Here’s an excerpt from Backstory Issue 31 for your reading pleasure:
(Warning: spoilers ahead!)
For writer Jennifer Lee, filtering everything through Meg’s character arc was not only a narrative necessity but her biggest creative challenge. “There were times the book took [the story] out of her hands, and a lot of times everyone else is the hero of the moment,” she says. “Also, in the book she is much more erratic in terms of her emotional response to things.” By taking the general structure of the story but putting Meg at the forefront, Lee found that many story points organically shifted in nature. In the novel, the three Mrs. first transport (or “tesser”) Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin to the paradise planet Uriel as a kind of base camp, but Lee’s version sharpened the focus of the sequence to Meg’s main goal: “Before it was, We’re taking you to Uriel to prep you. Now it’s, We’re going to Uriel in the drive to find your dad.” The book’s next sequence, where the three Mrs. lead the kids to consult with the eccentric oracle the Happy Medium (Zach Galifianakis), also evolved in Lee’s adaptation. At this point, Meg is dreading facing her self-doubt, so Lee penned her favorite line for Mrs. Which, where she says to the girl, “Do you realize all the things that had to happen in the universe to make you just as you are?” Then the screenwriter made crucial changes to Meg’s encounter with the Happy Medium. Whereas in the book the Happy Medium is a woman, Lee felt Meg’s emotional arc would benefit by changing the character to a man. “I wanted to address her fears that her father didn’t want to be found or love her. And I just wanted to see that happen with a male character.” Galifianakis brought his natural quirkiness to the role, but Lee believes the actor was able to make the Happy Medium especially emotionally vulnerable, and she now cites that as one of her favorite scenes in the film.
Lee begins her writing by putting together a checklist to confirm that she envisions all the elements necessary for a movie. “I make a very elaborate treatment, then I start turning that into a script by sluglining it, and I never look back at the outlines again,” she says. “I just write, because I feel like you can become too reductive or oversimplify.” She stresses the importance of not discarding those impalpable discoveries or happy accidents writers often encounters, and that flexibility means her output can vary from day to day. “Every day I lock myself in from 6 a.m. to noon for writing, and whatever happens in that time happened. Some days I pour out 10 pages, and some days it would be 1. The only thing I’ve learned over time is there’s no shortcut.” It took six months to turn in the first official draft, although within that time she did three or four versions, working closely with producers Jim Whitaker and Catherine Hand during the early stages. In all, she estimates she wrote 10 to 12 full drafts of the script. Once Ava DuVernay came aboard as director, Lee figured her time on the project was up and that DuVernay would take on the rewrites herself. But the director not only kept Lee on as writer, she engaged Lee to find an approach to certain critical parts of the film that combined their respective sensibilities. As one example, Lee notes, “Veronica [Meg’s school tormentor] is kind of a combination of her bully and my bully.” DuVernay even pushed Lee to dig deeper into the scientific areas of the story, even though the writer had the stronger science background. But Lee accepted the challenge, which led to another of her favorite scenes—a flashback to when Meg’s parents first pitch the tesseract to skeptical colleagues. “All the science in that is real, and yet she was like, ‘Bring the love into it, too.’ ” As a result, Lee was able to infuse what could have been a dry expositional moment with some emotional intimacy between husband and wife as they discuss their uphill professional struggle.
To read the complete article in Issue 31 of Backstory, click HERE to subscribe.
Backstory Issue 31 includes in-depth looks at Oscar-winning films The Shape of Water, Icarus and Get Out plus fellow nominees Lady Bird, Mudbound, Molly’s Game, The Big Sick, and much more! For more info, check out the Table of Contents.
