Screenwriters Try to Be Good While Doing Well

The check for the script promised five figures--a dream for a young screenwriter scrambling to avoid eviction--and the movie, the fifth in a horror series, seemed assured a cult following. But it also would have meant surrendering to gratuitous gore.

Annmarie Morais wasn’t sure she could write the script that was being tentatively offered to her, even with the $50,000 payment. But she rented the series on video, just to make sure. She made it through the first installment of the series (whose name she doesn’t want mentioned) without getting too queasy.

Then, minutes into the sequel, she hit the fast-forward button--and held it down for almost the entire movie.

“It was blood for blood’s sake and violence for violence’s sake,” said Morais, 29. “At the end of my life, I can’t stand up and say, ‘I did that’ and feel proud. There’s nothing honorable to me in that.” She rejected even an offer to use a pseudonym in the credits. “You can’t be anonymous, because I know and God knows. I just couldn’t go there.”

A year later, friends and fellow writers Tirralan Davis and Emily Glisson, who saw in Morais the strength of a grounded Christian, sat with her at Champions Cafe, a coffee shop run by the Los Angeles-based Oasis Christian Center. Over a doughnut and a latte, they urged Morais to start a support group of Christian screenwriters that dealt with the pressures of succeeding commercially while honoring God.

By this time, Morais had received a $25,000 Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and thousands of dollars more from selling other scripts. But the memory of the horror series lingered.

Weeks later, the support group, Write On, materialized.

Every other Thursday, six to 20 screenwriters climb wooden stairs to an apartment in Beverly Hills, slapping high fives and exchanging embraces.

Almost all attend services at the Oasis Christian Center, which tries to organize its members in “common interest groups” rather than traditional Bible study clusters in hopes that people will connect through hobbies or professions. Because of seasonal activities, such as surfing and beach volleyball, most groups get reorganized after three months. Write On has continued for more than a year.

Its members consider the fellowship too important to let go. There’s the fun of critiquing scripts, snacking on chocolate chip cookies and screening films. But it’s also about discussing the necessity of a personal vision anchored in the Bible. It’s about setting standards and discovering that they’re not monolithic, even among a bunch of Christians.

For instance, Davis, 31, assistant group leader and meeting host, shies away from certain language in her scripts, which she primarily writes for children. But her boyfriend, Devon Greggory, whom she met at Write On’s first meeting, feels comfortable with using some expletives, as long as his screenplay contains a deeper, more meaningful message.

“Her vision is frontal. Mine is more counterattack,” said Greggory, also 31. “With violence and sex [in my scripts], nothing is gratuitous ... but it might ultimately show good and evil.”

It’s the difference between C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” a clear Christian allegory, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” in which the struggle between righteousness and sin seems more subtle, said Lee Brandt, 32, a Los Angeles screenwriter.

For the most part, Tolkien’s approach resonates more deeply with this group of Christian screenwriters, many of whom cringe just as much at the believe-or-go-to-hell approach of some Christian films as they do at the explicit eroticism in some mainstream movies.

“I can’t write what will weaken my faith or someone else’s faith,” Morais said. “But that doesn’t mean that I’ll steer away from controversy.”

The script that clinched her Nicholl fellowship in 1999 centered on a girl’s obsession with self-mutilation, instigated by a mystery surrounding her stepfather’s alleged sexual abuse. Titled “Bleeding,” the script featured an older sister who wouldn’t give up on delving into the truth behind her sibling’s masochism. It was a gruesome subject, Morais said, but magnified a loyalty between siblings that reflected God’s love for humanity.

“What is the ultimate end of my writing?” she asked. “It’s not about making Annmarie famous. At the end of the day, it’s: ‘God, this is my gift that I’m giving back to you by being a person who writes a story that can plant a seed of hope.’

“It’s leaving that seed, leaving that trail no matter where you are, that people out there know there’s a difference about you. It opens the door to sharing your faith. Sometimes, a person might never come to God, and that’s OK. But lives are touched because of who you are and what you stand for.”