In 1994, Quentin Taratino wrote a fictional story about Mickey & Mallory Knox, a honeymoon couple who, as a perverse aphrodisiac, randomly shot and killed over 50 people. Oliver Stone directed the film and the week it opened, a real young couple in the Midwest went on a rampage killing 4-5 strangers. When apprehended by the police and asked their names, they replied that their names were Mickey & Mallory Knox - the fictional character’s names from Stone’s film. The film was Natural Born Killers, and this film made a difference.
I wrote for a popular television series called Touched by an Angel. Among the fan mail one day, we heard from one viewer. This man had decided to kill himself. It was a Sunday night and he happened to have the television on CBS where he watched an episode of Touched by an Angel. Moved by the story, he wept then decided to give life another chance. He wrote to us and thanked us for making a difference in his life.
After earning a living from acting in NY, I grew disenchanted with the roles of women in new plays, so decided to write my own, ten were produced. In 1989, I was wooed by Hollywood after writing an award-winning play, optioned by MGM. I began also to be offered writing assignments- both features and television movies. You might say I was the flavor of the month writer in Hollywood. Driving on the Hollywood freeway, I heard a Bill Moyer’s interview with David Putnam on NPR radio. David Putnam was for a year head of Columbia Pictures, and producer of Chariots of Fire and the Mission. Putnam said something which stayed with me. He said, “If movies could be what they might be, there’d be no need to go to church.”
As you know, many seem to want more from today’s films and television. If this is so, then why are we getting the films we are? Because, as a rule, the creative people rarely have the power in Hollywood. It’s a little easier in television as writers more often move on to producing. For instance, I was assoc. producer for The Christmas Wife, a movie I wrote for HBO, turning down a more lucrative contract with the networks, I opted for less money and more creative control. I cast the film myself with Jason Robards and Julie Harris earning a co-producer credit. We received 4 Emmy nominations including best film and best writing. A comic aside: a major network wanted to produce The Christmas Wife, “We love it, but what if ….”
Though I have been fortunate and sold nine scripts, for those of us committed to socially-responsible media, sometimes we lose. Here are two of my own examples:
- The Freedom to Kill: the Randy Weaver Story. Naples, Idaho. 1992. I held the rights for two years to the story of two American families: the Weavers in Idaho and the Degans in Massachusetts. Both shared a strong belief in family values, religion, and America. Both were Green Berets in Viet Nam, trained to kill, and willing to die for their country. One was a white supremacist, the other a Federal Marshall. Both were convinced they were right. Both died senselessly in Idaho, fighting each other. Because of the depth of interest these stories represented, I was offered a deal on network television by a company who produced 4 movies a year. One catch: the film had to show Federal Officers as the heroes. I was committed to do a balanced story, not black and white, so rather than compromise my beliefs on this, I chose to reject the deal and the movie was never made.
- It’s Only Women: the Dalkon Shield Scandal. Sometimes a studio or network will have a subject but not the story. I was hired by NBC to develop a story about the Dalkon Shield, which I later learned was a birth control device found defective then covered up by the corporation which also makes Chapstik. I interviewed 20 women and then made a composite of two women who suffered from the Shield. I was new in Hollywood and quite naïve. Instead of just writing the Shield story, I wrote a hard-hitting story about corporate greed in America. NBC expected it to win the Emmy and was excited, that is, until no sponsor would touch it. Who are the sponsors for television? Corporations. The script was never made though I was paid for it, thanks to the WGA. By the way, here’s a postscript to the Dalkon Shield Story. After the victims won a lengthy class action suit, the company was forced to take the shield off the market in America. They hired the doctor who invented the birth control device and had him travel to other countries to encourage its use. Later the corporation simply dumped it in the Third World.
