by Lucy V Hay
So Lizzie pays The Stranger for the visit, with Frankie overjoyed when his ‘dad’ turns up at the football trials, as promised. We watch with glee as Ricky Monroe has to hand over his Top Trumps cards: ‘You won them fair and square,’ The Stranger says to Frankie. Simple boyhood pleasures are perfectly illustrated in this sequence: football; beach walks; skimming stones across the water. Again, it would have been easy for The Stranger to get this wrong and try to impress Frankie in some overblown way (or, worse, for someone else to mistake him for a potential threat to Frankie), but we get the feeling this is a man who knows how little boys tick. We are not concerned for Frankie: we realise The Stranger won’t drop the ball and reveal he is not really Frankie’s Dad; nor will circumstances conspire against them. Yet it’s still as much a surprise for the audience as it is for Lizzie when The Stranger asks to see Frankie again, the next day. Lizzie is dubious, but The Stranger cannily asks in front of the boy, leaving her with little choice but to say yes. Lizzie finds herself being dragged along with Frankie to the docks and they all spend the day (and much of the evening) together, a faux family, pretending for Frankie’s sake.
Yet it’s important to note that it’s not Frankie who is the protagonist of Dear Frankie, but Lizzie: she must learn to let go of her past and trust again – not only other people, but herself. Lizzie has spent years chastising herself for ‘allowing’ Frankie’s father to hurt him, and the boy’s deafness is a constant reminder of what she feels is her failure both as a mother and as a human being. The Stranger is instrumental in her making this important realisation, but so is the fact that Davey’s sister tracks them down during the course of the narrative. Again, the expected route would have been for The Stranger and Frankie’s ‘real’ Dad to meet and clash during the weekend, with The Stranger ‘standing up’ for Frankie and Lizzie. But the two men never cross paths. Instead, the sister breaks it to Lizzie that Davey is dying and wants to see his son one last time. Lizzie is unrepentant at first, saying she doesn’t care, despite the sister’s pleas; we don’t feel Lizzie is heartless, either, since Davey’s sister acknowledges the terrible wrong done to them by Davey. But because she is fundamentally a good person, Lizzie ends up going to see her ex, though she does not take Frankie with her. A fantastic sequence follows, because we feel sorry for the broken-down Davey at first, lying in bed, weak and feeble. Yet, within minutes, Davey has reverted to type, angry and calling Lizzie names, so we know she was right not to bring Frankie, as does she. Lizzie gains peace at last, not from Davey’s impending death, but from the knowledge she was right to leave him, in order to protect Frankie.
Ultimately, The Stranger returns to sea and writes to Frankie for real. Revealed to be Marie’s brother, we have the burgeoning hope he and Lizzie might get together in the future, though there is no proper hint of that yet. Instead, the resolution plays out a twist, both for Lizzie and for us: when Frankie writes back to The Stranger, he reveals he knows his real father died, thus telling us he knew all along it was his mother he was writing to. This could have come completely out of left field, but for three clues in the writing, painstakingly set up in the narrative:
• Frankie’s silence. Frankie speaks just once (and to The Stranger at that) in the course of the movie. Lizzie tells her mother she keeps writing so she ‘can hear his voice’. When we realise Frankie knew all along it was Lizzie he was writing to, it clicks with the audience that he wanted to talk to her as well; he was not shutting her out as Lizzie feared.
• The PO box. When Lizzie meets The Stranger for the first time, she says she has told Frankie that all post that goes to ships has to go through a ‘centralised system’ or similar, meaning he ‘never questions’ the PO box number. But if Frankie knew it was his mother he was writing to, he wouldn’t.
• The book. When The Stranger arrives, he brings a present for Frankie – a book. When Frankie sees it is about his favourite subject – stamps – he signs, ‘How did you know?’ Both Lizzie and Nell are flummoxed at this odd question, telling him, ‘From your letters, remember?’ But of course Frankie is asking how The Stranger knew, because Frankie knows The Stranger isn’t really his father.
Dear Frankie is a great example of a story that could easily have played out in a number of different ways, such as romance or comedy (or even both), yet the version we actually get proves the more difficult route is often the most meaningful. Dear Frankie is a melancholy, yet ultimately heart-warming, drama about the joys and pains of mothering.
What We Can Learn from Dear Frankie
Write Tips:
• Never go the ‘expected’ route when it comes to story or characters in your own spec drama screenplays. Yes, the expected might be easier, but the more difficult path always pays dividends.
• Recognise the importance of script development, especially script readings (with actors, if you can). Enter initiatives like the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum and/or set up your own.
• When it comes to character elements like Frankie’s deafness, it’s really important that this portrayal is realistic. Whilst your own budget may not allow for workshops and interpreters or similar (such as the makers of Dear Frankie were able to afford), it’s still possible to pursue free research opportunities, especially via the internet, social media and/or Skype.
• Don’t be afraid of small coincidences in plotting, like the stamp, as long as they get the protagonist INTO trouble, not out of it.
• If you want to utilise a twist at the end of your spec drama screenplay, be sure to set this up adequately, so it does not come out of nowhere, leaving the reader (and potential audience) feeling cheated.
Selling Points:
• With so much focus on female protagonists and characterisation at the moment, the pendulum has perhaps swung too far the other way, with male POVs sometimes excluded altogether from a lot of spec drama screenplays. Yet Dear Frankie shows a woman-centric story can still include boyhood ideals and desires, such as the need for a father figure to look up to and model oneself on. A sense of balance is key and offers more opportunities to sell the story ‘off the page’ to potential male collaborators, as well as audience members.
• Don’t be afraid of challenging yourself and the material: it was a long time before Andrea hit upon the notion of making Frankie deaf, which undoubtedly meant a significant amount of research and rewriting. But this element broke the story ‘open’ and gave the story its unique selling point (USP).
• Andrea’s story shows that both short films and entering schemes and competitions can be a great way of getting noticed. Discount nothing. Connect with as many people as possible and keep going with your projects. Andrea was contacted by that initial producer about Shona Auerbach because she had put herself out there.
• Like Andrea, recognise what actors can bring to your material, both in your mind’s eye and/or in the finished article. They are not puppets; they can breathe life into your characters. What are you GIVING them, besides the story?
• There is certainly less development money around nowadays than ten years ago, so you may have to collaborate with producers for nothing in the first instance. Make sure you all share the same vision for the project and what you want to get out of it – you will probably spend a lot of time with these people!
COMMON WRITER AND
DRAMA MISTAKES
THE AUTHOR IS DEAD?
Theme in produced drama may be subtle, or it may be delivered with force like a brick to the face! Whatever the case, one’s theme or message can be ambiguous because visual imagery can mean different things to different people. This may lead to heated debates, especially online, about what certain images, stories and characters mean; and this in turn can even lead to wild speculation and insults, including libellous posts, statuses and articles in which labels such as ‘racist’ or ‘misogynist’ are applied to writers and filmmakers because their crimes are allegedly ‘apparent’ on screen. No. Absolutely not. We must remember a story is by its very nature fi
ctional (even if a ‘true’ story!) and it is foolish in the extreme to assume a wish to tell a story automatically indicates some kind of latent desire to do someone down. If we terrorise writers and filmmakers and make them think twice about tackling difficult and controversial story matter, it won’t be long before we are left with only recycled material. Since there’s too much of that in the spec pile already, we do not want writers and filmmakers shying away from challenging story matter.
Continuing the idea of personal interpretation, when theme is understated it’s possible for a screenwriter and filmmaker to be at odds, not only with each other regarding the story and what it means as it is rendered as image, but with their audience too! Viewers may see another theme or message, or miss the one intended entirely, when the movie is released. That said, stories are by their very nature a communication, so it’s likely some, if not all, of a message will get through, even if its decoding may depend on the experiences, prior knowledge, and/or abilities of the audience. What’s more, by accepting that variety is the spice of life and that there is no ‘correct’ way to view theme, said screenwriters and filmmakers can be treated to new, interesting and exciting ways of viewing their work by audience members. As long as both sides remember no one has the right to tell others how to view a work, no matter what the intention behind it was, what’s not to like?
COMMON THEMES AND MESSAGES IN SPEC DRAMAS
As we’ve already established, most produced drama content features one of four major themes – morality, truth, responsibility and enlightenment – although, needless to say, there is a wide array of different subtypes of produced dramas mining those themes, to which I will return in due course. First, however, I’ll put under the microscope some of the messages I see most often in spec drama screenplays:
• Life is shit. If you think a typical drama screenplay is one big misery fest, you’re not alone: I’d bet real money that about 90 per cent of scribes attempting speculative drama screenplays think the same! As a result, the spec pile is infected – yes, infected – with a huge proportion of drama screenplays whose only message, apparently, is ‘Life is shit’! In these types of spec drama screenplays, clichéd characters (crying mums, violent boyfriends, bent coppers) live in depressing surroundings (tower blocks, sinkhole estates, skanky cities), fighting familiar problems (addiction, mental health issues, domestic abuse). But even if so many writers didn’t do this it would still be dull. Though a drama target audience may want to be challenged, they do still want to be entertained; it may be via a different way to, say, a movie like Jurassic Park (1993), but they want to be able to take away something positive, usually, from the experience. Forget that at your peril.
• You can never escape what you are. This notion of ‘inevitability’ in a spec drama screenplay is not a bad thing per se, but predictability definitely is. If a character is his or her own worst enemy, the reader (and thus the potential audience) needs to believe that the character COULD turn it around until the very last second. Similarly, a storytelling or literary device like non-linearity or dramatic irony needs to ‘pay off’ in the resolution that you set up earlier, otherwise your character’s descent is simply dull, with them ‘standing still’ for most of the journey.
• Crime pays. Writers of spec drama screenplays who deliver the ‘crime pays’ theme in their work typically create characters with very jaded and bitter world views, often in the belief this makes the protagonist in particular an ‘anti-hero’. It doesn’t. Though the character gives the illusion of moving forward, this is usually so he can rant about the state of the world and how unfair everything is. This is not edgy. Like the previous two approaches in this list, it’s just boring, I’m afraid!
• Men destroy women. It should be noted that male writers are just as likely to ‘do’ this theme as female writers. As I frequently point out on my website, I have seen NO correlation between the gender of writers and the material they create, especially nowadays: women are just as likely to write genres like science fiction or horror as men (though this was not always the case, in my experience). So writers often express surprise when I flag this theme up as being potentially a problem; surely, as an apparent ‘raging feminist’, I want to ‘slag men off’ every chance I get?? But, as I tell everyone who asks, it’s patriarchy I hate, NOT men; from my POV, the theme of women’s downfall being largely decided by the actions of men is patriarchal, reducing us to princesses in the tower. But even if you think that’s complete hogwash – and, being theme, that’s your right – I put it to you: given that ‘men destroy women’ is SUCH a popular theme in the spec drama screenplays pile, is it a good one to pick when we need to differentiate our stories from the hordes of others? I’m unconvinced it is. Also, of the copious numbers of drama screenplays I’ve read over the years with this theme or message, I’ve noted, interestingly, that these are the ones most likely to contain gratuitous rape scenes. A coincidence? Who knows? But one thing is for sure: nobody wants to see THAT crap.
• Home is where the hurt is. Growing up in an unsafe and/or invalidating environment is an unfortunate reality for so many people that it is unsurprising this message turns up so often in the spec drama screenplays pile. Again, this is not necessarily an issue, but spec drama scribes writing spec drama screenplays can make it an issue by reducing it so often to a black-and-white issue, i.e. the poor are miserable and ill-educated, with no aspirations, no parenting ability and no empathy for their partners; whereas the privileged are happy, well educated, good parents and in happy partnerships. Seriously??
MORE REASONS DRAMAS ARE A ‘HARD SELL’
There is a variety of reasons why spec drama screenplays (or even just their pitches) can be a ‘hard sell’, but I have boiled down the main ones here:
• Producer-led. You may watch awards ceremonies like the BAFTAs, Oscars and Golden Globes and dream of holding one of those statuettes in your hand for your own hit drama screenplay, but you can bet your last Rolo there’s a stock of producers out there thinking exactly the same thing. What’s more, rather than coming up with an idea and trusting to luck, those producers are ACTIVELY pursuing that dream of theirs: doing market research; reading the trades; attending film festivals; talking to contacts; finding writers they can work with. In other words, the average writer is about fifteen thousand miles behind the average producer when it comes to this dream. So why would a producer want to make YOUR idea for a brilliant drama screenplay, when they could be making their own?
• Adaptations. Many produced dramas, whether award-winning or not, are adaptations of novels or plays. It’s become so prevalent in fact that ceremonies have had to split many awards for screenplays into ‘best adapted’ and ‘best original’! But don’t let that fool you: it is not a level playing field by any stretch of the imagination. Getting an original drama project off the ground is supremely difficult, because it is not ‘pre-sold’. A drama based on something that already exists in the public consciousness can only be a good thing, but many writers are unable to afford the huge option payments due on the most popular novels. Nine times out of ten smaller producers (never mind individual writers!) won’t even get to hear about the option auctions, because the rights are sold to the highest bidder long before they’re even published.
• Permissions. An obvious thing for a writer who cannot afford or access expensive options on popular novels and plays is to adapt something out of copyright, which in the UK is the author’s lifetime plus 70 years (though this can differ country to country, so always find out exactly what the law states where you are). However, there are certain authors and playwrights out of copyright who have been mined extensively already, the most obvious being Jane Austen (particularly Pride and Prejudice), Lewis Carroll (particularly Alice in Wonderland), Charles Dickens (particularly Oliver Twist, but in reality all his works) and Shakespeare (again, pretty much everything!). Unless you can bring something startlingly original to these stories, it’s simply not worth attempting any of these authors a
s a spec drama screenplay, I’m afraid. Why? Because even if you are aware of all the projects that have been produced, there are probably hundreds of unproduced ones in the spec pile already as well. As an example, I recall a single year in which I personally read over 20 – 20!! – adaptations of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. They varied in both quality and format – from feature, to TV pilot, to short; one was a web series – yet, strikingly, nearly all were called Wonderland (or similar) and followed an investigation into a girl’s disappearance and/or murder in the style of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990). Extraordinary!
So, something else a writer may want to consider when tackling an adaptation for a spec drama screenplay may be a true story. The ins and outs of permissions for these are hard to nail down, with conflicting advice offered on the internet. On the true stories I have consulted on for producers, the general ‘rule of thumb’ appears to be: