Interview (Part 4): 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 4, Sallie Sallie shares some of her thinking about the Protagonist’s love interest, a flamboyant musician Gabriel:
Scott: It felt like fate. You said it right there, “Fate has catapulted him into her small world.” And we’re talking about a fellow by the name of Gabriel Moon. You introduce him this way. “He has an imposing frame, russet hair, resonating baritone and a Scottish accent. His face is unremarkable, but his charm and wit captivate.” What was your inspiration for Gabriel Moon?
Sallie: Billy Connelly a bit. I think he’s hilarious. And brilliant. His accent and his mannerisms. He and Gabriel have the same kind of Gaelic charm.
Scott: You mentioned that she was assaulted with lust the first time in her life when she sees him playing this cello. He’s got his own lustful nature?
Sallie: Yes, but it’s not someone that you’re going to like at the beginning.
Scott: With the call girl?
Sallie: Yes. When he is just really offensive, the whole thing. It’s funny, but it’s offensive. The whole way he treats his Grace Ann when he goes to the auction later. He’s not likeable at times. But that’s part of what makes him an interesting character. Neither he nor Muriel are conventional protagonists.
Scott: It’s interesting, his name. Gabriel, of course that’s associated with an archangel from both the Old and New Testament. Moon is also an astral connotation. I was wondering, were you going for anything symbolic there, Gabriel Moon.
Sallie: I gave him the name Gabriel Moon to tie in with the flowering vine called moonflower, a dramatic white blossom that opens only at night. The imagery was so beautiful. Muriel carves one into the cello and then names it “Moonflower.”
Scott: In Act One of your story, you introduce us to Muriel, who is this 60‑year‑old, socially awkward luthier in South Carolina, and Gabriel, a 40‑year‑old, bawdy cellist living in Scotland, which creates this great dramatic question: How in the world are these two ever going to intersect?
Sallie: Thank you. Yes, and they’re completely different personalities.
Scott: That’s the next question. Even if they did intersect, how could they possibly get along? I am gathering that that contrast and separation between these sort of parallel worlds, that was pretty early in the process of your coming up with the story?
Sallie: Yes, it was. I thought long and hard enough about what is going to draw these two together. I don’t believe they could have made it work in conventional way.
Scott: Yes, you’ve got several key narrative devices you use to intersect these two characters, even though they never actually, physically…
Sallie: They never meet.
Scott: They never meet.
Sallie: Face to face..
Scott: The first is this inspiration that Muriel has where she sees that Gabriel, who is this incredible cellist, who is playing a substandard instrument. So she decides, being a luthier, and fate and all that, she’s going build him a quality instrument. How early on, and how do you remember that idea surfacing in your process?
Sallie: From the very beginning. I knew she would make him the perfect cello, and he would love it, and I knew they would never meet. It took a while to come up with the journal as the means through which they would interact. Her feelings come out here, her ideas and impressions about him. All of his playing and his style and what he needs to improve, and all of that comes out through the journal. She shares this as well as all of her own ideas and fantasies.
Scott: Let’s talk about that because there is this interesting synergy that you’ve got going on. She gets this journal and she starts writing in it. Though you’ve already introduced that active imagination, she has this fantasy relationship with Gabriel that we basically enter into her mind’s eye and see the evolution of this romanticized fantasy. How did that idea come into being where you were going to actually visualize this aspect?
Sallie: From the start. It occurred to me that people who have social inhibitions or poor social skills would have to turn inward in this way. It being their only outlet. And then through her observation and imagery, we come to know him. She pegs him right on the dot. She understands, and through her fantasies, we come to understand him.
Scott: That brings us back to the instrument, because it’s not just a musical instrument, is it? It’s more almost like a talisman, in a way, for her.
Sallie: The cello is personified. But think about the cello itself: it’s naturally sensual. Everything about it. From its shape to the way it is held and played, not to mention it’s fulsome sound. Of all instruments, the cello is said to most closely replicate the human voice.
Scott: I’m jumping way ahead in the story. After he’s made this connection about the cello and who did it and found the journal, which had been basically lying hidden for 20 years, there’s this wonderful scene in Act Three. He had a Stradivarius, but that’s now second fiddle to this cello that he’s been playing for decades.
He describes his feelings about the cello Muriel built. He says, “I’ve enjoyed exploring its mysteries, its heartbreak and sonority, its fire. I’m still sorting out its many voices. It’s willful, Muriel, and compliant, and so finely wrought, playing it is more like riding dressage, a power exchange, intimate, trembling here under my heart, sometimes barely purring other times. I’ve never felt such tonal sweep.”
He’s not only describing the cello. He’s describing her.
Sallie: Rather seductively.
Scott: Let me ask you a technical question here about the notebook, the journal that she’s keeping, because she could have this active fantasy life and she could build this cello without having to write it down. Did you decide that you needed to have that journal in order to facilitate that complication where he doesn’t see it and only then later on finds it?
Sallie: I needed it as their conduit. Their means for interaction and intimacy, because I knew from the beginning that Gabriel and Muriel would never actually meet face-to-face. That he didn’t find it for twenty years was part of the barrier I constructed to keep them apart and delay Gabriel’s emotional involvement.
Tomorrow in Part 5, Sallie describes what it was like to win the Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting.
For Part 1, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.