Interview (Part 3): Sallie West (2014 Nicholl Winner)

Sallie West wrote the original screenplay “Moonflower” which won the 2014 Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. I had a great conversation with Sallie about her background, the writing of her award-winning screenplay, and how she approaches the writing craft. This week: That interview in 6 parts.

Today in Part 3, Sallie talks about the Protagonist of her script “Moonflower”:

Scott: Let’s dig into your script “Moonflower,” specifically the two lead characters, beginning with Muriel, the 60 year old protagonist of the story. From a writing standpoint, what where some of the key aspects of her persona that you found yourself working with the most?

Sallie: Her standoffish nature. She’s kind, but uncomfortable with most people. The depth to which she believed in her work and how she crafted her instruments, each one as a masterpiece. Her level of dedication. She’s an atypical protagonist, in age, personality, and looks, but I found her compelling.

Scott: She has, I guess you’d say, a social anxiety condition. Is that fair to say?

Sallie: Yes.

Scott: What do you think the roots of that are?

Sallie: It was a technical device I used to create a barrier, but it’s not hard to imagine that there are people with certain characteristics that prevent them from connecting to others in traditional ways. Muriel’s method for surmounting this barrier takes a kind of valor that moved me.

Scott: The line of least resistance in terms of creating a sympathetic protagonist, certainly she comes across as that. She’s also extremely introverted, and I’m imagining that in some ways is tied in with this social awkwardness.

Sallie: It’s her world. She’s in her own world, and she’s really happy to be there. She doesn’t care to leave it, but she does find herself wanting to reach out to someone in a very tender and meaningful way. Seeing Gabriel’s cello performance changes her. A conventional relationship wouldn’t work, it would be antithetical to her nature. Does that make sense?

Scott: Yes, absolutely. She’s also got a couple of other things going on, which is she’s prone to these profound flights of fancy and has a very vivid imagination. When you’re saying she lives in her own world, is that what you’re talking about?

Sallie: Yes. The beneficiaries of all her time and effort are music and her cello shop. She keeps her physical world quiet and small, whereas her mental world is colorful and complex. It’s who she is.

Scott: Well, by the end we do learn that she had achieved a level of…

Sallie: Mastery, professionally, and, personally she becomes a bit less disenfranchised.

Scott: Yeah. She even has that heightened hearing ability.

Sallie: She had that from a young age. It’s partly demonstrated by the peculiar hearing competition she has going on with her dog — very endearing, I thought!

Scott: My wife’s done a lot of work on this. People of an elevated IQ, oftentimes they do have introversion, powerful imaginations, and can be socially awkward. They say they have over-excitabilities. Their brains work at 110 or 120 percent in terms of experiencing reality, like hearing. They call them ‘profoundly gifted’. As I got to know Muriel, I was thinking that she probably would fall into that category.

Sallie: It’s interesting that you bring that up, because Muriel has nearly savant characteristics, which may be what you’re describing. She’s fully functional, but she certainly has those leanings. I thought about that too.

Scott: You mentioned this TV performance she sees of this cellist. That’s really a call to adventure on her heroine’s journey. I have literally written down, it rocks her world. In fact, here’s a description from the script:

“Muriel is thrown back, incredulous. The best cellist she’s ever heard. Fate has catapulted him into her small world. She is assaulted with lust for the first time in her life.”

Could you go into that distinction or not between love and lust as it relates to Muriel’s connection to music and in particular over time this cellist.

Sallie: He would probably have a strong effect on most people, he’s really that charming and dynamic. But neither love nor lust had been in her realm of experience before him, I think it’s safe to say she was affected by both.

And the fact that she admired his technical brilliance on the cello certainly played a big part of it, but even before that, if you recall, his speaking voice caught her attention from the very start.

When she discovers that the charming Scots being interviewed on tv is the same person playing the Caprice, that is what calls her to action. That coincidence rocks her world.

Scott: That is a big coincidence, because she sees him and…

Sallie: She hears him.

Scott: She hears him, and she’s got this great ear. She’s deciphering where he’s from, and the lilt of his language and stuff. Then she sees him doing this performance.

Sallie: On the cello, which is her thing, and it just knocks her sideways.

Scott: They have a saying in Hollywood. I don’t know how true it is, but it’s something I learned when I first got there. You are allowed one coincidence per script. If you’re going to do it why not have a big one, and that’s a big one.

Sallie: [laughs] I hope it wasn’t over the top or whatever. I hope it worked.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Sallie shares some of her thinking about the Protagonist’s love interest, a flamboyant musician Gabriel.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.