Interview (Part 2): Elizabeth Chomko (2015 Nicholl Winner)

Elizabeth Chomko wrote the original screenplay “What They Had” which won a 2015 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently I had the opportunity to chat with Elizabeth about her background as a writer and her award-winning screenplay.

Today in Part 2, Elizabeth talks about what inspired her to write “What They Had”:

Scott: Didn’t you do a Sundance Lab at some point?

Elizabeth: I did, yes. In 2015 I did their January lab with What They Had.

Scott: That must have been a terrific experience.

Elizabeth: It was wild and hard and wonderful.

Scott: Let’s talk about your script, “What They Had.” The logline: “When her mother suffering from Alzheimer’s wanders into a blizzard on Christmas Eve, Bridget Ertz flies back to her hometown. Through stepping into her past she finally realizes what’s missing in her present.”

I believe you have a very personal source of inspiration for this story, and that would be your grandmother.

Elizabeth: Yes. I was very close with both sets of grandparents growing up. They lived close; I was very lucky. I’m the eldest grandchild on my mother’s side, so I had a special bond with that side.

My maternal grandmother was magic. She was this ball-busting, feisty working woman, a lady before her time. She had this wonderfully generous spirit. She had a long career as administrator of nursing homes that specialized in Alzheimer’s.

She was diagnosed with it quite young… 67 or 68. I didn’t know what to expect except that she’d forget stuff; I was maybe 20 at the time.

Then The Notebook came out. I saw it with two girlfriends who also had grandparents with Alzheimer’s and we had to carry each other out of the theatre. It was like oh, my god, it’s a death sentence, she’s going to disappear into this zombie, it will be nothing but sorrow and pain and anguish.

As the disease progressed and progressed — she was always still her, she never lost that spirit. She’s still kicking now, 15 years later, still cracking jokes, still endlessly loving. She has that same fire and that same generosity. And those 15 years were filled with heartbreak but there were also incredible joys and surprises. There were times she thought we were schoolgirls together. I got to know her as she must have been when she was a kid.

The most surprising part of her Alzheimer’s — for all of us in the family — was that a lot of it was fucking hilarious. My mom’s side of the family lives in that space where laughter and tears overlap. There were so many times we were all laughing our fool heads off — my grandmother loudest of all. Some of our most beloved family stories are about her Alzheimer’s moments.

And those moments would be sandwiched between moments that took your breath away. It’s such a strange, complicated disease. She’d be bouncing off the walls like a toddler, jumping on beds, and then she’d turn around and say something to you that’d rip your heart out, so earnest it would leave you utterly breathless. I can still see those moments so clearly, like it was yesterday.

Once I discovered how… oh, I don’t even know if there are words to describe the journey of loving someone through this disease. I guess that’s why I wanted to write about it. I wanted to pin down that juxtaposition, that tightrope between hilarity and heartbreak. I was going through old journals recently and this scrap of paper fell out, filled with little notes about her, dated over 10 years ago.

And when my grandfather passed away, the story to do this with almost knocked me over. It was a gift. I wrote the first draft in three sleepless days.

Scott: When you were writing it, were you considering this more of an adaptation or fiction?

Elizabeth: Oh, it’s fiction, for sure. The things that are inspired by my family are dramatized significantly. But my grandparents are there on the page. Their love story was begging to be told.

And I missed them. Writing this script, and all my re-writes, and making the movie — it’s an act of love. It’s my way of being able to spend a little more time with them. I’m desperate to keep them around, for me, for my family, my mother and her brothers, for all those who loved my grandparents, for the next generation of our family’s children. I couldn’t let them go.

Scott: So there are some specific events and characters, your grandmother, your grandfather, which are are in the script, but much of the other content is fictionalized.

Elizabeth: Yes. But like I said, it’s definitely a dramatization. But the scenes with Ruth — some of those really happened. Like at Bert’s wake, when Ruth is looking at the program, trying to figure out who on earth’s wake she’s at — that happened. That was me next to her, my arm around her, sitting there broken-hearted, having no idea what I’m supposed to say to her.

It’s such a strange thing. I remember all of us in the family not knowing how to handle it. Every ten minutes, she’s going “Where’s Cliff? Where’s Cliff?” — what do you do? Do you continue to tell her, to break her heart over and over and say, “he died” — is that what you do? Do you ignore her? Do you lie?

Scott: Into this relationship between these two, this married couple, you introduce the protagonist of the story, Bridget, and you describe this her this way when she’s introduced:

“Bridget, a young looking 53, red apron embroidered with ‘Bridget’ stands at the sink of a cooking class kitchen distractively drying a fruit cake pan that’s completely dry.”

So the reader learns she is distracted. Then the next line, “She doesn’t wear a wedding ring.” That’s a clue there’s probably some relationship issues going on there.

How would you describe Bridget emotionally and psychologically? Where is she at the beginning of the story?

Elizabeth: It’s funny you ask that, because I am, as we speak, in the middle of a re-write. Bridget’s trajectory has always been the toughest for me to crack. On the one hand, I want her to arc as much as possible. On the other hand, I don’t want her decision-making to seem rash or capricious.

Bridget is a giver. She gets her greatest joy out of giving to others. If there was her absolute favorite meal on the table, and she knew she would never have it again, and somebody she loved was there, she’d insist that they have the last bite, even if she knew they liked it a fraction as much.

But that giving instinct has made it difficult for her to speak up for herself — to even identify what it is that she wants out of her life.

She’s somebody who grew up caring for people, caring for her parents, her brother, marrying really young, having children really young, caring for her husband, supporting his career, caring for their children and his parents. She got married because it was the thing to do and because her father really thought that this was the guy. She didn’t really develop the muscle of, “What do I want?” That was a…what’s the word when your muscles…

Scott: Atrophy?

Elizabeth: Yes, an atrophied muscle. Exactly. It is an underdeveloped muscle.

Scott: You put that issue of her choice getting married back then on the table because her grown daughter Emma’s about to get married.

Elizabeth: Yes. The other part of Bridget is the historical element of feminism’s trajectory over the last 100 years.

She grew up in the ’70s, the Second Wave feminist movement, when women were out in the workforce, wearing little ties, acting like men. The women of that era had to work extra hard, extra long hours, to be competitive in these male-dominated fields, to challenge the glass ceilings they were facing. They thought they were doing a service to the generations to come, and they were in many ways. But there was a flaw in the system, because it meant that the kids were at home, fending for themselves, raising themselves, and often the eldest daughter would start to take over the homemaking.

And the fathers were sometimes home more than the mothers were, but they didn’t have the same appreciation for the feminist mission. They didn’t have the understanding of how to raise a modern woman.

That’s Burt. He grew up on a farm in the ’40s. He’s still parenting Bridget like it’s that era, advising her to lose ten pounds and learn how to cook so she can land somebody eligible. Before Second Wave Feminism, that was the American Dream for women. It was next to impossible for women to make a living on their own, even if they had the education and the gumption to try. The jobs that were open to them were phone operator or teacher or flight attendant. None of them paid enough to support a family. If you were a flight attendant, you had to keep your weight down, you had to be unmarried, and you got fired on your 30th birthday. Some of those restrictions didn’t lift until the 1990s.

It’s crazy when you think about that only being one or two generations ago. It’s crazy how far we’ve come. But because we’ve changed so far so fast, we have further to go in terms of re-shaping our perceptions of masculinity and femininity, and the limitations we can’t help attaching to both genders, unconsciously, enlightened as we may be. I think that’s part of Bridget’s issue — she’s looking at her daughter having the kind of choices she never dreamed of, and she’s just bewildered by the difference. So much changed for women in that one generation. Things have changed so much even since I was growing up.

Tyger Williams and Elizabeth Chomko at the Nicholl Awards Ceremony

Tomorrow in Part 3, Elizabeth and I delve more deeply into her script “What They Had”.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Elizabeth is repped by ICM Partners and MXN Entertainment.

Twitter: @elizabethchomko.