NOVEMBER 2, 2023 – Many years ago Beth, our two sons, and I went on vacation in Sedona, Arizona. We hiked, skied (well, three of us did), ate, played cards, slept (in)—mostly because we’d stayed up late playing cards—visited the Grand Canyon, toured the Lowell Observatory, and went on a dune buggy expedition among lots of sagebrush. We also watched movies at the Sedona Film Festival.
As a result of viewing back-to-back films several consecutive evenings, Byron and I found ourselves bitten by the film bug. We tossed about a number of ideas for a short that we ourselves could make. Of course, we had no idea what was involved in producing a film—except for what we’d gleaned from a “workshop” session at the film festival. We thought naively that by taking a beginner’s class or two and learning how to make really good popcorn, we might one day be invited to enter a film in some festival and walk away with a prize—for popcorn, if not filmmaking.
But first (we figured) we needed a compelling story, just as movie theaters need really good popcorn . . . to attract viewers. Yeah, right.
* * *
A year earlier I’d submitted a story—a true story—to the publisher of a glossy Twin Cities magazine. A couple of weeks later, the publisher called me.
“I forwarded your piece to my chief editor,” he said, “who told me it made him cry. He showed it to his editorial staff, and it made them cry. I showed it to my wife, and it made her cry. Then I read it . . . and it made me cry. We’d like to give it special feature treatment in our next issue.”
I was elated but surprised. As far as I knew I’d never written anything—except possibly a break-up letter—that had made anyone cry.
* * *
A few days after we’d left Sedona, Byron called me at work. “Dad,” he said excitedly as he ate his desk lunch at his Midtown Manhattan office. “I thought of a story for our film.”
“Yeah?”
“The story you got published.” He meant the story that had made people at the magazine cry.
Just as the beginner popcorn maker is told that it’s “all about the corn-popping oil,” so is the aspiring filmmaker informed that a storyboard is the foundation of every movie (or so I was informed via the results of my Google search query, “How do you make a good movie?”). Thus, I set about building a sequence of illustrations giving visual effect to “the story that made them cry.”
But then what? All the “how to books” I’d accumulated portrayed a steep and treacherous climb—after trudging over a vast plain of concepts, crawling through an urban sprawl of equipment and technology, getting lost in a jungle of techniques, navigating across an ocean of possibilities, and walking in circles inside a maze of refinements. I never got past the pile of books.
After months of going nowhere, all I had to show for my head-first dive into ankle-deep corn-popping oil (as Byron maintained a safe distance to achieve disassociation) was my deflatable unicorn—my storyboard of illustrations.
After numerous consultations with Byron, I decided it was time to seek outside help and partnerships. Together we made an appointment with George Sheangshang in New York. George was an affable film-law lawyer who’d played a role in the production of Garrison’s 2006 movie directed by Robert Altman, A Prairie Home Companion. I’d worked on the financing end of things and in the process had gotten to know George. Seven years later, he was kind enough to meet with Byron and me about our movie-making hallucinations. In retrospect, George was immensely charitable for not having laughed himself silly in our presence. I have no doubt that he rolled his eyes after bidding us farewell.
Byron and I relished our token reward, however: a glimpse of all the playbills, movie posters, and autographed head shots that adorned the walls of George’s well-appointed office suite. The exposure was well worth the periodic embarrassment I felt every time I recalled our meeting[1].
Back in Minnesota I pursued various contacts and referrals. Ahead of each meeting I sent a treatment or film proposal I’d drafted and revised a hundred times. The generous souls who gave me their time and attention were as self-restrained as they were gracious: no one told me, “Stick to your day job.” In continuing self-delusion, I refused to read between the lines.
In fact, out of kindness each person gave me just enough implied encouragement for me to take the next step: reading a whole book about writing screen plays. Then I purchased a screen-writing app and wrote a complete screenplay based on “the story that made them cry.”
I gave a printout to my good friend Jurek, a Polish-born immigration lawyer who, as a graduate of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (the Oxford of Poland) was one of the best read, best educated people I knew, with a learned eye for things cinematic—but absolutely no knowledge about how a film is actually produced. After reading the screenplay start to finish, Jurek burst into my office with a cascade of compliments. “You absolutely have to drop whatever you’re doing and make this happen,” he said, waving the screenplay in the air. This is will be a blockbuster. It’s a movie that will be popular with people of all ages everywhere. It’s a story that will make them cry.”
He then returned to his law practice, and I to mine.
A man with a dream often walks in blissful ignorance down a path until he’s stuck waist-deep in corn-popping lard. In my case it took a while to reach my destiny. But at least I’d acquired a couple of souvenirs along the way: my storyboard and . . . a screenplay that my polymath Polish friend said would make for a smash-hit movie; one that would “make them cry.”
Some time later, Byron called to check in, again during his 10-minute desk lunch. By then the bite of the film bug had faded but not quite disappeared.
“Anything happening with the movie idea?” Byron asked.
“Nah. I’ve been pretty busy with other stuff,” I said, in large part truthfully.
“You know Dad, I was thinking . . . you’re not a filmmaker. You’re a writer. What you should be doing is writing a book, a novel based on the story.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. The conversation shifted to other topics until business—his and my own—required us to wrap up our call.
That evening during my power walk, I thought about Byron’s suggestion. He was right. What in the world had given me the ridiculous idea that I could make a movie? Yet, my childlike dream brought an unexpected benefit. In the darkness of my walking route, I experienced a flash of light: the “movie delusion,” however guileless, was an exercise in visualization. If a writer tells the reader what to see, the filmmaker shows the viewer. So, I thought, what if in writing the book version of my story I used a mental storyboard of illustrations to enhance my writing, and with the semblance of a screenplay, what if I sat in an imaginary director’s chair and conceived each scene through a figurative camera lens?
I returned to the house, opened my laptop, and began to write. Upon the story that had “made them cry” I would superimpose the three successively higher arcs of tension and resolution that shape a movie. Adherence to this convention would require some departures from historical reality without sacrificing the essence or foundational facts of the true story. In the process the work would better explore familial conflict and reconciliation. The central details that made Jurek and the magazine people cry, however, are as true and accurate as the memories (and writings) of the family members who experienced them and are still alive.
Months later I completed the book, though a writer—and perhaps a filmmaker—is never finished. May the reader, with tissue in hand, now enjoy the fruits of the experiment.
Finally, followers of my blog series Inheritance will recognize certain ground covered in the first three chapters of this book. The familiar territory provides critical background for the main stage and character development in The Story that Made Them Cry. Thus, the reader will profit by re-tracing a few early steps. Not to worry, however: the path of discovery soon deviates from the scenery and subject matter of Inheritance.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Perhaps I subsequently achieved a modicum of redemption, however, when George called me to consult about his work on behalf of a famous public radio personality who was trying to pattern his relationship with NPR after the one I’d helped create for Garrison with MPR in 2002. George called quite a few times in the course of his efforts. I never sent him a bill for “consultation.” I figured my suggestions were the least I could do in recognition of his generous accommodation of Byron and me years earlier.
