Last wk 4 #FemaleScreenwriterThursday I talked about FALL, my spec on school shootings where the forests & farmfields of Iowa give life to maternal rage. This wk is all about THE WOMAN FROM THE NORTH. A script that acts as a letter of apology to my grandmothers.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
T.W.F.T.NORTH is a supernatural drama/horror. It’s about an elderly vampire who must take revenge on ex-lover who destroyed her family & trapped her in eternal old age, but she’s been held hostage by a lonely American Vet who’s convinced she’s a Nazi war criminal…
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
& She has one night to escape to spring her trap.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
Honored by Nicholl and @StoweStoryLabs it’s as if The Debt met Let The Right One In. The Woman From The North intercuts timelines to paint an epic, sweeping biopic of one woman’s life, the horrors she’s faced, and what she clamors for.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
One story follows a young girl learning lessons from her Grandmother on tradition & protecting others. Another, a young woman in Nazi-occupied Denmark shepherding Jewish families to freedom in Sweden…
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
& lastly, a story about the isolation and loneliness of old age with an elderly woman trapped in a frail body she resents.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
One woman. One life, but like many of us, this is not one life of completed tasks, but a reflection back on unfinished business, regrets, promises, and finally coming to know who you are and what you need to do.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
I wrote this for my grandmothers, as like many, I associated the elderly wi/ almost Jim-Henson-like strangeness as a child. They smelled funny, offered love and affection, but the tissue-paper-thin skin on their hands, the bad teeth, & the hunched backs didn’t seem fully human.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
I didn’t really get a chance to know my grandmothers, and as a young child they didn’t seem like real people to me. It was only after I was older did I understand what they would have witnessed: love, fear, war, heartache, careers, children, and loss. pic.twitter.com/666LKRe4zz
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
So, in their honor I created this woman, Ronia of Denmark… And I wanted to explore the idea of being a woman who has lived an epic, sweeping life, but was then set aside and ignored.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
Ronia, a former World War II resistance fighter, has finally tracked-down her old childhood love, Aaron—the man who trapped her in her weakened, elderly form as a vampire, and then destroyed her family.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
Rather than end her own life, however, Ronia has plotted and planned for decades. Working nightshifts in an old folks’ home, she survives by acting as an angel of mercy to those elderly souls eager to pass on.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
But on the last night of her job—and as her plan to kill Aaron begins to fall into place—Nick, a suspicious elderly American veteran, holds her hostage.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
Convinced he’s found a Nazi war criminal hiding in their midst, Nick quickly realizes this seen-it-all woman is a different form of monster—but one with whom he has more in common than he thinks.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
As the blazing sun of dawn rises closer and closer, Ronia has one night to convince Nick to let her go before Aaron can escape her trap, and a night of anger and butting heads evolves into one of shared tales of heartache, loss, and old, weary bones.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
Yes, THE WOMAN FROM THE NORTH is a genre piece, but I consider myself a writer of dramas, I just happen to sometimes write about monsters. I love The Others, the work of @RealGDT … I mentioned Let the Right One In. They’re really about Loss, tragedy, war, horror, loneliness.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
I also write stories with female protagonists, and I wanted an elderly woman to be the hero of this story. It’s one thing to see Alicia Vikander or Soairse Ronan kick ass in a period piece, or have Maggie Smith or Judi Dench pull at your heartstrings in a drama…
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
But how would you view them differently if it’s both of them in the same piece?Aware that physical strength and beauty may have faded but it merely disguises steely wisdom underneath….What they will become… and who they were… There is a resonance, a power of time & identity
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
And what better way to push this idea that we’ve set aside our elderly and forgotten their past greatness than to make the old lady hero a vampire—she literally lives on the fringes and isn’t viewed as completely human…
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
It’s a timely story about refugees, the reasons we go to war, and what makes a good soldier… https://t.co/DyXkZP7EpN
[Image below of Sunshine courtesty of @HolocaustMuseum ] pic.twitter.com/2SMy3EGf5g
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
But most importantly, it’s a story about coming to know who you are as a woman when your beauty no longer matches your strength of will.
Fin#FemaleScreenwriterThursday
*That’s my maternal grandmother Abbie Rose Ross Pulliam above. Total badass.
— Shelley Gustavson (@shelleygusto) March 22, 2018
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