Page 24 - the NOISE September 2014

OF WORDS, WOMEN, & BIG BOMBS:
screenwriting the war in skirts
by SARAH GIANELLI
Jen Nelson-Wieters might be best known about town as one half of the dynamic, sharp witted duo who own and operate Je- rome’s FlatIron Café, but with an award-win- ning screenplay currently under review at four Hollywood production companies — with serious interest from one in particular — that could change in a heartbeat.
Yet another example of the extraordinary lives many Jeromies lead behind the scenes, Ms. Nelson-Wieters wrote her first script, The Final Approach, in three months and, on a whim, submitted it to the 2012 One in Ten Screenplay Contest — the largest international LGBT film competition in the world. By the time she was announced a finalist out of nearly 600 entries, she was already months into working on her second screenplay, The War in Skirts, which would also place in the top 10 in the 2013 competition, establishing Ms. Nelson-Wieters as the only contestant to be a two time finalist two years in a row.
Based on true events, The Final Approach tells the story of two teenage girls who are swept into an international drug trafficking ring and have to skirt the law and heightened air travel security measures after the mysterious 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800.
The War in Skirts more directly reflects Ms. Nelson-Wieter’s military upbringing, feminist mores, and LGBT advocacy. Intertwining history (or, more aptly “herstory”) and fiction, The War in Skirts tells the story of Diddy, whose mechanical bent lands her a job in the General Motors Eastern Aircraft Division factory in Tarrytown, New York; and Delores, who joins the Women’s Army Corps seeking overseas adventure but, as it turns out, the War Department has other plans for her — The Manhattan Project. A love story between the two women ignites when their lives intersect in a lively Greenwich Village gay bar scene.
“I come from a family rich in military history,” says Ms. Nelson-Wieters. “I grew up with stories of my great uncle, Russell Lemoin Bastian, a war hero that served in the Army Air Corps in World War II as a glider pilot. He would drop troops behind enemy lines, then have to crash land the glider, seek out the ‘underground’ allies who would direct him to a series of safe houses, then onto a boat back to England to do it all over again. He was the first man down, injured in Normandy.”
Ms. Nelson-Wieters herself was raised on
or near military bases since she was 14, when her father’s job as a civilian contractor for The Department of Defense moved the family to Guam at the start of Ms. Nelson’s freshman year.
“All of this shaped my central question for the project: What were women doing during World War II?” she says. “My research was fascinating! I think it’s important because it’s spoken of very little. In comparison to all we hear of war history, there’s very little on war herstory. It’s pertinent to today’s society for so many reasons — the foremost being, these women won the war! Can you imagine today’s society if we hadn’t? It’s time to widely recognize how GAY World War II really was, and to recognize all these amazing ladies — nicknamed “The Goddesses of Victory” — for the work they did to contribute to the world we live in today.”
A few of the women that Ms. Nelson- Wieters discovered during her research and who form the factual foundation of her screenplay include Edith Nourse-Rogers, the pioneering congresswoman whose determination to create a women’s only branch of the Army led to the creation of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, which would later become the Women’s Army Corps; Margaret Bourke-White, one of the first staff photographers for Life Magazine and the first woman to be accredited as an official war correspondent; and Oveta Culp Hobby, a parliamentarian in the Texas House of Representatives and married to the Governor of Texas, who became the first director of the WAC, and later, the first secretary of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
“In addition to these amazing ladies, there were many nameless, faceless, amazing World War II heroines,” says Ms. Nelson- Wieters. “My story focuses on the Manhattan Project, which was pieced out to women across the country and all over the world — some in such far-flung places as New Guinea. Each woman would have their own small indiscernible piece of the project and most had no idea what they working on at all. It wasn’t until after the atomic bombs were dropped and the war ended that senior military officials began writing letters of commendation to the women involved.”
With actual historic events and individuals providing a sturdy framework, Ms. Nelson- Wieters is freed up to enjoy the more creative aspects of writing historical fiction
— immersing herself in the music, images, film and literature of the era, and character and plot development.
“There were many times I felt transported to 1944, and often felt as if I were sitting in on my scenes, that I was just the bystander needing to document the action. Many of the bar scenes in Skirts were written this way, as if I were a silent observer as the gals laughed, played and teased around me. My stories are character-driven,” she says. “I focus intently on character development before plot. I interview them, I spend time with them, I give them their own identity and ultimately, they drive the story. The most magical characters, though, are the ones that just appear, fully formed, with their own look, back story, life, and I need to integrate them into the script.”
That happened in both of Ms. Nelson- Wieters’ scripts. She was writing a scene for The Final Approach in which the women enter a hotel room and there was Byron who became a major character, complete with a grandmother he was providing for with his illicit activities. In Skirts, that character was Cherie, a drag queen from the Savoy who also became a major player, adding some little known detail about life as a transgender black male in 1944 New York City.
Ms. Nelson didn’t set out to create a “gay” story, but her research naturally led her to it, drawing from resources such as as Allen Berube’s book “Coming Out Under Fire” and the documentary Before Stonewall.
“World War II led to a social experiment never before seen in history,” she explains. “The sexes were segregated early on in their sexual development and thrown together often in intimate, single-sex living spaces with very little privacy. Women left home in droves for jobs in war plants and the WAC. It was the first time in history that it was socially acceptable for a woman to leave home unmarried and enter a well- paid career field that provided financial independence. Folks that may have felt ‘different’ from their peers but lived in small or conservative communities might never have met another gay person had the unique circumstances of WWII not happened. These unique circumstances gave rise to the gay lifestyle and movement.”
Ms. Nelson-Wieters has always written — she remembers creative writing class as her favorite as far back as second grade. After a
difficult year in racially tense Guam, where Ms. Nelson-Wieters was harassed constantly for her association with the military presence, as well as being six feet tall and blond, she dropped out of high school, got her GED and started college at 17 in Oregon with a double major of Pre-Med and Women’s Studies. After college she began writing and performing poetry under the pseudonym Jade Leaf. When she decided to homeschool her son, his education took precedence for about 10 years, but always up for a new challenge — this time learning how to write screenplays. As soon as she was able, she got herself to the library and voraciously read the works of Joseph Campbell (Ms. Nelson- Wieters incorporates the 12 stages of the hero’s journey for every single one of her characters); and screenwriting classics like The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure Writers by Christopher Vogler & Michelle Montez, and The Screenwriter’s Bible by David Trottier. Clearly, Ms. Nelson-Wieters has demonstrated an innate knack for this highly regimented literary form. Ms. Nelson-Wieters submitted her screenplay to husband and wife team Ned Farr & Dreya Weber of Red Road Studios because of a film they made called A Marine Story about a lesbian Marine discharged from service abruptly under DADT. Because of the similar subject matter, she knew they wouldn’t be turned off by her script and was pleasantly surprised when they responded positively, with Mr. Farr asking to be attached as director.
“Because of the cost involved in filming a ‘period’ piece, it will need to be picked up by a major studio or well-funded privately at a smaller one,” says Ms. Nelson-Wieters. “I want it to hit the big screen immediately, despite its controversial nature, and bypass the small indie film festivals. I want to see it represented at the Oscars.”
In addition to her big screen ambitions, somehow Ms. Nelson-Wieters, with partner Amy Wieters, keep the FlatIron Café going strong 7:30AM-4PM Wednesday-Monday (closed Tuesdays) at 416 Main Street, and have recently started the Jeromee Produce Market on the FlatIron patio on Fridays from 4:30-6:30PM featuring vegetables, herbs, and fruit from Whipstone Farm in Paulden, Arizona. theflatironjerome.com
| Sarah Gianelli is often spotted with a fistful of flatiron and cappuccino. arts@thenoise.us
24 • SEPTEMBER 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us