Script Writing
Post date: Dec 21, 2010 1:38:32 PM
This is Zachary Houp, one of the screenwriters for “Misa’s Fugue.” You may be interested to know that this is my first “blog,” so please don’t fault me if I commit more than a few web faux pas.
I suppose I first became involved with the documentary by association. As a colleague of Jen and Sean, I was trained in the right skill set: storytelling. I have been an English teacher at Fleetwood Area High School for more than six years now. But there have been other experiences in my life that have prepared me to act in such a capacity for a documentary film. I teach a Film Theory elective at the high school and have devotedly studied film history and technique for numerous years. Then there is my five-year stint as resident playwright for a youth theatre company that some friends and I founded while in college. Please don’t think I’m trying to put extra feathers in my cap with this information: I’m simply trying to put you into the experiential mindset that I possessed when I first endeavored upon this, my first documentary screenwriting project.
By the time I had officially come on board, Jen and Sean had already traveled to Indianapolis and filmed approximately five hours of footage in which Frank Grunwald told his life story. Based on the footage that I have seen, they sometimes ask Frank questions for clarification, but the majority of the clips consist of nothing more than Frank retelling his story in the same manner and order in which he remembers it. As Sean and his students transcribed all five hours into a 116-page document, he realized that some additional help was going to be needed to craft Frank’s stream-of-consciousness recollections into a moving autobiographical account. Enter the English teacher.
My responsibilities were manifold: determine some organizational structure based on Frank’s words, refine his language for clarity and precision, unravel the recurring themes of his life, and shape one man’s monologue into a poetic narrative arc. I was overwhelmed to say the least. Had I been asked to write a fictional screenplay about the Holocaust, I would have done my research, outlined my narrative, and scripted the dialogue. But here I was, presented with more than 35,000 words, none of which were my own, and the responsibility of enhancing their narrative purpose. It was, for me, a lesson in storytelling, linguistics, and humility.
There was a very fine line between shaping Frank’s words and manipulating them with a heavy hand. The stringent pedagogues who insist that spoken language rigorously conform to written grammar—of which I do not count myself—would be appalled to see on paper what most of them say out loud. Reading Frank’s transcript gave me new respect for the linguistic mind, which can clearly assemble ideas when spoken aloud even when all grammatical structure is sacrificed. This is all a labored way of saying that I had difficulty reading even the first page of Frank’s transcript. As a reader, I have been spoiled by studying the elegant prose of literary giants who would not pen their next word without the utmost calculation. Suddenly, to be presented with the truth of human speech was an undertaking for which I was not prepared.
But I improved, and as I started listening to Frank on the page rather than reading his written words, I found his phrasing eloquent, his cadence calculated, and his tale both tragic and inspiring. There are certainly times when words escape each and every one of us, and that is probably truer for anyone who speaks of the Holocaust. In those moments, I have tried to carefully select Frank’s words in a manner that preserves the truth of both his tale and his character. What I found interesting about this process were that those moments when Frank was most moved, either by the horror of those lost years or the elation that is peppered in between, were also the ones that needed neither revision nor embellishment. Such is the power of humanity. Such is the power of truth.
Crafting Frank’s monologue as a narrative was both easier and more challenging than I had anticipated. The first question I asked Sean before reading the transcript was whether or not he wanted the tale to move linearly. He said that he did, and so the first step of my structuring process was to make sure that events were recounted in sequence. Whether Frank had an afterthought or his interviewers posed a follow-up question later, the transcript did not necessarily reflect the course of events as they chronologically happened back in the 1930s and 40s. To undertake this process, I cut up 116 pages of transcript into approximately 300 slips of paper that could be arranged and rearranged as the story required. I have the benefit of a three bedroom home and two offspring that are as-yet-
unconceived. Those 300 slips of paper tiled the more than 100-square-foot floor of one bedroom as I mapped out the life of Frank Grunwald in a manner that seemed most accessible to viewers.
There was some degree of what we shall call literary rearrangement—a calculated negotiation of themes, deliberate consideration of pacing and revelation, and an emphasis on providing the most moving quotes from Frank’s testimony right when they were needed most. But on the whole, the story is his. If I have done my job well, then my presence will be undetected, and Frank himself will say to me someday, upon our first meeting, “You didn’t really do anything, did you?” He could not offer a more welcome compliment.
Apart from helping to make the themes of Frank’s story visible, I was first charged with the task of detecting them. The patterns of Frank’s life, like that of any Holocaust victim, are woven with life and death. But, as he tells his story, life is not merely about existence but about the creation of what is eternal. In the same way, death is not merely an end but the destruction of something whose eternality has been stolen by hatred and anger and ignorance. For Frank, it is art and music that has always demonstrated this binary, and it was art and music that soothed him both during and after the war. At one point in his interview, Frank is not ashamed to turn the old mantra of “Never Forget” on its head by explaining how he would cherish the opportunity to expunge those memories of oppression and confinement and death. But one look at his artwork, tortured sculptures formed from media both sublime and secular, and one can see that this man’s memory is vibrant and, above all, essential.
This is my experience with “Misa’s Fugue.” It doesn’t seem likely that anyone can work on a project like this and say he enjoyed it, stopping there without further apology. I have learned a lot about the Holocaust and a lot about documentary filmmaking by participating in “Misa’s Fugue,” and I guess that, since I enjoy learning, I have indirectly enjoyed this experience. But, more importantly, I was humbled by this experience, and I feel blessed being able to say so. When a person comes to first grasp the true extent of the Holocaust—hate propagated, lives lost, a culture all-but-eradicated—he has the option of using this knowledge or ignoring it. Those who choose the latter are part of the same group whose indifference permitted the rise of the Nazi party and the subsequent oppression that went unchecked for far too long.
I chose to make a documentary.