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"I Hear Dead People"Cynthia's Column Dec. 2002 This is a Column I was not planning to write until I retired. It is likely to get my vote cancelled by a lot of people, possibly even people I work for or would like to work for. But what the hell. We have to make sure we write our stories before the clock runs out. And this is one that needs to be passed on to other writers. Not so you can do as I do, but so you can get some outside validation if you are already working this way. Get a little feedback that says you're not crazy, or if you are, you're not the only one. I'm with you. It started with Eleanor Roosevelt. It was 1982. When they came to me, they already had a script, a cast, and they were three weeks away from shooting it when they were told the script was not good enough. Actually not even close. The cast was "pay or play," which means if you don't shoot it, you still have to pay them. And the dates couldn't be moved. Actors line up projects months ahead, as do directors. Stars line them up two and three years ahead."Eleanor, First Lady of the World" already had Jean Stapleton, Joyce Van Patten, Gail Strickland, E. G. Marshall and Coral Brown in the cast. So they needed a new script as good and as fast as possible. I went in for a meeting. They liked my ideas. But the big question was "How fast could you fix this?"I said I could do it in five days, if I moved into a hotel. They said great. Met my price in a deal that took less than an hour to negotiate. They even paid my hotel bill. I went directly to the library and found some recordings of Eleanor Roosevelt's voice. Jean Stapleton was going to play Eleanor and Jean's voice was so distinctive there was some danger of my writing in Jean's voice. And even when Jean isn't Edith Bunker, she also isn't Eleanor. It had to be a real voice. In my head and on my pages. The hotel I picked (and you would too, if CBS was paying) was the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. The drive down was more than two hours long and the whole way I had Eleanor talking to me in my car. Her voice in my ears. Getting her rhythms, tone, and her vocabulary. I moved into a suite in the old section of the hotel overlooking the beach. I brought a typewriter, card table, and a folding chair. Let's face it, even the best hotels have tiny antique writing tables that are nearly useless for actual writing. And the lovely chairs are never the right height. This is marathon writing. This is the kind of thing where you start before six a. m. Write a couple of hours. Brisk walk on the beach. Room Service breakfast. Write for hours. Room service lunch. Write until you run out of gas. Short nap. Coffee or tea courtesy of more room service. Write a few more hours and stop as the sun is going down, when you walk on the beach again and spend the evening staring at the TV, brain dead. Multiply by five days and if you're lucky you get a script out of it. One they can actually shoot. And I am lucky. The only real problem with this kind of gig, is that you don't have time to do any research at all. All you can do is power write straight through it. Hopefully getting the story, emotions, structure, sub-plots, historical period, set ups and pay offs in place. Historical research? Forget it. Not a chance. And this is a true story. An important one. It has to be historically accurate. Fortunately since it was in pre-production, it had a research staff already at work. I wasn't in touch with them from the hotel, but I was reassured that they would go over everything afterwards and give me notes so I could make it accurate. So I didn't worry about it too much. The old section of the Hotel Del Coronado has long, long hallways. I took to going out my door and pacing up and down them talking to myself. Trying out dialogue. And as I walked, I started hearing Eleanor's voice in my head. The voice from my car. She told me what I needed to know. How it was. What happened. What they said. And I went back into the room and wrote it down. Like taking dictation. Everything she told me, I wrote it down. I'd been doing this for years of course. We all do this. We hear the paragraphs or dialogue or sentences as they formulate in our heads and then we write them down. So, honestly, I didn't think much about it. At the end of five days I drove back up to L. A. and turned in the script. A week went by and I heard nothing. I mean I heard they liked it, but that was it. I finally called and asked if the research people had gone through it and could I have their notes so I could fix it. They said yes and no. Yes, they went through it with a fine-toothed comb and no. There were no notes. I said, "What do you mean? There have to be notes." And they said no. Everything in it was accurate. Now I have to tell you, this flipped me out. I had made up a lot of stuff. Or at least I thought I had. I had been making up stuff for years. I made my living making stuff up. But this is the first time anyone had ever told me that the stuff I made up was TRUE! This was the beginning of a fantastic chain of events. I began to get referrals from the Great Beyond. I was hired to write a script about Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan in the years after The Miracle Worker. As I was working on the project, somewhere in the research, I discovered that Helen knew Eleanor. Of course. In working on Helen and Annie's story, Anne's husband John Macy was the one helping me the most. As you type you just get this feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder helping you out. Filling in the blanks. Giving you wonderful little gifts. I had researched this one. I had time and wonderful material. And I had a detailed (network approved) outline I was working from. And late in the story, after Anne and John are divorced, Anne is struck down by illness and is blind for a time. And as I began to write this, John said, quietly but clearly, "I came back." "John, I'm sorry. I love you. But you're out of the story. Your part is over." And he said, "But I came back then." I was on a deadline. I was in the last twenty pages. I didn't have time to go back to the drawing board now. But if you want this amazing support system to keep working for you and helping you out, you have to honor it. And you have to listen. So I made a deal. "I'll go look this up in one of the books. If I can find it fast, I'll bring you back." So I went back to the books. The first one I put my hand on opened to the very section I needed and, you guessed it. John came back. I tossed out the outline and wrote it exactly the way he said it was. And it was powerful and moving. The night before I had to deliver that script, I was cross-eyed from working on it, so I had one of my friends come over and proofread it for me. It was around two a. m. when she finished. Her response was, "John is amazing. And I don't know where he came from. It's like you made him up out of whole cloth." I said, "He is amazing! You have to see his picture!" We went to my dining table where the research books were scattered. I grabbed the book and it fell open to the photograph of John Macy, a full-page head shot looking straight at the camera. I put my hand on the page and said, "That's John." At that moment, the Tiffany-style chandelier over our heads began to shake violently, all by itself in the air. Like a 6. 0 earthquake, only nothing else in the house moved. It felt like it was John Macy saying "Yes!I am here!"It felt wonderful and strong and positive and then when it stopped we both freaked out. In the aftermath of psychic phenomena our minds tend to do that. Mark Twain was next. I adore this man. The movie was called Mark Twain and Me and was for Disney Channel. (Also available to rent on video. )Jason Robards ended up playing him. I heard Mr. Clemens' voice. He has a very clear, strong voice. But I was about halfway through the research when I came across the passage about his knowing Helen Keller. Ah. Here it is again. I always think, this one's not part of the chain and then it's like a joke and they finally poke me and clue me in. Ha ha. Gotcha. Here is how it progressed as I became sort of a Network TV Bio Queen: Grace Kelly. Grace knew Eleanor. Sinatra. Knew Grace. Elvis. Knew Sinatra. Roy Orbison. Knew Elvis. Doris Duke. Knew Elvis and Eleanor. It got to be almost ridiculous. Like they were chatting away up there, telling each other, "Get Cynthia. She listens really well."The Ghost's Grapevine. I wrote one based on a true story, but with no one famous in it. It was called "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" and starred Martin Sheen and Brendan Frasier. It was about Bobby McLaughlin, a nineteen-year-old kid convicted of a murder he didn't do, and how his father spent six years and finally got his son out of prison. I was sitting at my keyboard finishing the script when I had the thought that this was the first true story I'd written in years with no one helping me from the other side. Everyone in this story was still alive. The instant I had that thought, a voice about six inches behind my left shoulder said, "I'm not alive."It was Spooky Hallstead, the kid who had been murdered. He knew Bobby. He knew he wasn't guilty. He was there. And he had been helping me the whole time. I have to say this one did scare me for a second. But not for long. We all have help. Some visible. Some invisible. I accept this and am heartily grateful for it. We need all the help we can get. And sometimes it comes from amazing sources. Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |