This year’s Governors Awards
banquet, hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, gave
honorary Oscar statuettes to four Hollywood icons. Director David Lynch took a
mere fifteen seconds to thank the academy, and then sat down. Actor Wes Studi,
the first Native American to ever earn an Oscar, proudly held his statuette
aloft. But the stars of the evening were two female honorees, Italian director
Lina Wertmuller and actress/activist Geena Davis, who forcefully urged the Academy
to move past gender stereotypes and make Hollywood a more inclusive place.
I wasn’t (alas) invited to
that banquet. On that same day, though, I appeared on a panel that expressed similar
views. We also went one step further, exploring just how enlightened writers
can replace stereotypes with full characterizations that add truth and heft to
their stories. As a closing feature of
the DTLA Film Festival, held in L.A’s newly cool downtown, our panel introduced
an attentive audience to the pressing question of “how to recognize and avoid unconscious bias
in your screenwriting.”
Moderator Rosanne Welch, a
professor at Stephens College, first asked her six panelists to explain, by way
of introduction, where they themselves were coming from. Maria Escobedo and
Evette Vargas, who both enjoy a long string of television writing credits, discussed
their place in the Latinx community. Screenwriter-producer Hanala Sagal, touted her role as a recovering alcoholic and as the
child of Holocaust survivors. Writer-director Donna Bonilla Wheeler saluted her
Peruvian mother and Irish father. Kala
Guess, representing Final Draft screenwriting software, identified herself
as a single parent and as someone who’s struggled with mental challenges. Several
panelists noted that they were only children, acutely aware of family dynamics.
The point being: that each of us is an amalgam of gender, ethnic, religious,
and familial connections. It’s our job as writers to create characters who are
no less complicated and no less true.
We all decried easy
stereotypes (the Latina spitfire, the loud-mouth Jewish mother, the pathetic
single mom). Donna Wheeler mentioned an upcoming film project in which she—attached
as a director—successfully campaigned to shift the protagonist’s role from male
to female. The result, which she was invited to write herself, deeply enriched
the central storyline. (I noted in passing that the role of Ripley in Alien,
triumphantly played by Sigourney Weaver, had originally been envisioned as
male.) Evette Vargas, who had worked with Welch on Touched by an Angel,
told an instructive story about the series, which involves angels played by
Della Reese and Roma Downey assuming various human disguises in order to help earthlings
in trouble. On one episode, they were pretending to be a wealthy woman and her
maid. The assumption in the writer’s room was that Downey would portray the wealthy
woman and the African-American Reese would take on the maid’s role. Vargas then
made the bold suggestion that the roles be reversed. Everyone was enthusiastic
for a moment, then pointed out that the ageing Reese was contractually limited to
a three-day work week, which would rule out her playing the meatier part.
Vargas, though, persisted, guessing that Reese would be willing to work longer
hours to take on the bigger (and less stereotypical) role. She was right.
Beginners are always
instructed to “write what you know.” So how do writers avoid limiting
themselves to their own perspective on what’s normal? All of us could agree
that one way is to have the widest possible range of friends and life experiences.
A broad, generous view of the
world is key to presenting that world in all its complexity.
The latest version of
Final Draft, the industry standard for screenwriting software, now offers an
Inclusivity Analysis feature. It allows writers to check on the degree to which
their project encompasses the full range of social possibilities. More on that,
perhaps, later.
No comments:
Post a Comment