In the weeks leading up to the Film Independent Spirit Awards, we are posting Q&A’s with the writers who are up for Best First Screenplay. That way you can learn who they are, what they do and yes, how they managed to get from point A (dream of being a screenwriter) to point B (reality of sitting in the tent in Santa Monica alongside some of the most lauded  filmmakers of their generation.)

Sara Colangelo is nominated for her  work on Little Accidents, which she also directed. Set in an Appalachian coal-mining town, the film explores what happens when a mining disaster tears at the fabric of the community and the lives of three very different residents intersect to form a tangled web of secrets. Here, Colangelo tells us what compelled her to tell the story of a one-company town, and why her dad scolded her for her third grade poetry.

How did you come up with your premise and what was the most difficult aspect of achieving it? 
I wanted to look at how a traumatic event—one set a few months in the past—could reverberate onto an entire community and cast of characters. I was interested in the creative challenge of never showing the event onscreen but instead experiencing its horrors and its effects through people who are desperately trying to cope and move forward in its aftermath. I also liked the idea of setting a drama within a one-company town. I wanted to investigate how trauma could cut across lines of class and, in certain cases, connect victim and perpetrator. Contemporary coal country seemed like a compelling and timely backdrop for the story, and I was intrigued by the fact that this world and this industry were pretty unexplored in American cinema.

The sheer scope of the project was probably the most challenging aspect of it. As written, it was a portrait of a town but also an exploration of three characters within the town. So it had to at once provide context and express the shared psychology of a community, while at the same time delving into the inner life of each character. The script had a lot of locations, interweaving storylines, three hero houses, scenes in coal mines—so there were a lot of moving parts.

Did you have any cut scenes that were really hard to let go of? 
Prior to shooting we had to cut a few scenes due to scheduling and location logistics. One was a scene in which Owen (Jacob Lofland) drinks whiskey with his friend Claire in her basement—they end up getting drunk and he comes dangerously close to confessing his secret to her. Another scene that was tough to lose was set in a shopping mall and involved Owen watching Diana suffer over her missing son as she wanders loopily through the boys’ section of a department store.

Did you have a specific actor in mind for your lead when you wrote this script? 
I’ll usually have some visual or emotional reference point whether it’s a known actor or someone from my life, but I try to let go of some of that in the casting process. I thought a lot about Coming Home, vis a vis the love triangle between Diana Doyle, Bill Doyle and Amos. The dynamic between Jane Fonda, Bruce Dern, and Jon Voight was something I was inspired by.

During the draft process, what was your most valuable note? 
A mentor of mine gave me the very good advice of thinking about the “before” and “after” of the coal mine blast. What was each character’s life like before it happened versus after it happened, and how can you dramatize the big or small ways that they’ve modified their lives as a result. It seems like such an obvious note, but I went through the entire script with only that idea in mind and it opened up a lot of the scenes in interesting ways.

Did you have any go-to music while writing this script? 
I listened to a lot of Copland, the Appalachian Spring Suite and Rodeo pieces in particular. I was also obsessively listening to a score by Johann Johannsson for an experimental doc called The Miners’ Hymns. The film had a lot of beautiful black and white footage from early 20^th century Welsh coal fields and Johannsson’s score really blew me away. Both he and Copland used these dirge-like horn arrangements that I thought captured the heroism and melancholy of coal country.

What was the first story you ever wrote? 
I was actually going through a huge bin of old stuff in my mom’s attic and came across a poem that I wrote in third grade about an old man who is hobbling up a hill with a cane as kids run past him. It was a weird nine-year-old’s take on Umberto D or something. But I remembered that my dad subsequently found it on my desk and scolded me for writing about things that I couldn’t possibly understand.

Do you have an easier time writing character or plot? 
Definitely character. I really enjoy delving into a character’s psychology and exploring their idiosyncrasies, their moral deficits, their strange obsessions.  I like to think that character is the starting point and that the plot is somehow flowing from it and inspired by it. Hopefully you’re crafting a story that dramatizes those character traits in ironic or compelling ways.

What is the greatest line of dialogue in the history of cinema? 
Well, there’s the great line that Roy says to Chew in Blade Runner: “If only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes.” There’s a literalism to it since he’s talking to the scientist who has actually genetically engineered his eyes, but it obviously unravels to mean so much more. I like it because it encapsulates so much of what cinema is about—this bizarre desire to go on a journey through someone else’s point of view.

JB Bogulski / Film Independent Blogger