One Encouraging Word

One encouraging word.

Was all it took. 

Sitting with a few close friends on a hot summer evening one of them asked what I was doing besides the usual. The usual, of course, being training and racing, video creation, dog sitting and painstakingly intricate detailed analysis of the University of Washington’s football program. I said (and I keep a running tally of guests on MSNBC who begin their responses to a questions from Rachael, Ari, Lawrence, Brian or Nicole, with a …well), well, I am making some progress on the screenplay. 

What screenplay?

The story of the bomb that was dropped on Brookings, Oregon in World War II. 

What?

I look around the table to gauge interest by facial recognition, noting that there seems to be a consensus that additional detail is warranted. 

Yeah, it’s a great story, do you know it?

Three negatives and a head shake later I am trying once again to make the brand strokes storyline clean, crisp , concise and colorful. In Hollywood terms this is known as the pitch, where the writer crafts her longline in one sentence. 

It is the story of honor in the time of a world at war, an American Navy Captain, a Japanese pilot, Harry Truman, the Manhattan Project, the USS Indianapolis, Japanese internment, 400 years of Samurai, and a love story set on Mt. Emily, Oregon. 

Realizing that my pitch was falling well outside the intended strike zone, I paused to allow consideration and hopefully a response. 

What about the bomb?

Yes, it was dropped from aircraft launched from a submarine on Mt. Emily, the goal was to ignite a forest fire on the West Coast to divert attention and resources away from the primary target. The incendiary bomb exploded but due to the damp conditions failed it’s primary objective. The pilot……

Wait, when did this happen?

Between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima/Nagasaki. 

So while Japanese-Americans were interned, Oppenheimer is burning midnight oil to build an atomic bomb and being pushed hard by Truman’s administration to do so, Einstein rides his bike*…

Washington has a place in all this, as we built several batteries to guard Puget Sound from submarine attacks, as hundreds of Japanese-Americans were separated from their families, arrested and sent to Manzanar as spies, and Hanford was the site for enriched plutonium production…..

Wow, all that. A local angle.

Sure, so my two main protagonists are from here, the future Navy Captain and his sweetheart whose parents have been arrested and sent to camp.

Amazing.

Yeah, I think it is a good story. 

Heads nod, chins are scratched, goblets rise. 

How far along with the treatment are you, I would love to see it. 

Of the 40 scenes, or 120 pages of script, I have 19 completed. 

Get to work, we want this to be done. I wanna see it. 

*This picture is a fraud.