Wally found me - as so many clients do - by reading screenwriting magazines and trolling the Internet for advice. He liked what I had to say and wanted to engage my consulting services to mentor him through his Epic.
Yes, you read that right. Epic. Wally was fixated for some inexplicable reason on Lewis and Clark. In fact, he had spent a good deal of his adult life reading everything he could about the intrepid explorers and decided the time was right to tell The True Story.
Wally had also checked his Calendar of Really Important Historical and Film-Worthy Dates for Aspiring Screenwriters and discovered that the 200th anniversary of the pair's journey to the Pacific Northwest was coming up. "If I write a movie now," he told me, "this could be huge at the box office."
I gently pointed out to Wally that he might perhaps not be the only person on the planet who was aware of this auspicious occasion and that other Lewis and Clark fans might be planning a similarly themed blockbuster even as we spoke.
Wally, however, was not daunted by this and told me that there hadn't been any movies about Lewis and Clark since the 1950's. (For trivia buffs, the film in question featured Donna Reed as Sacajawea which gives you a sense of its gripping authenticity.) I suggested that maybe there hadn't been any movies since then because, well, maybe because Lewis and Clark just don't resonate with moviegoers in the same way as giant sharks and big-headed extraterrestrials.
Wally was unphased by this and told me he would be dropping his first draft in the next day's mail...
* * *
The story opens with an earnest young mapmaker feeding a thin barley soup to his bedridden mum. “Isn’t today your very important meeting with Thomas Jefferson who is the third president of the United States, Edwin?” she inquires.
“Yes, I believe that you are correct, Mother. When I am finished here, I will let my stepfather William and my two younger brothers - James, aged 7, and Frederick, aged 4 - know that I am leaving on my trusted chestnut-colored steed, Freedom, which you gave me on my 17th birthday 3 years ago.”
“And what is the purpose of this important meeting, Edwin?”
“Well, Mother, I understand that there is going to be a great expedition led by two men named Lewis and Clark and they will be in need of a good mapmaker such as I am.”
NOTE TO FILE: Work with Wally on crafting less doofy dialogue.
“Excuse me,” I said to Wally before I reached the end of the first act (and nary an appearance yet by L or C), “but who, exactly, is this Edwin guy?”
Wally enthusiastically explained that Edwin’s role would be to fill the audience in on what transpired once the expedition got underway (somewhere around the middle of Act 2). I reminded him of his objective to tell The True Story. How would this be possible, I queried, if he was throwing in characters like Edwin who didn’t exist?
He was quick to tell me that movies did that all the time. “Look at ‘Titanic’,” he said. “Everybody knows that Jack and Rose were just made up.”
Yes, but the difference, I responded, was that it’s easier to throw in a couple of fictional personas against a backdrop of 2,000 than it is to let fictional mapmakers tag along on one of history’s best documented treks that had less than 50 participants plus a dog.
“Oh,” said Wally. “Then you’re probably not going to like Edwin’s Indian princess love interest and the riverboat gamblers they play cards with that ends in a duel…”
* * *
Breaking up is hard to do. Painful as it was for Wally to send Edwin to the cutting room floor, he grudgingly accepted my advice that if his epic was going to be about the adventures of Lewis and Clark, the two men needed to be more than just a peripheral footnote in the plot.
His second draft opened with Lewis and Clark sitting around a campfire.
“So, Meriwether,” says William, “I understand that you are the private secretary to our third president, Thomas Jefferson.”
“Yes, that is right, William. It is a very interesting job.”
“I would think so, Meriwether. Though not as interesting as our current quest to search out a route to the Pacific Ocean and to gather important information about the Indian tribes that live there and the dangers that future explorers who follow in our footsteps will have in establishing settlements in the Far West.”
“Well, we have had a long winter of training and preparation, William. Next year will be 1804 and—“
NOTE TO FILE: Remind Wally not to use dialogue to explain things to the audience that the characters themselves already know. They also don’t need to keep repeating each other’s names if they’re the only two in the scene.
By page 79, Lewis and Clark arrive at a trading camp and encounter a wily French trapper named Charbonneau.
“Allo meez-yours,” says Charbonneau. “Vellcomb to zee bess tradings post in zay ree-jione. Vood zah foors be of inter-ahst for zah freegid treks to zee Paceefic?”
“No, thank you,” replies Meriwether who speaks perfect French. “But who is yonder beautiful squaw starring at us in wonder and who looks quite young and appears to be heavily pregnant?”
“Zat eez my wife – Zakajaweejia.”
I send Wally an email and ask him why Charbonneau’s phonetically scribed lines read like Peppy la Pue.
“I just want to be helpful to the actors,” he brightly replies.
* * *
According to Wally’s latest version, an hour and 19 minutes have elapsed and his plucky band of adventurers have yet to move past the trading post. I remind him of the 1 page=1 minute of screen time rule. “If this is going to be a two-hour flick,” I point out, “you’ve only given them 41 minutes to make it all the way to the opposite coast, pack up, and come back to St. Louis.”
Wally pondered this a moment. “Maybe I should cut out the backstory about Meriwether’s childhood and the troubling incidents that led him to become an alcoholic in later years.”
“Yeah, probably,” I said. “You might also want to lose the dalliance in the pantry between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.”
Wally was ruffled, reminding me that it was the first sex scene he’d ever written and he was rather proud of it.
“But it’s completely off-message,” I said. “You need to remember the audience you’re writing this for.” (beat) “By the way, who is your audience?”
Even via email, I could picture Wally shrug. “Everyone,” he replied, as if this answer should be perfectly obvious.
I needed a new strategy.
“Whatever historical period you’re writing about,” I said, “there needs to be something that resonates with modern viewers.” Themes about reward, revenge and escape, I went on, can be plopped into any century because this trio of concerns has plagued mankind since the beginning of time. “To carry it off, though, you need a protagonist your audience can relate to.”
Wally asked whether it should be Lewis or Clark.
“I’d go with Sacajawea,” I told him. Ask any two people on the street to name famous Native American heroines; she and Pochahontas will top the list. Unlike the latter, however, Sacajawea’s life following her 15 minutes of fame is shrouded in a mystery that persists to this day. Did she die within a few years of the expedition’s return? Or – as claimed by her own people – did she live well into her 80’s?
“Think of it this way,” I explained. “She’s a young, pregnant woman in an unhappy relationship with a Frenchman her family isn’t too keen about. She’s attracted to another man who is not only kind to her but also protective of the son she gives birth to. Unfortunately, he’s married to someone else. Far from home and with limited job skills, she’s forced to do whatever will be best for her child.”
I could sense a glimmer of a lightbulb coming on. Even though it was roughly the wattage of an EasyBake oven, I was encouraged to hear Wally say he was now going to rewrite the entire epic from Sacajawea’s POV.
My elation lasted up until I read the opening scene of his next draft.
EXT. – DAY – A babbling brook in the wilderness.
Two BRAVES look up from their fishing as a third, RUNNING BEAR, splashes his way toward them.
BRAVE #1: Why are you so excited, Running Bear?
NOTE TO FILE: Tell Wally to read this line out loud and without the comma.
RUNNING BEAR: I have just heard the most incredible news that my wife and I are expecting our first child to arrive at the beginning of spring. If it is a girl, we are thinking of naming her ‘Sacajawea’ which, as you both know in our native language, translates to mean ‘bird woman’.
BRAVE #2: That is a fortuitously splendid omen indeed. We should get everyone together this weekend and carouse with gusto.
* * *
“People are not born interesting,” I tell Wally. “They become interesting as a product of life experiences.”
“Huh?” said Wally.
I explain that starting out Sacajawea’s life as a twinkle in her father’s eye is all well and good except that if his epic is going to be about her travels with Lewis and Clark and he’s telling it in real time, we’re looking at a script that’s roughly 175,200 hours long.
Wally is totally stymied at this point. He likes the notion of telling the story through the woman’s POV but has no clue where, exactly, that POV should commence. I decide to help him out with a freebie idea – a bookend approach that would hook the audience, get to the heart of the journey, and fade to black with the mystique that still endures regarding Sacajawea’s ultimate fate. It would also weave into the tableau the reality that Clark subsequently became the legal guardian of her little boy, a situation that prompts us to wonder what influences compel a loving mother to give up her own child. Did she know she was dying? Did she see in Clark a more positive role model than her husband? Would a mixed-blood toddler have encumbered the return to her tribe?
“The film begins,” I say, “with a dark and stormy night in St. Louis.”
A cloaked figure carrying a bundle is hurrying through the rain soaked streets looking for a house, the home of the territorial governor. His housekeeper is reluctant to let her in and goes upstairs to tell her employer that a young ‘savage’ woman with a little boy claims that she knows him. Clark realizes who it is and hastily admits her. Absent Charbonneau, Sacajawea has come to see if he would be willing to raise her son. There’s an underscore of attraction between them. Now widowed, Clark realizes he has an opportunity to make a home for both of them. Sacajawea is disinclined to acquiesce to his request but agrees to give him her answer in the morning.
“The bulk of the script,” I then tell Wally, “is the flashback of the journey where we see how their chemistry slowly evolved into a love story that could not be consummated because of their respective obligations.”
Wally was now bouncing off the walls with excitement and promised “the best ever” version within the week.
INT. – CLARK’S LIBRARY – MOMENTS LATER
There is a light tap on his open door. He looks up and is astonished by the transformation of his guest. Helga the housekeeper had done well when she went next door to borrow clothes from the neighbor to replace Sacajawea’s wet ones. Standing before him now with a radiant smile meant only for him was his true love – her black hair swept atop her head and displaying the emerald earrings that perfectly matched the low cut Parisian gown Helga had procured. She carries two glasses of his best wine from the cellar.
SACAJAWEA: Shall we toast to the past and talk about our epic journey, William?
“And I’ve got this great idea for casting,” Wally announced in a margin note. “Catherine Zeta-Jones as Sacajawea and Michael Douglas as Clark. What do you think?”
What I think is that I’m not paid nearly enough to read any more Wally-isms.
__________________________
Former actress and director Christina Hamlett is an award winning author and professional script consultant whose credits to date include 25 books, 125 plays and musicals, and 5 optioned screenplays.
Christina -- This is hilarious. I love it!