How Sweet It Is
How sweet it was. Early in the morning, dreams still within my grasp, I opened my email to discover my script was an “Official Selection” of the DC Shorts.
Read on. You, Elizabeth Appell, are invited to Washington, D.C. to oversee a table reading of your short script, Easy Made Hard. AND…AND…if you win the Audience’s Favorite Award, you will collect $2,000 without passing go.
Well, hells bells. I’m on!
I booked a cheap ticket through Hot Wire and on October 15th caught a big bird east. I knew I had a stop in Salt Lake. Never been there. But wait! What’s this? Hot Wire neglected to include in the itinerary that I also would have to stop in Detroit. How lucky could I be?
Finally, after taking off and landing twice, swimming like a salmon up stream through airport crowds and eating dry and tasteless food offered by three or four pathetic choices located in the airport arcade, (no longer do they serve food on the flights,) I arrive cranky and spent in the nation’s capital.
11 PM. I stumble onto a cab and head for the Palomar Hotel. I lean back, close my eyes, take a breath and wait for my atoms, which are strung like Christmas lights across the country, to catch up. When I open my eyes, I gasped.
A glowing beacon hovered across the river in the darkness. The Lincoln Memorial. Tears leapt into my eyes. God Bless America.
For the next four days I operated on Pacific Standard Time, only I was in the East. That meant I went to bed at 1PM THEIR time and woke up 3AM MY time. Brutal. But who needed sleep when you were in the groove.
Well, sort of in the groove.
Jonathan Gann, Founder and Director of DC Shorts had sent headshots of black actors for me to peruse before I left. (My script is written for an all black cast.) I had requested three older men to audition for the father’s part and three younger guys to audition for the son.
Five other writers had also been bestowed the honor, and they too had been sent headshots from which to choose.
On Saturday morning, thirty Thespians arrived to perform monologs. From this pool of talent we were to choose actors for our readings. All shapes and sizes trooped in, with one exception. All shapes and sizes of white people. Only one black actor showed up.
Okay, what now? This is NOT being in the groove.
I felt uncomfortable casting the one young black guy, (although his monolog was beautifully done,) to play opposite a white father. I feared the racial mix would throw an element into the play that would only puzzle the audience and detract from the truth of my story.
So, what’s a writer to do?
This writer chose two white actors, John Bailey, who would read Curtis Brown, the father, and John Robert Kenna, who would read the son, Tyrone. In the first cold reading I knew I’d made the right decision. Within seconds these two talented men checked their whiteness at the door and took on the tragic characters of this father and son and played them with a palpable rawness that was heartbreaking.
We did not win the $2000. This too is a symptom of NOT being in the groove. But we were playing on the hometown field and that’s a tough one to beat. No matter, we got raves, great feedback, and the high of hitting the notes just right. That IS being in the groove.
DC Shorts is now in its 6th year and has been named by MovieMaker Magazine as “one of the nation’s leading short film festivals. They screen 100 movies made by filmmakers from across the U.S. as well as from 10 different countries.
As I bid adieu to the whirl wind, Jon Gann, he hugged me and said he looked forward to seeing Easy Made Hard…as a film. My hope (a four-letter word) is it will be accepted to be screened in 2010 festival.
Thank you, DC Shorts, for the encouragement. Your early morning email spurred me on and the film is quickly becoming a reality.
