The Protagonists in Four Films that Susannah Grant Wrote
an essay written by Daniel S. Duvall
[originally published in the March 2001 issue of Written By magazine]
© 2017 - Infinity Daniel S. Duvall - all rights reserved
Susannah Grant’s protagonists take crap from no one. Pocahontas articulates a passionate rebuttal when John Smith refers to her people as “savages.” Cinderella says she “will die a thousand deaths before I see my mother’s dress on that spoiled, selfish cow” when her stepmother orders her to give a gown to her stepsister. A recovering alcoholic flings champagne into a lake when her boyfriend offers her a drink. An impoverished single mother demands a raise and benefits from a boss whose wardrobe she insults. These women put the “pow” in “empowered.”
Judging by her oeuvre, Grant was the best possible scribe for Erin Brockovich. Examine the other feature projects on which she was a credited writer earlier in her career: Ever After, Pocahontas, and 28 Days. The protagonists share much with the real Erin Brockovich: all trust themselves and are not easily swayed by external opinions, and they radiate courage and strong-willed determination to transcend the expectations of others. Also, with the exception of Gwen (the drug addict portrayed by Sandra Bullock in 28 Days), they possess an instinct for self-preservation that is tempered by healthy altruism.
Danielle de Barbarac, the heroine of the Cinderella-tale Ever After, is a 16th Century Erin Brockovich: a poor servant who fights fiercely when anyone messes with her. Erin lives among cockroaches; Danielle sleeps among (literal) pigs. Erin berates intimidating corporate lawyers; Danielle pelts a sword-carrying horse thief with apples. When a dozen armed gypsies rob her, Danielle demands that they return her possessions and give her one of their horses. She floors her wicked stepsister with a roundhouse slap in a spat over the glass slippers that belonged to Danielle’s biological mother. Like Erin, Danielle selflessly seeks justice for others at the bottom of the caste system: she uses freshly-acquired gold to buy back a servant’s husband who had been sold for tax money. She inspires a Prince to envision a university where anyone (regardless of social standing) can study. Both Erin and Danielle skillfully brush off the advances of unwanted men.
Pocahontas tells the story of a young Native American woman who, like Brockovich, follows her instincts toward a goal that ultimately benefits others. When her father urges her to marry a strong young man and settle into a comfortable routine, Pocahontas chooses instead to embark on an exploration to discover “what’s around the river bend.” She meets and cautiously befriends John Smith, a British settler. When she ventures back into the woods, she assures her best friend that she’s confident of success. She ultimately averts a war between her people and Smith’s people, thereby preventing dozens of deaths; Erin Brockovich saves dozens of citizens from ongoing illness and death due to the poisons that were leaked into their soil by Pacific Gas and Electric.
Rehab centers pelt new arrivals with cult-like pressure to conform. When the heroine of 28 Days arrives for detox and finds her fellow recovering druggies standing in a ring and chanting, she promptly writes a letter to her boyfriend asking him to smuggle in some pills. She is as strong-willed as Grant’s other protagonists, only she compulsively channels that will into self-destruction. Her sister and boyfriend predict that she’ll tumble into her boozing and pill-popping habits once back in the real world, but Gwen ultimately fights to stay sober; like Brockovich, Gwen refuses to be defined by the perceptions of others.
Grant’s skill for crafting independent-minded female protagonists is evident even in Island Girl, an unproduced screenplay that won the Academy’s Nicholl Fellowship in 1992. The heroine in that tale, Eleanor Hayes, is a well-read 14-year-old loner in a small Maine town where no one else uses the library. Like Brockovich, Hayes has a satirical tone that she’s not afraid to use when she believes someone is totally wrong. A peer tries to convince Eleanor to get to know his friends, who relentlessly taunt her bookworm ways; she replies, “That’s like saying the Christians and lions just needed to share a little quality time.” Hayes also brushes off the same boy when he defines the greeting “hey” thusly: “Yeah. Hey, hi. You know.” Grant’s protagonist responds, “Have you ever considered a career in public speaking?”
The fictionalized Erin Brockovich is an archetypal Grantian protagonist. The film would have been forgettable if a lesser writer had been hired to distill the actual Erin’s battle with Pacific Gas & Electric into a screenplay. Grant successfully wades through that eldritch swamp that faces all biopic writers. It’s a spooky place where crocodiles rear up out of the water and ask, “How much of the subject’s childhood, if any, will you depict? What aspects of this complex human being’s personality should you highlight, and how, and in what order? What cool, real events will you omit because they have no place on a sleek narrative spine? Answer quickly and correctly or I’ll gobble you alive and tell the development people that you cracked under the pressure.”
While the version of Erin Brockovich that reached audiences largely reflects the story told in Susannah Grant’s script, director Steven Soderbergh did tighten the narrative spine somewhat. Interestingly, though, he didn’t cut much material prior to shooting; he felt that most of Grant’s script was worth filming, and then he tinkered with the story in post-production. Many of the excised scenes are included on the Erin Brockovich DVD, and Soderbergh’s audio commentary includes this telling observation: “I suppose at the end of the day we could’ve tried to make the script shorter. It wasn’t a short script. But I find that it’s just really difficult to tell what things will come across and what things won’t, and what things will be moving and what things won’t, and what things will feel fast or slow. If you can, it’s better just to shoot it all and figure it out in the editing room.”
After being nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award (an award that she ultimately won), Grant told The Hollywood Reporter, “When you get a group of people like that working on your script, you can pretty much relax. What has Steven Soderbergh done that hasn’t been interesting and respectful of the story?”
Ultimately, the film gives voice to Susannah Grant’s common themes: trust yourself, stay strong, and don’t let weaker people define who you are.
Is the writer similar in character to her protagonists? I suspect she might be. She told Salon, “You could call me a ‘card-carrying feminist,’ if there were a card to carry.”
www.DanDuvall.com