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…?

~ by Fran Kaplan on December 22, 2008.