Me Too: Evil Woman & Female Hero

In the literary context, Merriam Webster defines heroine as “the principal female character in a literary or dramatic work” and they give “the heroine of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” as an example.  There’s a problem with that.

According to opensourceshakespeare.org, Romeo speaks 163 times to Juliet‘s 118. Juliet is clearly the lead female and second character by size of role, but by appearing in both opening and closing scenes while Juliet does not, Romeo clearly has the primary lead. This is often the case in movies. If there’s a leading man in a movie, the leading female may play more of a supporting role than an actual lead. This has been a way to blur the lack of true female leads. This is also reflected by the way awards are given for movies. For example, Oscars are listed with leading and supporting men coming before any women are listed.

However, there is hope. The Me Too movement may be making a dent.

I just finished writing a screenplay for a company that produces a lot of movies for television. They provided a rough treatment for a starting point, along with the instructions that not only did they want the villain to be a woman, the primary protagonist was to be female as well. I’m calling her a female hero because she is definitely not playing second fiddle to any of the actors and she is the one who takes action to save the day. In reality, the leading actor is playing a supporting role to her lead.

Creating a female hero to triumph over the evil woman made this really fun to write. And since these guys have a good track record for selling their films to major outlets, I have to believe they’ve checked the market and found that the industry wants more women in leading roles. We’ll see.

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#evilwoman #heroine #shakespeare #movies #hero #Oscars #strongwomen #womeninfilm #FemaleRoleModels #film #MeToo

Oatmeal Brain: Writer’s Post-Race Blues

It’s possible I’ll be asked to do a few more tweaks, but the screenplay I contracted to complete has gone through two major revisions and they seem to be happy with it at this point. It was fun developing someone else’s idea. I really liked my first draft. It had this third wheel character that offered some comic relief in a tense TV movie. But they wanted him combined with the romantic lead, so I had to toss him.

Once I put aside my attachment to the character and looked at it as a challenge, I figured out a way to move a bit of the humor to the romantic lead. Of course, the script will change again once it goes into production, but that’s the way screenwriting works. I just read a lengthy interview with Terry Rossio that addresses that reality.

At the end of this major project, my brain’s functioning like oatmeal – nutritional, good content, but thick and sticky. Ideas pour slowly in globs.

Oatmeal brain: the writer’s version of post-race blues. It’s time to reboot.

To start, I took a look at my 2018 Goals and the steps I planned to meet them. If you’ve been following this blog, you realize I write all this stuff out at the beginning of the year and post it where it’s easy to access. My writing goal for 2018 is to make at least $10,000 writing. I came up with three objectives to help me meet this goal. The activities for my first objective revolve around getting Peg’s Story: One Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Herself polished, promoted, and published. The second objective’s about continuing to create new material and the third is about doing workshops on self-publishing.

Well, the screenplay wasn’t on my radar and, as long as they produce it this summer as planned, I’ll have met my goal without completing any of the written objectives.

I also have an author client I’m helping in multiple areas, which is adding to my income. And I’m doing volunteer work on promo for Who Will Remember. None of that was written into the plan either. I’ll keep devoting a few hours a week to these activities.

However, going back to the plan, I want to get that book out, I want to continue creating new material because that’s energizing, and I have three workshops scheduled – the first one at the end of June! My class is listed on page 6 of the catalog.

Fortunately, much of the preparation for the workshops overlaps with research I need to do to launch the book, so that research is the next primary focus. Writing new material will be my fun time.

I was surprised to see my personal (non-writing) goals are doing okay. I’ve completed activities under almost every objective. That’s pretty amazing. It felt like I was getting completely absorbed by my writing activities, until I looked at things in black and white. In reality, I’ve done a lot with family this year already, including some short trips.

Life is good.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

#success #depression #research #postraceblues #planning #oatmealbrain #inspiration #film #goalsetting #goals #Writing

Films That Changed My Life

Someone recently asked me what three or four films defined my life – took it new directions, made a lasting impact, that sort of thing. Being a movie junkie, my first thought was that it would be impossible to narrow it down that far. However, in the next moment, three films came to mind. These films changed the course of my life, each in its own way:

Around the World in Eighty Days (the 1956 version with David Niven) – This is the first film I remember seeing at the theater – The Grand – and it began my lifelong love of movies. The heavy red velvet curtains framed the enormous screen and up on the walls were traditional theater comedy and tragedy masks. The music swept me away from the opening moment and carried me on down the sidewalk to Tony the Greek’s, where we went for ice cream after the show.

The Grand sent out a calendar each month with which movies would show which days. It was a one-screen theater on the corner of routes 20 and 17 in Westfield, N.Y. Eventually it was torn down, and Tony the Greek’s is long gone as well – but those memories are still strong, as is my love of movies and the movie theater experience.

The Bad Seed - the original black and white - was probably the first frightening movie I saw, and I can still visualize some moments.

High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood’s second feature film as director, 1973) changed the way I look at films. I’d never heard of Fellini or any other European filmmaker, but I came away babbling about the visual effects and realistic characters – and went back to the theater two more times to watch for details. That awakening led to my repeatedly participating in film appreciation classes at College of Marin – watching and discussing key films. (They showed different ones each semester).

So that’s the three that popped into mind immediately as shaping my life. And then there’s a fourth – which should have been obvious. Working on an early version of the script earned me my first paycheck as a writer and got me started on my current path.

Eye of the Dolphin ended up being written primarily by Wendell Morris, who had a solid record writing for television whereas I had no screenwriting credits and no major publishing credits. Since most of what I wrote ended up discarded when they got enough funding to change the setting of the film, I got a creative consultant credit rather than one as a writer – but it got me started on IMDb. And I still have a photocopy of that first check on my inspiration board.

What films have had a lasting effect on your life?

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#lifechangers #TheGrandMovieTheater #aroundtheworldin80days #WestfieldNY #thebadseed #movies #screenwriting #clinteastwood #highplainsdrifter #film #DefiningMoments #fourkeyfilms