The Doctor is In: Notes from a Script Doctor

Prop 8: Our Choices, our Fate…

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

With everyone weighing in on the colossal disaster that is Prop 8, I thought I’d toss my ruminations into the witches brew.  As a screenwriter, we are constantly being advised. “This character is too risky; sand off the rough edges.” “Make your hero a man and you’ve got a deal.”  A few days ago, someone asked me to change my main character, an African woman whose ancestry and origins are crucial to the story, to a white woman. Why? Because, in all sincerity, he thought it would make the script more green-light-able. 

As writers in this business, we are accustomed to receiving notes about changes to make in our scripts. Most of the time, especially if we can see how a particular suggestion improves the writing, we are willing to cut, rewrite, restructure. But occasionally, we feel we must stick to our guns. And sometimes, when this feeling strikes, we are actually right.

The passage of Prop 8 in November, 2008, followed by yesterday’s decision by the CA Supreme Court to uphold it, was more than just another disappointing setback. It hurt me to the core.  In Massachusetts, when the law changed in 2004, I got married to my female partner. For 14 years before that, we had been domestic partners in San Francisco, with very few tangible rights. When we moved back to CA in 2005, we were demoted back down to domestic partner. When the law changed last May, we were “grandfathered in” and thus married once again. After Prop 8 passed, we were sentenced to legal limbo. And now that it’s been upheld, we remain there. 

If we visit a few New England States or Iowa and possibly New York down the line, we’ll become married, once again, for the length of our stay. If we go somewhere completely new, say, Utah, we would be reduced to legal strangers. After 18 years of marriage, forgive me if this feels like a sock in the gut.  Who can keep track? Who can live with the uncertainty of trying?

Beyond my own frustrations, we have a daughter who is affected by all this. Not just by her mothers’ changing legal status, but by the attitudes of the kids and teachers at school. Last year, her teacher, a well-meaning, very gay-friendly Latina woman, was teaching about Anne Frank and the Holocaust. After reading a short reference about gay people in concentration camps, a child made an anti-gay remark. 

Here was an educational opportunity that arose organically and was, after all, related to the subject at hand (irrational hatred of a particular group). The teacher could have chosen to conduct a brief discussion that my child, in particular, and the other children, in general, could have benefited from. Rather than correct this slur immediately and dispel the child’s confusion, the teacher came to me. She hadn’t wanted to make my child uncomfortable (she said) and she promised to go back and discuss this issue, when the time was right. Well that time never came. The opportunity to expand and influence the minds of 60 impressionable kids was wasted.

I am acutely aware that each time I choose to be out --braving the reactions of unknown people to my family, my sexual orientation, my personhood-- I am opting for visibility, which paves the way toward change. I want that better world for my self, my partner and for my daughter. And for all of the other people out there who are gay, have gay family members and friends, or are just plain compassionate and fair-minded. 

As a script consultant and script doctor, I am also aware, that it is the more difficult, but necessary road to choose to address stereotyped characters in my clients’ scripts – whether they are about race or gender or sexual orientation. I could so easily let it slide and only discuss pacing and story arcs. But, I choose to suck it in and bring it up, over and over again.

As a writer, I can opt for the safer path, writing characters with vague sexual identities or none at all, rather than explicitly gay and lesbian ones. How much easier to avoid the discomfort, the fear of negative reactions, and the inevitable advice that I am making my work less marketable.

In my last screenplay, which is already pushing the concept of marketability to its outer edges, the premise hinges on the sexual orientation of two minor characters. They (and their ability to be open about who they are) are crucial to the story, but they are not the main characters, and this was a conscious choice. The main character however, is not a blonde bombshell or muscular Adonis, but an African woman – a translator living in rural Africa who must decide if she has the inner resources to help a bright girl of 13 avoid a forced marriage. 

In the screenplay I have just begun to write, a mystery-thriller (very loosely suggested by a true story), the main character is a prize-winning journalist who uncovers government ties to terrorism and organized crime. She is single and avoids commitment and relationships because of unresolved traumas from her past. 

My original intention was to end the movie with the protagonist in bed with an unidentifiable person – thus showing that she has made progress with her commitment issues, but not treading into uncomfortable waters. If I were to be absolutely truthful however, this character, as I imagined her, has a long lost love, who happens to be a woman. That unrequited lover is the unidentifiable person, with whom my protagonist is finally reunited.

Yesterday’s news about Prop 8 was not just a kick in the gut, but also a kick in the pants. In the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” whenever an angel gets its wings, a bell rings. What if every time we choose to hedge on sexual orientation, another Prop 8 remains the law? I, for one, don’t want that kind of legacy or life. If there is anything within my power to counteract it, I’m going to give it my all.  My protagonist in the thriller will wind up with her female lover. Identifiable and visible. For a better script, and a more wonderful life.