Reality check

It's always good to get feedback from a reader who hates the genre you're working in. You get all kinds of suggestions for changing it, most of which defeat your purpose of course. It's the triumph of ideology over aesthetics. All the same, even here there's often something useful.

Not by design, but it happens that among the readers giving me feedback on the splay draft are 3 women who would call themselves feminists. A radical feminist in her 60s who lives in Paris. An old-school 70s feminist in her 70s. And a young feminist in her 30s. The latter wanted to change most things about the script; the former thinks the screenplay excels and the movie will excel! The question is, What happened to feminism in recent decades that a feminist so radical she can't stand to live in the U.S. and who put her body where her beliefs are, a woman with a PhD and an MFA both, a poet, an essayist, a professor, why is she not bothered by the very things that outrage the younger feminist? I will say, the radical made a suggestion that I immediately embraced: the love interest is not married. In the context of the story, this makes her stronger. But far, far from the SuperWoman desired by the younger feminist. (The 70s feminist liked the script, sort of a "B" feeling like, and had no suggestions for change. Maybe just being polite -- neutrality is always suspect.)

I am reminded of a startling realization when my labor play BLOOD AND ROSES: 1934 was done at a Longshore Union picnic and all the younger unions members thought it was a commie propaganda play and all the old union members, some of whom participated in the 1934 strike subject matter, thought the play didn't go far enough in telling how violent the times were. The Generation Gap and all that.

I don't know the political persuasions of another female reader, in her 40s, who also thought the script was strong and raised none of the earlier objections. Her suggestions, in fact, were in the direction of cranking up the romantic moments in the story.

Now all this says is the obvious: we bring ourselves to the material. This is why contests have more to do with judges than writers, and why this feedback process has more to do with readers than anything else. Even so, it's an extraordinarily useful exercise. You have to reach a point where you know what you want -- so a suggestion like, "Irene would be stronger if she remained single despite...", jumps out at you, By God, she's right! and another like "Irene should cut his throat" gets you wondering if this were possible without screwing up other things and a third like "let's move the whole thing to Brazil and make it a musical" are quickly dismissed with a grin.

So far, over half the readers are on the same page I'm on, and that ain't half bad. The script is better for the feedback, and that's the bottom line.

But talk about material for a cultural comedy! Has there been a comedy about a writers' group?