Interview (Part 4): 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 4, Elizabeth and I talk some themes at play in the script “What They Had”:

Scott: There’s a relationship Bridget has with Ruth. That’s one avenue you travel in terms of her journey of discovery about love. Then, there’s Burt, who offers another side of the coin. There’s an aside that he has to her. The central question, what are you going to do with Mom? What are you going to do with Ruth?

You raise that question as soon as she escapes. And Burt of course is resisting doing anything about it. He has a line, aside that’s very powerful.

He says, “Finishing her sentences for her, telling her how she takes her coffee and how many cubes go in her Scotch because she doesn’t remember what she likes and doesn’t, that’s memory care. I was there for her every damn memory she made the last 60 years. If I wasn’t where, I’ve heard about it a half dozen times.”

“I’m the best memory care in Chicago. I bathe her. I feed her. I give her pills. I do it a hell of a lot better than some goddamn aid who doesn’t have the first clue a person has spent the last 70 years becoming.” That commitment that he has to her is a powerful message to Bridget.

Elizabeth: Absolutely. That’s the moment where she goes, “Holy shit. I don’t know that I can die without at least trying to know what that feels like.” On both sides — to be loved like that and to love someone like that.

Scott: There’s a moment later on with Emma and they have a wonderful little arc in their relationship, too. Where Emma says, “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Bridget says, “What?” Emma says, “What they have.” That’s it. That’s at the essence of the center of the story of Bridget’s journey.

Elizabeth: Well. Yes. And no. It’s complicated. In my years on this planet, limited as they may be, it seems the biggest challenge for men and women is that generally, men live in the black and white, and generally, women live in vast degrees of color and shades of gray and a multitude of dimensions. My husband and I butt heads about it. He want to whittle stuff into it is or it isn’t, it’s this one thing or it’s this other one thing. And I go, no, no, it’s endless things that are fluid and flexible and will change with tomorrow’s variables.

So with Bridget — yes, it’s about what her parents have. I think Emma is eager to pin it down into something she can understand and process so she can make sense of her mother’s choices. But for Bridget — and for me as her puppeteer — it’s also about a dozen other things, it’s fluid and flexible and changes with tomorrow’s variables. And as the puppeteer, I’m okay with that.

But to answer your question — if I was forced at gunpoint to pin it down to one thing, it’s about loneliness.

Scott: She says at one point she feels like a check mark.

Elizabeth: Yes. How lonely.

Scott: I’m going to lay another analysis on you here.

Elizabeth: Go for it.

Scott: My background, I studied theology.

Elizabeth: Not too far from…

Scott: From philosophy, yes. In the church, there are three rituals which mark these key transitions in life. Baptism, wedding, funeral, or as ministers sometimes call it — hatching, matching, and dispatching.

Elizabeth: I’ve never heard that. That’s hilarious.

Scott: Your story has a visible presence of two. There’s a funeral. Then, there’s a wedding. There’s also a baptism, metaphorically speaking, with regard to Bridget, who you could say comes away reborn. You had moments like that shower scene with the water…

Elizabeth: That’s super cool. I always liked that the story involved the precipice of the three pivotal relationship moments. You have one woman about to get married, one woman about to get divorced, and one woman nearing the end of marriage, the end of life.

And certainly there’s a big spiritual element in this script. That’s something I am always exploring with my work, writing to understand.

Scott: I did a little research on the background of the script. It made the Nicholl Top 50 in 2013.

Elizabeth: It did, yes. That was an early draft.

Scott: I’ve interviewed every Nicholl winner since 2012. There were probably about four or five that reentered the script. It placed OK, or well, or Top 50, and then reworked it, and then reentered it.

When Tiger William introduced you at that academy event when they were honoring the Nicholl winners from 2015, that after writing, and rewriting, and workshopping the script, you ended up going back to your first draft. True?

Elizabeth: Well, it wasn’t my very first draft. That was the cracked-out three-day binge-fest. That draft was very sketchy, although there were things that have remained intact. I wrote that and almost immediately started re-writing, using that first draft as kind of an outline. The 2013 top 50 draft was I think that first re-write.

I knew from the very beginning that if What They Had was ever going to exist anywhere other than my computer, I’d be the one making it. So in 2014 I directed a little short film to get my ass behind a camera — I’d never gone to film school and had only directed theatre. And shooting that short made me understand what was possible with filmmaking and inspired me to envision What They Had The Movie in a way I’d never seen it before. It unlocked a lot of storytelling I could accomplish cinematically.

So after shooting the short, while I was waiting for the first assembly, I did a complete overhaul of What They Had. And that draft was the real first draft of “Here we have a movie.” That was the draft that got me repped and invited to the Sundance Lab.

The Sundance Lab was intense. It’s 18 hours of one-on-ones with incredible artists — writers, directors — I mean, these are your heroes, and they’re so invested in you and in your work. You get 18 hours of notes from them in the space of five days. I left with a notebook filled with 30 pages of passionate suggestions. It was overwhelming.

I re-wrote a ton based on their notes, trying everything, doubting everything that had come from me. I hadn’t been intending to reapply for the Nicholl, but we were trying to get producers involved at that point, and I thought, “This is definitely better than the draft that placed in the top 50” so I decided impulsively to submit, thinking maybe it would place again and get a little momentum. But I hadn’t finished the newest draft, the one that I was working on based on those Sundance Lab notes, so I sent the original “movie” draft, the one I’d written right after making the short.

I’d made substantial changes after the Sundance lab, and I kept thinking I was making it better — I had no compass for which changes were right or wrong. And then that pre-Sundance draft won the Nicholl. So I went back and re-read it. It wasn’t perfect, but it was very inspired. And in contrast, the new one was a mess. It was unfocused. Because it hadn’t come from me, from my soul, it had come from a community. I’d packed in everybody’s best ideas, because they all knew way more about moviemaking than I did, and forgone the story in my heart.

It made me understand what can happen when you overthink and overwork, when you trust other people more than yourself, when you value experience over inspiration. It was this lesson of, “Nobody knows the story the way that you do. Nobody knows anything.” I needed to learn that lesson. Winning a Nicholl was a stunning way to learn it.

Scott: When I work with writers as their teacher on a project, I always ask them, “What is your inspiration for the story? What drew you to it? What is your emotional resonance with it?” to remind them of that original inspiration. That can get lost, can’t it?

Elizabeth: Oh my goodness, can it. I’ve also found that once you overwork something, it’s difficult to get back into what originally inspired you. You’ve lost the joy. You’re sick of the world. The characters are not the live wires they were when you were trying to pin them down the first time. It’s hard to get them to surprise you anymore.

I’m now very careful about when I sit down to re-write. I have to feel ready; I have to know exactly what I’m going to work on and why. It can be triggered by somebody’s note, but the inspiration itself has to come from me, from that place in my gut, that place that, for me, is almost spiritual. I’m channelling a power greater than myself.

When I’m working from that place, it’s… amazing. It’s stupid good. Both the experience of writing it and looking back and going, “holy shit, who the hell wrote that?”

When I’ve worked the other way, fighting against my gut, sticking things in don’t feel exactly right, that don’t come from that organic place… it feels like work. And it always shows in the writing. It just doesn’t have the same grace.

Tomorrow in Part 5, Elizabeth describes what it was like to win a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Elizabeth is repped by ICM Partners and MXN Entertainment.

Twitter: @elizabethchomko.