In honor of Spring, myself and my a few of my fellow lady writers introduced a new hashtag to celebrate the work of our peers, mentors, and selves.
#FemaleScreenwriterThursday debuted on International Women’s Day and has been up and running on Twitter for a few weeks. While a week old, I wanted to embed a threat on one of my projects that I’ve featured here in my blog in the past, FALL.
If you are on Twitter, I highly recommend jumping in, searching this hashtag and seeing what amazing stories you can follow — and fantastic writers you can meet.
Wanted to spend a thread talking about a project near and dear to me that seems to hit in waves of relevance. FALL, my supernatural drama/horror about the women of a small town going insane after a school shooting… #femalescreenwriterthursday
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
It’s an indie supernatural drama/horror that often makes me balk as it was born from maternal fear and calls-out those that co-opt others’ grief for their own self-promotion. It puts my fears front & center in a tale that allows a collective of American women to lose their shit.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
FALL has had many titles and gone through many iterations. Has been honored by #AFF and @sundanceorg and @BiatchPack , but originated in 2014 from two seeds: my love of an ancient play about the dangers of extremity of position—and the tragedy at Sandy Hook…
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
In #THEBACCHAE, Dionysus (Bacchus) travels to Thebes to seek vengeance on a family that ostracized his mother and refused to recognize his divinity. Dionysus drives the women of Thebes mad, gathering them into a collective of worshippers who take the hills in primordial abandon.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
Dionysus sets his sights on the king, his cousin. Generations spar over what is “proper,” women shun “traditional” roles as they abandon all to join the worshipping hordes, and a young man is led to the slaughter when in a hallucinatory rage his own mother tears him to shreds.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
…Calm descends, and all are shunned for their horrific crimes. Yes, I know; warm and fuzzy stuff.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
While the details of his life are unclear, The Bacchae was Euripides’ last piece in a body of work. One theory is that he wrote this in exile during his last days—mourning his home, and a way of life tragically cut short during the Peloponnesian War. ..
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
Or, it may have been a final act of spiteful bridge-burning. This play is not a story of fickle gods/ tragic human loss. Nor is it infallibility of the divine/ human error. It is about dangers of extremities of position. Unfeeling isolation. Unwavering judgement. Orgiastic chaos.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
This is my baffled gaslit confusion as now we stand in the UpsideDown of American political discourse. No compromise. No empathy. No ability to process the emotional truths of our neighbor. We literally crave to tear one another apart for merely existing with an opposing opinion.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
This ancient play always resonated for its open-ended ambiguity; for a divine devilish pro/antagonist who sought to destroy the destroyers. It prompted thoughts about cycles of violence, and the hamstrung post-mortem conversations we avoid after tragedies such as mass shootings.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
So out of these thoughts I found a channel to express my horror as a mother in the wake of Sandy Hook… and then after so, so many other mass shootings to the point I felt like Cassandra with my frighteningly-predictable dialogue…
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
…and teens who flood out of a high school, abandoning all in a supernaturally-induced walkout. (Seriously, now I feel like a current-issues hack)
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
FALL is an ensemble film that centers around Abbie, an elderly teacher weighed-down by guilt for a school shooting she couldn’t foresee; Don, a hard-drinking god who loves nothing more than the feral, the wild—but secretly craves a mortal life of children and love…
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
and Pete, a repressed farmer and former high school golden boy pushed into a political landscape where buzzwords and talking points override a community’s grief. ..
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
It’s a small, conservative town where emotions are bottled up, everyone knows everyone else’s business, and you can never escape the bullies, the nagging parents, nor the frustration of not living a life you want.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
Until one day it’s all washed away in a wave of rage.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
FALL moves in three parts – not so much narrative acts, but more like symphonic movements.
There is the mundane, the boring, the everyday—where we’re too busy to notice the beauty surrounding us, the pain behind a paused breath, or a child needing a listening ear.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
Then there is where we are permanently frozen—communities, parents, and politicians ignoring tragedy and refusing to “politicize” it all as we all must agree to move ahead as a unified front… but zombie-like, aware that the minute we show emotion or pause we’ll crumble…
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
And then the final movement. Collapse. The letting go. When emotions are released to run wild after being bottled up for so long. Chaos reigns as a community breaks down, floodgates open, and ghosts with old grudges—and an entire town of women—let their true feelings run wild.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
Skewing genre expectations, FALL, to me, is THE SWEET HEREAFTER’S meditation on grief slammed headlong into AMERICAN GODS’ supernatural tapestry of immortals, spirits, and mankind.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
Masculine versus feminine; civilized versus wild.
In this small Iowa town, toxic masculinity drives a timely story about our response to mass shootings, and how we co-opt tragedy to suit our own means.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
Here, the “good guy with the gun” meets the liberal, rules-don’t-apply “you all are not worthy” man who craves anarchy and chaos.
And both come to realize that the women they used as pawns have the final say.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
It’s my arthouse rant into the winds in honor of my son–and in fear of the country he’s being raised in. It’s one of many of my stories, but it is a personal one. #femalescreenwriterthursday fin pic.twitter.com/8wzBsO72my
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 15, 2018
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