Postcard #70 (Grayton Beach)

“In just a moment we’ll see how thin a line separates that which we assume to be real, with that manufactured inside of a mind.”
Rod Serling
Introduction to The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode 23
A World of Difference

Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend and many people are watching football games, shopping, or working (at football stadiums and malls), I thought I’d expose you to another part of the United States you may not be familiar with—as well as give you a little trivia about The Truman Show that I think screenwriters will find interesting. (This post is also a good example of what happens when you poke around in unlikely places.)

A short drive—or bike ride—from beautiful Seaside, Florida (where they shot much of The Truman Show) is Grayton Beach State Park that back in 1994 was named the number 1 beach in the US by Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman (known as Dr. Beach).

I took the photo at Grayton Beach State Park by a lagoon near the beach.  If you’re looking for a classic white sandy beach complete with sand dunes and not spoiled by condos and hotels, yet has nearby hotels and restaurants for cast and crew then Grayton in  Santa Rosa Beach, Florida fits the bill. As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on Seaside, if you’re interested in shooting a film in that area contact  The Emerald Coast Film Commission.

I also found a link at The Wall Street Journal where Don Steinberg pointing out how two Twilight Zone episodes are similar (perhaps story influences or story echoes) to The Truman Show. In Special Service from the 1989 season, “A man and his wife discover that their lives are secretly being videotaped and is a huge hit on a network television show.” Here’s the entire episode written by J. Michael Straczynski.

The other is from the 1960 Twilight Zone episode A World of Difference where, “A businessman sitting in his office inexplicably finds that he is on a production set and in a world where he is a movie star. Uninterested in the newfound fame, he fights to get back to his home and family.” Here’s the entire episode written by Richard Matheson. (Note the great inciting incident at the 2:04 mark.)

Remember the saying, “Producers want similar, only different.” Here a a couple qualified creative sources that I found over at Brain Pickings to help explain why there is nothing new under the sun:

“All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.”
Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s Letters, Vol. 2 of 2

“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”
Salvador Dalí
Letters of Note

Shakespeare was not only a master dramatist, but a master of sampling stories by other dramatists.

Related posts:
Screenwriting Quote #24 (J. Michael Straczynski) ““It doesn’t matter if you didn’t go to the best schools, if you’re a kid or in your 50s….”
Starting Your Screenplay (Tip #6)
Where Do Ideas Come From (A+B=C)
Movie Cloning (Part 2) “I think it’s fine for young (filmmakers) to out and out rip off people who come before them because you always make it your own.”—Francis Ford Coppola

Scott W. Smith

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Postcard #69 (Seaside)

“Meet Seaside, the idyllic town on the Florida Panhandle known for its perfect beaches, pastel cottages, and the kind of laid-back vacations we Southerners adore.”
Jennifer Mckenzie Frazier
Southern Living

“As the Bard says, ‘all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ The only difference between Truman and ourselves is that his life is more throughly documented.”
Christof (Ed Harris)
The Truman Show

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…even in Seaside, Florida. I took the photos on this post earlier this month when driving through the panhandle of Florida. I’m a long-time fan of the Seaside community, and since it’s the day after Thanksgiving I am thankful that I’ve been able to visit the area a handful of times since it was established in 1981.

But even if you’d never even heard of Seaside, you may be familiar with the Jim Carrey movie that was shot there—The Truman Show (1998). If you’re college age or younger it may be hard to realize what made the Andrew Niccol script for The Truman Show so prophetic. But once upon a time there wasn’t Facebook, You Tube, and reality TV programing to give us a close up on the lives of everyday people.

The Truman Show—and its perfect town of Seahaven—was a look of where we might be headed as a culture. I’ll leave it up to scholars, sociologists, and you to decide if the future is here or not.

In the meantime, here’s a couple of buildings in Seaside that at least give you a hint of the fruit of developer Robert S. Davis and his wife Cathy, and the architectural firm Duany Plater—and Zyberk & Company have had in shaping a unique spot in the United States. The goal was to make a seaside community (the unincorporated community sits on the Gulf of Mexico west of Panama City Beach) that was beautiful in design, regionally centered, as well as being pedestrian and eco-friendly. Seaside was on the ground floor of what is now known as New Urbanism.

 

If there’s one downside to Seaside it’s that it worked. Idealism has its price. Most of the homes I saw listed for sale in Seaside fell in the range of 1 million to 6 million dollars.  If you ever happen to be looking for an idyllic place for a destination wedding check out the tallest building in Seaside—the nondenominational Seaside Interfaith Chapel.

P.S. In The Newmaket Shooting Script Series of The Truman Show, Peter Weir (Dead Poet’s Society, Witness) talked  about writing a backstory of how The Truman Show can into existence to prepare him for directing the film. I think Peter Weir is brilliant and it’s worth your time to read or watch anything he’s touched.

Related post: Postcard #70 (Greyton Beach) With two complete episodes said to be similar in essence to The Truman Show.

Scott W. Smith

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Planes, Trains & Hunger Games

“I’m saying you are stuck in Wichita.”
Del Griffith (John Candy)
Planes, Trains and Automobiles

On Thanksgiving Day 2013 I decided to challenge myself to a movie mash-up. Could I take a classic 26 year old Thanksgiving story (Planes, Trains and Automobiles) and somehow connect it with a movie that is currently number one in the box office this Thanksgiving (Hunger Games: Catching Fire). According to Box Office Mojo Planes had a total gross of just under $50 million—Catching Fire made more than that its opening day and has gone on to make more than $300 million worldwide in the first six days of its theatrical release. 

Granted Planes was released in 1987 so you’d have to adjust those numbers to be an equal comparison, but the truth is that John Hughes written and directed film starring Steve Martin and John Candy was far below the box office winner (Three Men and a Baby) the year it was release. But when was the last time you heard anybody talking about Three Men and a Baby or quoting lines from that movie?

Like every year, 1987 had its share of memorable films that have endured. Some did well at the box office (Fatal Attraction) and others didn’t find their audience until later (The Princess Bride). But what makes Planes, Trains and Automobiles continue to entertain and please audiences today?

“Some movies are obviously great. Others gradually thrust their greatness upon us. When ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ was released in 1987, I enjoyed it immensely, gave it a favorable review and moved on. But the movie continued to live in my memory. Like certain other popular entertainments (‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,’ ‘Casablanca’) it not only contained a universal theme, but also matched it with the right actors and story, so that it shrugged off the other movies of its kind and stood above them in a kind of perfection. This is the only movie our family watches as a custom, most every Thanksgiving….The buried story engine of ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ is not slowly growing friendship or odd-couple hostility (devices a lesser film might have employed), but empathy. It is about understanding how the other guy feels.”
Roger Ebert
Review for Planes, Trains and Automobiles

What Ebert called a “buried story engine” I would call theme and emotion. Here are two of my favorite questions on those subjects:

“I think what makes a film stick to the brain is the theme.”
Screenwriter Bill Martell

“The goal of every screenplay, every movie, every novel, every story of any kind (and ultimately, every work of art) is identical: to elicit emotion.
Michael Hague
Selling Your Story in 60 seconds

Call it “an understanding how the other guy feels” or “empathy,” but 26 years from now people will still be watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I’m not sure the same can be said for Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The studios don’t care about that now, they’re making money. The reviews are good. They’ve done their job. Me? I’ll watch anything with Jennifer Lawrence in it (she had me at Winters Bone), but Catching Fire didn’t warm my bones. I felt like I was watching a middle program in an episodic TV show that was a cross between Survivor, LOST, and The Truman Show. (Please don’t tell me I need to read the books to appreciate the movie. That was never said of The Godfather—or The Wizard of Oz.) 

At first I thought maybe it was just me coming off a long road trip before I saw Catching Fire until I read ScriptShadow’s review of the film.

“The Hunger Games, and movies like it, represents one of the most thankless screenwriting jobs in Hollywood. Sure, you get to write one of the biggest movies of the year, but all the credit will go to the two people who sandwiched you in the process – the author of the original book, and the director who put the movie on the big screen.

To that end, that middle cog, the screenwriter who adapts these huge books, is allowed little to no creativity. His job amounts to that of a translator. Maybe that’s why Catching Fire feels so empty inside. Its two talented screenwriters, Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt, weren’t allowed to do anything but translate. And it’s left this movie without a soul.”
Carson Reeves/ScriptShadow
Movie Review—Catching Fire

Even if you really enjoyed the film (which many of its intended audience did) you have to admit it didn’t have what Arndt calls an “insanely great ending”—the credits just come up and you go, “I guess it’s over.” Just one of the problem of sequels.

BTW—Scriptshadow also had a good post this week on 10 Screenwriting Tips from Thanksgiving favorite: Plane Trains and Automobiles! 

P.S. Films released in 1987 worth going back and watching or re-watching include Empire of the Sun (Christian Bale’s first major film), Wall St. (Michael Douglas won an Oscar for his role created by Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser), Moonstruck, the third Coen Brother film—Raising Arizona, and my personal favorite of that year Broadcast News written and directed by James L. Brooks.

Related Posts:
40 Days of Emotions
Theme: What Your Movie is Really About
Writing from Theme (Tip #20)
Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)
“The Artists” 3— “Hunger Games” 0
Before John Hughes Became John Hughes (And how Planes was inspired by his day job.)

Scott W. Smith

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The Tennessee Williams Project

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire
Written by Tennessee Williams

New York actress Tory Flack in front of the house Grant Wood used for his painting “American Gothic.” Eldon, Iowa (2009)

Yesterday we went global big, today we’re going local small. Well, at least small scale in the big city. In one of the many posts I did on playwright Tennessee Williams this month I mentioned that his worked continues to gain in popularity since his death in 1983. So I wanted to tell you about an opportunity you have to support Bedlam Ensemble in their Kickstarter campaign for The Tennessee Williams Project.

They have three days remaining to raise an additional $1,000 to meet their goal and I’d love to have a few Screenwriting from Iowa angels help push them toward their goal of presenting “A unique twist on the one-act plays of Tennessee Williams” directed by Daniella Caggiano.

Bedlam Ensemble didn’t contact me, but I do have a connection with them. About five years ago I worked with one of the Bedlam actors, Tory Flack. First on a video project I produced for an economic development group and then on a short film I wrote and directed. Tory graduated with a theater degree from the University of Iowa—the same college where Tennessee Williams himself earned his college degree.

I took the above photo of Tory in front of the house in Eldon, Iowa Grant Wood used in his painting “American Gothic”—one of the most recognizable paintings in the history of art. It was zero degrees when I took that photo. Consider giving to The Tennessee Williams Project just because Tory not only gave her lines when it was zero degrees—but could smile as well. Here’s an updated photo of Tory by Chicago photographer Johnny Knight. (Throw Johnny a little kindness if you need some photography work done in Chicago, and consider Tory for that film you’re casting.)

Tory’s a very talented actress and I’m glad she’s found her way to New York where her acting gigs include the Brooklyn Shakespeare Festival. So while I’m not familiar with the Bedlam Ensemble, my hunch is Tory has connected with some like-minded actors. I saw the Bedlam Kickstarter campaign on a  Facebook post last night. Bedlam Ensemble is in its fourth season and according to their Kickstarter page:

“We chose to present the one act plays of Tennessee Williams because of their beautifully poetic language, striking characters, and the great potential for ensemble work. However, these wonderful plays are not in the public canon, which means we have to pay for the right to perform them. Your support will help us pay for those rights, as well as the cost of renting The Gene Frankel Theatre—an appropriate venue since Gene Frankel in fact knew Tennessee Williams. We also need to cover the expense of putting together the lights, costumes,set, and sound design that bring the world of the play to life; and the funds for advertising our show to the world so we can get the word out and have the best possible audience.”

Lastly, I heard an interview with Tennessee Williams last week (probably from the ’60s or ’70s) where he talked about the importance of smaller regional theaters around the country as being very important for the development of writers. So seek out and support groups like Bedlam Ensemble. And if you have some plays, contact Bedlam’s literary manager Daniella Caggiano (dcaggiano@gm.slc.edu) about submitting your script.

P.S. Performance is scehduled for January 15th-26th 2014 at the Gene Frankel Theatre in NYC.

Related posts:
Postcard #65 (Tennessee Williams) Tennessee is buried in St. Louis.
Postcard #66 (Sewanee) Where Williams’ willed his literary works.
The Catastrophe of Success (Part 1)
The Catastrophe of Success (Part 2)
Don’t Quit Your Day Jon (2.0) One of the great characters in theater came from a job Williams hated.
Postcard #64 (Columbus, MS) Where Tennessee Williams was born.

Scott W. Smith

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The Black List Annual Report (2013)

“[Franklin] Leonard grew up in Columbus, Ga., as one of a handful of black students in his high school, which he says has always helped him identify with outsiders.”
Rachel Dodes
The Wall Street Journal

“Screenwriting from Iowa…and Other Unlikely Places” readers in 2013 represent 116 Countries

It always seems to come back to Juno.

Yesterday I came across the The Black List Annual Report for 2013 and it’s fun to look at just because it’s so well designed by Glen Charbonneau. I also learned that the first script on The Black List to win an Oscar was Diablo Cody’s Juno. The same movie that inspired the launching of this blog because it was written by an outsider. Cody was Chicago born and raised, received her college education in Iowa, and lived and worked in Minneapolis when her writing on the side got the attention of a Hollywood insider.

But beyond the design and glance at the history of launching the first Black List in 2006 the report also gives a sweeping overview of the work they are doing. If you are unfamiliar with The Black List check out The Wall Street Journal article, For Budding Screenwriters, a Way Past the Studio Gates. 

Franklin Leonard’s had an interesting journey on his way to being the founder of The Black List; Raised in small town Georgia, degree from Harvard, analyst at McKinsey in New York, agent assistant at CAA, and creative executive at Will Smith’s company is Los Angeles.

The Black List has morphed and grown over the years and now includes Scott Myers’ Go Into The Story as its official blog and a forums section, The Black Board, with Shaula Evans as the Keymaster. I see The Black List as a place that celebrates talent, fosters community, and is doing its part in providing a pathway for screenwriters and producers to connect.

And while the bulk of the screenwriters connected with The Black List are in the Los Angeles area it’s also nice to see that they are providing a door to people in unlikely places all over the world.

P.S. On a similar note check out the Reddit poster “profound_whatever” who is a script reader who has also put together a nice screenwriting graphic that offers some insights into where scripts come from and some “recurring problems”the ones he reads has—such as “The story begins too late in the script.” That’s the most common problem I see when people ask me to read a script. Many times I’ve told writers the same thing, “I read ten pages and nothing happened.” And the most common answer I get back  is, “Well, I’m setting up the story.” Go watch Kramer Vs. Kramer and then Winter’s Bone and see how long the filmmakers take in setting up the story. (Spoiler: They both come out of the gate like horses at the Kentucky Derby. Granted ever script doesn’t need to have a scene one inciting incident, but I think the less established you are the sooner your story should start.)

P.P.S. Going back to a quote by CodyI first read in ’08, “Just put your stuff out there and see what happens,” I get a kick that since its inception this blog has been read in more than 85% of the countries , regions, and dependent areas of the world, including Burndi, Macau, Suriname, and Yemen. Thanks for reading wherever you are in the world and best wishes on your writing finding an audience.

Related Posts:

The Outsider Advantage
The First Black Feature Filmmaker
Screenwriting Quote #180 (Justin Kremer)
The World Outside of Hollywood (Buck Henry quote)
One of the Benefits of Being an Outsider ( Robert Rodriguez quote)

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting from a Wheelchair

“Actually the really cool thing about being more and more gimpy is I really don’t care about my hair loss at all.”
Screenwriter Scott Lew
(Who has ALS, known as Lou Gehrig Disease)

Today on Screenwriting from Iowa…and Other Unlikely Places we’ll learn about an unlikely place not tied to geography.

My last post was on Franklin, Tennessee so it makes a nice segue today to have a Franklin Leonard inspired post.  It helps that I just read this Retweet from @franklinleonard (originally from @theblcklst) :

Next time you even think about complaining about how hard it is to be a screenwriter, watch this. Watch it now too. http://buff.ly/1aKU9n8 

The link is for an artcle at The Atlantic with a video about Scott Lew who wrote the Sexy Evil Genius (2013) screenplay.

“Lew has ALS, a degenerative disease that causes gradual loss of movement, and he can currently control only a few facial and eye muscles. He depends on infrared technology and an assistant to put his words to paper.”
Katherine Wells
The Atlantic/ The Creative Process of a Paralyzed Screenwriter

Scott W. Smith

@franklinleonard

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Postcard #68 (Fall in Franklin)

”Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
Ben Franklin

After traveling around the county over the years for various productions there are a few cities and towns that I find special—Franklin, Tennessee is one of those places. Located just south of Nashville the town was founded in 1799 and named after Ben Franklin. I took the photo of the late fall leaves yesterday when I had the opportunity to walk around the shops in the historic downtown area.

If you’ve never heard of Franklin you may be surprised to learn of some the people who have (or had) homes in and around the Franklin area; Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman and her Grammy-winning country star husband Keith Urban, five-time CMA Male Vocalist of the Year Brad Paisley (who had two songs on the Cars soundtrack) and his actress wife Kimberly Williams-Paisley (Father of the Bride, Nashville), actress Ashely Judd (Heat) and her champion race car driving husband Dario Franchitti, and Carrie Underwood and her pro hockey husband Mike Fisher have 400 acres there with plans to build.

If that sounds like neighbors you’d like to have (and there are 60,000 or so regular folks living there as well), the uber talented couple Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are selling their 753 acres (complete with four houses and once owed by Hank Williams Sr.) in Franklin for $20 million.  (They bulit a new house betwen Franklin and downtown Nashville.)

McGraw has not only had more than 30 number one songs, but has popped up as an actor in Friday Night Lights and The Blind Side.  Earlier this month McGraw’s latest single Southern Girl (written by Jaren Johnston, Rodney Clawson, and Lee Thomas Miller) became a #1 hit. Even if you don’t like county music, perhaps you can appreciate the geography covered in the song.

Related Posts:
Muscle Shoals Music & Movie
The Advantage of Being from ______ (“I know one writer, believe it or not, who launders his scripts through a phony address he has in Murfreesboro, Tennessee,  outside of Nashville, because it’s just more exciting than one more writer from the San Fernando Valley.”–UCLA’s Richard Walter)

Scott W. Smith

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Postcard #67 (Nashville)

There’s been a load of compromisin’
On the road to my horizon
But I’m gonna be where the lights are shinning on me
Rhinestone Cowboy
Written by  Larry Weiss and performed by Glen Campbell

“All the stuff all your writing teachers and all the books say about ‘it’s the journey that matters’ is totally true. Disregard that bon mot at your peril. Writing is so painful and so heartbreaking and takes so long, that if you aren’t having a wonderful time while you’re a failure, you won’t have any fun when you’re a success.”
Will Akers
Your Screenplay Sucks! 

While Nashville is known as being the county music capital, it’s also long been quite a production hub. Granted like the tv show Nashville (created by Oscar winning screenwriter Callie Khouri) and the Robert Altman film Nashville much of the production there centers around the music industry.

I took the above photo while passing through Nashville is a little pedestrian but it does show the layers of clubs you find in the Music Row area on any given night. The clip below is a great example of music and film blending together brilliantly. Keith Carradine won an Oscar for Best Original Song for I’m Easy which he wrote and performed in the 1975 Altman film.

But there are other stories to tell in Nashville and the surrounding areas of Tennessee and screenwriter & professor Will Akers is staring a new venture in Nashville to help train up and coming filmmakers. Akers wrote the book Your Screenplay Sucks! which I’ve pulled a few quotes from over the years, and for 19 years taught screenwriting a Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He is now the dean of the new film program at Belmont University.

I had lunch will Akers yesterday across the street from the Nashville campus and had a fun conversation talking about film and screenwriting. In a short time we cover the gamma from Peter Bogdanovich and John Ford to Pieces of April and Winter’s Bone. I had read Aker’s book and his blog, but had never met him before. But we have a shared loved for movies and screenwriting so it was a fast paced conversation that personally felt like talking to an long time friend. Found out we even had a connection in that we both studied under Bruce Block.

It also turns out that Tennessee native Akers’ has a connection to Tennessee Williams. When I mentioned to Akers about visiting The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee earlier in the week he told me that once received a Walter E. Dakin Memorial Fellowship which is part of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. In my post Postcard #66 (Sewanee) I mentioned that the literary Tennessee Williams willed his literary rights to The University of the South in memory of his grandfather who attended the school of seminary at Sewanee. His grandfather’s name was Walter E. Dakin.

Akers has high hopes for the program at Belmont and it will be exciting to watch it develop. Nashville may not qualify as an “unlikely place” to be making films because of its production history, but it’s another example of the pulse of what’s going on outside of Los Angeles.

P.S. As you wander the streets of Nashville and watch the many young (and some not so young) people carrying around their guitars it’s not hard to realize that Nashville and Los Angeles are cousins. They’re hotspots of the world where creative people take their talent and dreams in hopes that they will flourish.

Related posts:
“Your Screenplay Sucks!”
Screenwriting Quote #158 (William M. Akers)
John Ford’s Advice to Spielberg Touches on a helpful book by Bruce Block.
Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)
“Goal. Stakes. Urgency.” (Tip #60) A post that touches on both Winter’s Bone and Pieces of April.
No Emotions? “Your Screenplay Sucks!”

Scott W. Smith

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Postcard #66 (Sewanee)

“How weak is man? How often do we stray from the straight and narrow?”
Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton in the movie version)
The Night of the Iguana written by Tennessee Williams

“Have you seen the cross?” I had no idea what the lady was talking about. On Monday I made a quick stop off I-24 in Sewanee, Tennessee to take a couple of photos at The University of the South campus.  I read recently that the school was willed the literary rights to the works of Tennessee Williams and I was intrigued.

I was trying to get a photo of the large Gothic chapel on campus but the setting sun was too low for me a shot I liked. That’s when the lady asked me if I had seen the cross. She seemed to think it was something I should see, so I followed her instructions and five minutes later I pulled up to the cross which is 60 feet tall.  Now the setting sun was working in my favor and I got the above shot. (The Sewanee War Memorial Cross was constructed in 1922.)

So why did Tennessee Williams leave has literary rights to a school which sits atop the Cumberland Plateau between Nashville and Chattanooga, and that was founded in 1860 by Episcopal priests?

It’s because that’s where his grandfather, an Episcopal priest, graduated from the School of Theology. I’ve read that Tennessee Williams is only second to Shakespeare in frequency of plays produced today so that literary estate must be doing quite well. Check out the link The Tennessee Williams Legacy on the school’s website.

“I was born a Catholic, really. I’m a Catholic by nature. My grandfather was an English Catholic (Anglican), very, very high church. He was higher church than the Pope. However, my ‘conversion’ to the Catholic church was rather a joke because it occurred while I was taking Dr. Jacobson’s miracle shots. I couldn’t learn anything about the tenets of the Roman Catholic church, which are ridiculous anyway. I just loved the beauty of the ritual in the Mass. But [my brother] Dakin found a Jesuit father who was very lovely and all, and he said, ‘Mr. Williams is not in a condition to learn anything. I’ll give him extreme unction and just pronounce him a Catholic.’

I was held up in the Roman Catholic church, with people supporting me on both sides, and I was declared a Catholic. What do you think of that? Does that make me a Catholic? No, I was whatever I was before.

And yet my work is full of Christian symbols. Deeply, deeply Christian. But it’s the image of Christ, His beauty and purity, and His teachings, yes . . . but I’ve never subscribed to the idea that life as we know it, what we’re living now, is resumed after our death. No. I think we’re absorbed back into, what do they call it? The eternal flux? The eternal shit, that’s what I was thinking.”
Tennessee Williams
Interviewed by Dotson Rader for the Paris Review

Williams’ play (and the movie that followed) The Night of the Iguana is about a defrocked Episcopal priest.

P.S. A little Night of the Iguana trivia; The cross that Richard Burton wore in the movie belonged to Williams’ grandfather and is on now on display at the former house that Williams lived in in Columbus, Mississippi where his grandfather used to minister. It was donated by Williams’ nieces.

P.P.S.
At the base of the Sewanee cross it reads:

WWI
To the sons of Sewanee who answered their country’s call to service win the World War 1917-1918.

WWII
To those from the University, the Military Academy, Sewanee, and all Franklin County in World War II. 1941-1945.

Related post: Postcard #64 (Columbus, MS)

Scott W. Smith

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Postcard #65 (Tennessee Williams)

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks! The world thirsts after sympathy, compassion, love.”
Don Quixote character in Camino Real 
Play written by Tennessee Williams
(The first part is engraved on Williams’ headstone.)

It just so happens that in the midst of this run of posts on the life and work of Tennessee Williams I drove through St. Louis, Missouri yesterday and basically had enough time to stop and take the above photo at Calvary Cemetery north of I-70.

I knew of Williams’ connection to St. Louis, but did not realize he was buried there until doing research on these recent set of posts. Danny Manus in his Script article posted yesterday, Notes from the Margins: Every Article on Screenwriting You Never Have to Read Again, may be correct when he stated that 90% of screenwriting blogs are “regurgitated bullshit,” so the way I try to set myself apart from the hundreds of screenwriting and writing blogs is to take you to places like Columbus, Mississippi where Williams was born and Calvary Cemetery where he was laid to rest.

The stake I put in the ground on January 22, 2008 (with the post Life Beyond Hollywood) was that this blog would be come from the angle of a Hollywood outsider. Of course, along the 1,684 posts I’ve quoted more than 400 Hollywood insiders, but I’ve always been concerned with writers’ origins and a sense of place. You can’t separate Chekhov from Russia, Ibsen from Norway , or Shakespeare from England. And you can’t separate Tennessee from Mississippi, or New Orleans, or St. Louis.

In fact— from the perspective of this blog—if there is a bookend to screenwriter Diablo Cody (who was the inspiration behind starting this blog just a few days after seeing Juno) it is Tennessee Williams. Like Cody, Williams graduated from the University of Iowa. Both achieved awards at the highest level for their dramatic writing (Williams a Tony and a couple of Pulitzer Prizes, and Cody an Oscar). Other commonalities between the two writers are a struggle with depression, an enjoyment of alcohol, and a mixing of the sacred and the profane.

I’m not saying that Cody is on the same plain as the hallowed Williams, just that they make a nice bookend to what this blog is about in hopes that it will help inspire you in your writing. (And to be fair to Cody, when Williams was 35-years old as Cody is now, he was known for just one major play.) As I was driving 25 hours over the last two days I also connected Williams with writers Ernest Hemingway and Pat Conroy, in that part of what shaped them as writers was a love for books at an early age as well as interesting (read highly dysfunctional) dynamics between their fathers and/or mothers.

Circling back to Williams’ gravesite, in one interview I saw he said he wanted to be buried at sea—as close to his poet hero Hart Crane as possible. Yet there he is in a Catholic Cemetary with his mother and sister buried on each side of him. Williams’ sister Rose may be the single person in his life that influenced him the most. She is the basis for Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. Perhaps the most powerful over-arching theme in Williams work is the fragileness of human life. A theme by the way, which will always have an audience.

“Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger—anything that can blow your candles out! For nowadays the world is lit by lighting! Blow out your candles, Laura, and so goodbye….”
Tom in The Glass Menagerie
Written by Tennessee Williams

P.S. I know Angelina Jolie has a tattoo on her left that are slightly modified words from Tennessee Williams; “A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.”
 I don’t have any tattoos, but if I got one right now I think I’d go with, “The world thirsts after sympathy, compassion, love.”

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