a child was Oklahoma! We had 2 theaters in my home town: one always played a Western, the other a Disney animation. My parents thought of movies, or at least these movies, as junk food for the mind. We read books.

I was introduced to good films at the university cinema, where a cinephile friend from NYC took me once in a while. Once I moved to Milwaukee I learned about the art house theaters here and would go occasionally, taking my sleeping child, for a single parent’s night on the town.

My son always loved stories – Greek myths, science fiction – but he never was interested in photography or videography. Imagine my surprise – and that of his grandparents – when he announced the his grad study path of choice was film school! It was a hard choice to understand; his grandparents worried that he’d be poor, and I, a social activist and educator, worried that he wasn’t going to contribute positively to society.

Not to worry: the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. My son, Aaron Greer, became an academic (teaching film production) and began making independent films that touch on social issues with the nuance and subtlety of observation and wit that are some of his unique gifts.

I came to understand film as the literature of his generation and began to see lots of movies in order to learn about his chosen profession. (I also have striven mightily to understand football, another of his passions.) And then, about five years ago… (see my next post)