Go Into The Story Interview: Jane Therese

Jane Therese wrote the original screenplay “Sins of My Father” which won a 2020 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. I had the opportunity to chat with Jane about her creative background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to her.

Scott Myers: You have an eclectic background. Let’s see if we can provide some context. You’re originally from Southern California, is that right?

Jane Therese: Yes, I am from Southern California around the Peralta Hills area.

Scott: That’s where you grew up.

Jane: Yes. I went to a Catholic school, Cornelia Connelly, which unfortunately in December closed its doors. There were several parochial schools in the area at that time, Marywood, others. It was very interesting to have that happen on a chapter of my life.

Scott: You’re both a screenwriter and a photojournalist. Let’s start with photojournalism. How did you develop an interest in that?

Jane: I went to Fashion Institute of Technology, FIT. I left two weeks before graduation, which I still sometimes have nightmares about, that I didn’t complete it. But I left to go work. Part of that was in the fashion industry. I love the fashion industry.

I just found behind the scenes interesting, the psychology of people, why we do what we do, and situations that bring us to make the decisions we do. I began to gear my point of view more towards the journalism which is what I thoroughly love to do.

I went to Haiti, I just love that country, and it needs so much attention. I came back, put some work together and started at a newspaper. I am so grateful that my photo editor at the time allowed me to write and produce my own stories. It opened up a whole new world for me.

Scott: Originally, you did the Fashion Institute of Technology. That’s in New York City, were you involved in the fashion industry in New York?

Jane: Yeah, being in Fashion Institute of Technology, it was definitely geared towards fashion, and fashion photography and working with designers and clothes. The great thing was we could use the collection.

Now I say we can use. I don’t know if we were allowed to use it or not, but I went in to where they had the collections and asked to use some clothes and went into modeling agencies to ask them if they want to put a book together.

I would give them the images for their book for modeling from my book. One of the greatest moments I had was shooting on top of the San Remo building and Robert Stigwood actually had that penthouse. I made banana bread just to ask if I could shoot up there.

He was so gracious that he blocked out all the windows. They gave me carte blanche to do what I needed to do. Did my shoot. That was it. It was a pretty crazy time.

Scott: The journalism, I suspect that reflects an interest in storytelling.

Jane: Yes. I’ve always been a storyteller all of my life in one phase or the other. In fact, in junior high, I think at the time, we would have these, between the schools, these competitions. One of them was storytelling. They would give you three words, and that was it. You had to construct this whole story line based on just three words.

It was lots of fun. It’s always been whether through the written language or the camera, and I love being behind the camera, because I just think the world looks so much better through the lens of a camera.

Scott: You mentioned you’re going to Haiti. This is just after the Duvalier regime collapsed. Also you worked with indigenous people and displaced families in America. There’s a project you got involved with, called “Breaking the Silence of Autism.”

It feels like just reading through your personal history, certain personality traits come through… passion, curiosity, empathy, and advocacy. Do you feel like those attributes are a large part of your life interests?

Jane: Yes, absolutely. I also feel that is what gives me the momentum to continue to tell stories. The “Breaking the Silence of Autism” started with this young six‑year‑old boy, Jamie. I just fell in love with him and started documenting him, then adding more families to be able to give a broader perspective on autism through a variety of situations.

When I approach people, I approach it with the premise that I’m the vehicle for their story, and I truly believe that. I think the only way for change is to allow somebody’s voice if you have that ability to help them move it forward as a storyteller or a photojournalist or whatever it may be.

I find being that vehicle gives them the security to believe their words are going to be heard the way that they want to be heard. That’s important.

Scott: I think you studied psychology at Hunter College. Is that right?

Jane: Yeah, Hunter, and at that point, I was living in the City. Then I moved out to Pennsylvania, to Bucks County, and continued on at the community college here, just taking all the courses and using that knowledge in my storytelling.

Scott: If one of my writing students asks, “Should I minor in something,” I always tell them, “Do psychology,” because we spend so much time with our characters, we have to understand them.

Jane: Oh my God. Definitely. Psychology, philosophy, and logic ‑‑ ethics is extremely important, but I went into psychology if my photography wasn’t going to work out. Psychology is a science that pretty much explains your behavior.

You are certainly not going to try to define psychology on your own terms. It defines you, and “you” being one person, not our collective.

Scott: The individual you, yeah.

Jane: Exactly.

Scott: We talked about photojournalism. What about the screenwriting? When did you introduce yourself to that?

Jane: I’ll just say a friend of the family’s had reached out and contacted me. She was going through a situation where her son was murdered in Baja and wanted me to tell her story. She knew I was in photojournalism.

I flew back home and started working on her story ‑‑ interviews, court records, just all of it, from a very investigative‑journalistic approach. It was really fresh in her mind.

You sort of have to stand back sometimes, she was still needing to go through something. Anyhow, I moved back to the East Coast and started working at the newspaper, but that story right there of her son really kept that script alive.

Through that script, I was able to hone my craft a little bit better, receive feedback, and get an idea of the screenwriting world in LA, that whole industry, which ‑‑ I was forever fortunate because I think to assume that I could just jump into a craft and “Ooh, this is going to work,” really woke me up to a lot of different things.

Scott: You didn’t go to film school, so how did you go about learning the craft?

Jane: I’m a huge movie buff. Don’t even ask me what my favorite movie is. I watch all kinds of movies for a variety of reasons, and I think screenwriting, the way the storyline is broken down is an added bonus to being a photojournalist for me.

As I’m going into my stories as a photojournalist, I have this way things should be played out, so at least I have a structure going in. I think as a screenwriter with a storyline, I have that same structure. Obviously, sometimes things don’t work out that way, you have to be very flexible, but that’s how I approached it. It was along the same lines.

Scott: In a biographical statement you put together, you said that, “You continue to dedicate your work to those who remain unheard.” That sensibility is reflected in your Nicholl winning script, “Sins of My Father.” Let’s jump into that. The logline: “The young woman in Ireland grapples with the love she has for her father, after bringing charges of abuse against him.”

The title page says, “Inspired by true events.” My first question for you is, are those events tied to a specific individual or is this more about a story that arose from the general state of the situation in Ireland?

Jane: I got involved with a project that quickly filtered, fell by the wayside. One of the things I do in storytelling — and just me as a person as I’m thinking of stories to tell — is I have to be mindful and aware of my surroundings and things that are being presented to me.

That may sound a little strange, but maybe there’s people out there who feel the same way. For instance, even though the storyline had fallen apart, what I took from that was a judge during that time. After researching him, he dedicated his life to children of abuse, rape, murder. He devoted all of his career to this.

Now with that being said and with the history of Ireland, and the more I started to research, there was a collective of children who were sexually abused and what that did to them. I wanted to go beyond that and tell the story differently.

In my newsfeed during this time, a story popped up about a child of incest and the love the mother had for the father. I thought, “Wow. What do you do with that?” Love is a central thing for me. I think love, it propels us to do the most heinous crimes and the most compassionate of gestures. We just go all over the spectrum.

We have this premise hiding behind of “I love you.” This is very false and very misleading because love isn’t as pure as all of this.

I wanted to look at that perspective of love and how we trust in love, we believe in love, and we believe the words that are being said to us. What do you do when those words are twisted, but you have these feelings inside for that person? Even though you know what’s going on is wrong, there’s still that connection to that person.

To explore that and then to have a child by that person, there is an awakening that even though suppression, we can suppress all we want, but there will be an awakening within the psyche that will seek to break out. That’s what Imogen [the Protagonist] is trying to do in a way to where it doesn’t affect anybody, doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s just her doing what she needs to do for her, and unfortunately that’s not how abuse works.

Abuse trickles through the family, generations, relationships. I wanted to show how no one comes out of this a winner.

Scott: Let’s break that down. The screenplay isn’t easy to write. Given the dark nature of the subject matter, I suspect this was a challenging story to write. How did you manage to write a script like this with sustained inter-familial child sexual abuse and incest, balancing that as a screenwriter versus your feelings that you had?

What I’m hearing from you is what drew you to it was, “Wow. That’s such a complex thing that someone who could have been abused by their father yet still has feelings for them.”

Jane: Right. In the storyline, the mother leaves, so there’s really not a role model for her to model after. It is complicated.

When I first started to write it, it was heavy, I took a break. I wrote this other fun fantastical adventure story. I needed that to get away from the subject matter. Then I was brought back into the subject matter when I started to research more.

I played around with every scene. From everybody’s point of view, but never trying to leave the central theme of the story. I went to the Athena Workshop, and one of the Athena woman, we were talking about our screenplays, and she said, “Victims are groomed.” I thought, “Oh my God, that’s right.” That’s all she had to say to me.

It was like, hearing at the Athena lab, this is also wonderful and great. All it took was just victims get groomed. That was all I needed to know.

When I came back, I took that and the feelings I had for this woman who loves her father, but is beginning to understand, I don’t want to say the reality, but the honesty of the relationship or the lack thereof, all tied up with her daughter. Literally, what do you do with that? What do our children who are abused do with that? Then you have a child of abuse who you love and you’re committed to.

Scott: The script creates this community of people, this little village of Garristown, Ireland, which is near Dublin. That’s a whole other thing I’d like to talk to you about how you immerse yourself in that and achieve that sense of verisimilitude where it feels like you were there. Let’s break down these characters so that we can get a handle on this.

You mentioned Imogen. She’s the protagonist in this story. 30‑year‑old woman. How would you describe her at the beginning of the story?

Jane: In the beginning of the story, she’s wound. She’s going through a lot. It’s her daughter’s 15th birthday. She’s involved in a celebration physically, but emotionally and mentally, she knows what’s going to be required of her in the next few days, weeks, and months coming up.

It says, “If she’s attending the most important event of her daughter’s life, a birthday. She almost feel like she’s betraying people.” She’s had a secret.

Scott: This 15th birthday is a symbolic trigger because Imogen had a child, her daughter, Ane, when she was 15, correct?

Jane: Yes.

Scott: She’s projecting her own past experience about having given birth to her daughter when she was 15 and now her daughter’s turning 15. That’s a triggering thing, right?

Jane: Right. Her daughter is, I don’t want to say promiscuous, but she’s exploring her sexuality. This also triggers Imogen into this mother mode, but once again, she doesn’t have a role model. She’s just going on these visceral feelings of what this marker de psychologically means to her and she wants it to stop.

She’s almost as if she takes her child and just wants…She wants to give her wings, but she wants her to stop. Like, “Just stay little. Don’t go anywhere.” By holding back all of the secrets, Ane is at that age where she’s questioning everything, especially truth and love, and honesty.

Scott: Ane wanting to get out of the house?

Jane: Yeah. Big teenager there.

Scott: She’s a teenager pushing back against her mom…

Jane: Thinking she knows more.

Scott: …and she has this positive relationship with her grandfather.

Jane: That’s one of the things that Imogen made sure that any damage that was done to her, she wanted to keep it to herself. She’s hoping that it doesn’t affect anybody. She’s happy to see that her daughter has a relationship with her grandfather. You also see that Brendan, the father, makes himself at Imogen’s home. He just comes and goes. That’s the way the family has always been.

Unfortunately, as things begin, it’s says, “If Imogen is on autopilot at that point and she begins to sever, bring up the walls, so everybody is protected in her family. That means that the kids can’t be with the grandfather.”

Unfortunately, which is interesting is the kids can’t be with the grandfather, not because of what Imogen is doing. It’s because of what the father doesn’t acknowledge, but continues to behave as if something has never happened.

Scott: That’s interesting to Imogen’s walls. That’s a really interesting metaphor because on the one hand, it’s reflective of the way in which the community wants this thing. [laughs] Basically, Imogen is going to bring charges against her father for sexually assaulting her for a long period of time.

Starting when she was four up through her adolescence, resulting in, and being the daughter of Brendan, who is the father. In effect, Ane is not only the daughter of Imogen, she’s also the sister of Imogen. Ane is not only the daughter of Imogen. She’s not only the granddaughter of Brendan, she’s the daughter of…

It’s really a complex thing. Basically, the people in this village don’t want to deal with this at all. They all build these walls to ignore it, but there’s an interesting way in which that shifts. Where Imogen says, “I need to build a wall” ‑‑ I’m speaking parenthetically, right? ‑ “to protect Ane, to protect people.” It takes on a different meaning, doesn’t it?

Jane: Yeah. It takes on a different meaning which not only affects the children, but she’s in a marriage. This marriage was her husband never really questioned a single mom getting pregnant, falling in love with her. Taking on the responsibilities of raising the mother’s child as we have in marriages now, and then have a child of their own.

Not only is she protecting the wall within the family, she’s putting people in compartments, she’s also compartmentalizing her marriage. Eamon, tried to understand, can’t really understand because he’s never had that experience. The only way he sees things surviving and moving along normally is if his marriage moves along normally and there’s no hiccups and obviously.

Scott: But hiccups occur because in the process of her going forward with this legal case against her father, that basically disrupt everything.

Jane: Yes. All of it psychologically is really it.

Scott: You mentioned that you had this epiphany, when you’re at the Athena IRIS Screenwriting group, victims are groomed. There’s Bridget, who is Imogen’s mother. Could you unpack the nature of that relationship a bit and how she was…literally in the script you talked about her grooming her daughter?

Jane: I know some women and which is where I drew this from not personal experience, but the experience of that kind of a woman. We have it when women who have children and their marriages are not working, where they get involved in a relationship and maybe the child isn’t received as well as they had wanted the child to be received with a partner. Let’s put it that way.

The mother who is invested obviously in this relationship, she’s had these children, but she’s also competing with her older daughter, who’s a child, for the father’s attention. She didn’t know what to do. She’s just as repulsed as anybody else and it’s a sickness. It was also culturally accepted for a very long time in Ireland.

The Catholic Church was there, turning their back, understanding that the only way this country is going to be populated is we may have some scenarios like incest. You’re talking hundreds of years ago, but culturally ingrained, and maybe not practiced as much as it was, but it’s also something that’s in the culture and handed down through generations.

With this being said, Bridget is not part of that culture in her family, but knowing this culture exists, happens upon this in her marriage as a very rude awakening and caught up in something in the beginning that was unacceptable. She left. All around she couldn’t deal, but she didn’t go far because when Imogen goes back to court, she sees her daughter’s photo. She does go out of curiosity to Imogen, but once again, just to see how things were wasn’t really to be a part of her life, that Bridget would never be a part of Imogen’s life.

Scott: A part of this is the patriarchy. That’s probably tied in, though you don’t get into it at all, the Catholic Church, but that kind of male dominated society. There is this don’t rock the boat mentality, like her sister Colleen at first. Then some of these other characters, they take out their anger toward Imogen or even bringing this up.

Jane: Right. I do set it in a time in the 90s in Dublin. It was toward the end of the troubles where the Protestants and the Catholics, they were going through that part of history.

We do have that on the outskirts, as far as theology, and how that is ingrained in that culture. Once things start bubbling up, Colleen, her sister begins to experience these thoughts. Memories are repressed, so certain triggers bring out those memories. Then to find out that her brother has taken on the role that the father had with their niece, awakens everybody in the family.

Scott: Let’s talk about Eugene, the brother. You got these three siblings Imogen, Eugene and Colleen. Colleen has basically repressed this stuff, but Eugene, talk about his character.

Jane: Eugene is the middle child, and he has been caught up with the sexualness of just being a teenager and a boy. He notices things are going on in the home. It leads us to believe that he’s been spying on Imogen.

It’s not so much his spying on Imogen, but watching his father, and how the father behaves in the family. He’s taken that because it’s a learned behavior as well as anything else, but not just because it’s learned, it’s ingrained and has done those things to his family and his child.

It’s a huge complicated family with a lot of their own individual realizations, awakenings, awareness of what really their childhood was a like. Once they all started to look at it for what it was, just realize that the house of cards is tumbling quickly. There’s no saving anybody.

Scott: I have a theological background. As I was reading the script, I was reminded of the Catholic idea of sins of commission and sins of omission.

Eugene is an example of someone who is engaged in sins of commission that he is behaving in a way that was taught to him by his father. He’s committing these acts consciously, setting aside the sort of conflicted psyche he may have about that.

On the other hand, Imogen’s mother has departed. She has no maternal representative there to help her. Her sins, if you will, are omission. When her daughter, Ane, it’s 15, that’s when her own maternal self starts to come out irrespective of the vacuum that Bridget created by leaving.

So it appears she’s now leaning into and embracing her own maternal self to help her daughter not suffer the consequences that she did.

Jane: That is an extremely fair assessment. I think, Eamon, Imogen’s husband to his credit, bringing Imogen and bringing Ane at a very young age and being a father figure to not only Ane, as a small child, but a father figure, not age-wise, but behavior-wise.

It’s something that she could look at and model and go, “OK, this is normal.” Even in the back of her mind, she might have some thoughts about Eamon as far as…”I didn’t want to explore that because I didn’t want it to be something that Eamon was guilty of or anything like looking towards at Ane and or anything like that. I wanted it completely normal.”

Both of these women have had a taste of normalcy. When Imogen’s emotions and these triggers happen, she at least has the foundation or her backside up against what she knows to be a normal model, if that makes any sense.

Instead of leaving a home of abuse going into abusive relationships, abuse, abuse, abuse, which, yes, does happen, she was able to go into a family where there was love and nurture.

That’s what was able to give Imogen that strength not only being the mother to a 15‑year‑old Ane, but also being in a family unit. That was a positive.

Scott: Yet it’s so complex, because once Eamon understands what’s going on, then see how Imogen acts toward Brendan. There’s a scene in the grocery store with a bay leaf, the spice, after she’s already may have known the legal processes are started and Brendan knows this.

They have a conversation, but it’s like two people who are talking about spices. Eamon has to live with the fact that she actually invited this guy into the house and how does he deal with that, and so it’s just this whole layers of complexity going on there.

Jane: Right, yeah, he has a lot. He gets into his little state of denial too. Towards the end, he’s like, “I didn’t ask you. I should have asked him, but I didn’t ask you any of this,” because I felt like it wasn’t important. He almost admits that it doesn’t matter what you say to me, just if I asked you a question, just answer it. I don’t even care what the answer is.

There’s so many things going on. I don’t know what to do with it. He, at that point, just sits back because Imogen has a moment with her cousin, or is it her cousin, Grace? She has a row with her.

Eamon doesn’t butt in. She’s just in the kitchen drinking a beer watching it all crumble around them and just giving Imogen her space, and that’s tough. That’s tough. He really has to hold himself back on a lot of accounts. Meanwhile, he has to come to the term said his wife was raped over and over again by the father. That’s tough.

Scott: There’s the standard screenwriting proximity that we have to our characters, we’re like a journalist, describing what’s going on. But there are scenes in your script where you shrink that distance between the journalist and the narrator’s feelings about Brendan. I’d to explore a scene, picking up where he’s left the house. Ane has had a row with her mom. She’s gone to hang out with Brendan. Now we know ‑‑ Ane doesn’t ‑‑ but we know his whole back‑story, so that’s some frightening dramatic irony.

There’s this really creepy breakfast scene. I just want to read some of this language to you. It’s been a while since you’ve written it, so I’d be curious what your reaction to this is.

Brendan wakes to find Ane dressed for school making

breakfast. A pleasant sight for an old pedophile.

He feels vindicated having her in his kitchen. A new shift in

power and he likes it.

He watches Ane in her school uniform make him breakfast.

He reaches for a packet of sugar. Knee socks pulled up to her

thighs. Tearing the paper. Her hair falling over her eyes.

Pouring in the sweetness. Her lips. Laying aside the sugar

packet. She serves him breakfast. Stirring his coffee.

It’s really creepy.

Jane: I know. [laughs]

Scott: Did you intuitively or intentionally shrink that distance between the narrator and Brendan, in effect go into his mindset?

Jane: Abnormal psychology is extremely fascinating, and there is duality in each of us. When we look at Brendan and how he is viewing his daughter/granddaughter, we can go back and reference Eugene in his approach to his family life.

Now, I covered as a photo journalist, Jesse Timmendequas, I think is his last name, but anyhow, back in the day, Megan’s Law covered that, was there on side when Megan’s body was discovered, had ended up talking to the little brother Jeremy, all of this.

All of this ‑‑ I’m outside of the house ‑‑ and all of this is going on knowing, not until later but knowing that the pedophile was living across the street from them which we began to have laws in place as far as sexual registration and all that.

Here is a person who has a psychological deficit. That’s really what it is. Yes, the deficit is monstrous. There’s no doubt about that. He also tries to ‑‑ I don’t want to say he reasons or rationalizes himself ‑‑ but he tries to then move away as we see when Imogen is in the attic and he turns to her. Brendan turns to Imogen.

It’s like, “This was tough,” and your mom wasn’t here and all this other stuff. As a human being who’s trying to repress this psychosis inside of them, but then you see it lapse. It see it for what it is when Ane is in the kitchen.

We have this idea that Brendan is trying to really, “But I’m the dad, and I’m sorry. Things were tough. Hey, I provided a really great life for you. Let’s just move on.” It’s almost like a taste of kill or something.

We thought we rehabilitated this animal, but come to find out, this animal really isn’t rehabilitated because we just see him slip. At that point, when we see him slip it’s like, “Whoa, where’s this family going now?” I thought that was intense.

Scott: Yeah, it was intense. On the one hand, you could look at this and Ane is this lovely young girl who desires to be a fashion model. Obviously, she’s very pretty. Imogen, now making this connection, she was 15 when she got ‑‑ I forget what the word you use ‑‑ plugged or something like that, but the word when…

Jane: Pregnant.

Scott: Yeah. Now, she’s concerned because Ane is making out with his boy Daniel and all this stuff, but mostly concerned about her father and so that’s what precipitates this whole thing. It’s one thing because…Look at it from Imogen’s perspective as it’s unfolding and there are a few flashbacks filling that in terms of her youthful experience with her father.

Then to have this breakfast scene with the father, it’s one thing for Imogen to be concerned in abstract and our own sort of way about Ane safety. Then, we realize, “Oh, man she’s like literally in this predator’s crosshairs.”

Jane: I was going to say like teenagers…Have you ever heard a parent go ‑‑ I don’t know if you have children ‑‑ but they’re at this age in fact literally on an assignment a couple of days ago, which ended up getting canceled because of the cold.

This guy shows up, and he was like this wagon ride. It really was cold. He’s like, “Oh, I’m about ready to like, oh my 13‑year‑old boy.” I said, “You’re supposed to be feeling these feelings. This is what it’s like to have a teenager. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”

You want to protect them. Even if you tie them up and put them in their bedroom, they’re going to find a way out to do exactly what you’ve asked them not to do. It’s almost like as if she has given this power over to something bigger than her and hopes that, “Pray to God.” Her daughter wasn’t going to be preyed on by this man. The relationship is so complicated.

We saw Brendan’s slip. We really saw Brendan slipping. It was really heart‑wrenching to see that he’s sick, but he took matters into his own hands.

Scott: He actually did say to Ane, “No, at some point, you can’t stay here.”

Jane: It’s like he’s backing away from the ledge.

Scott: There is this kind of almost like a race. You have this two-part court case. First of all, was that always in mind instructionally like you’re going to build toward that?

Jane: Yeah, there is a judge, and I was impressed by his behavior. There were things going on in his life where he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He made this judgment in a court case that shocked the country.

There was anger and hatred and just spewing of vulgarities. Rightly so, nobody understood it so I needed to understand why this judge, after all of these years, after being so dedicated to the law and so dedicated to these people, why he would hurt this person the way he did?

Come to find out, he had a terminal illness, so I was able to draw a conclusion where I feel satisfied that possibly this could have happened, where he realized that in Ireland or anywhere else in this country and this world ‑‑ and it’s really not Ireland ‑‑ we really need to take a look at the way that we treat our children and how we raise them because we will not have a healthy society if it doesn’t belong with raising, educating, critically thinking while we have these children formed as adults.

I really believe it was his last ditch effort to say, “You know, there’s an epidemic. We have an epidemic. There’s an epidemic.” If nobody’s listening to me, then forget it. Just forget it.

On the other hand, even though he was struggling with his decision, I didn’t expect the outcry as almost as if he felt that the sentences that he was handing down earlier were not making any dents. In fact, they were making progress. He just was not able to see that.

Scott: Yeah. I think it’s a fair to say that Imogen was looking to this legal case to provide a kind of black and white clarity in a complex world, and what the judge does is essentially create yet another layer of complexity.

Jane: Right. Then, we begin to look at the legal system. The story couldn’t really have been told from a legal point of view. I find those really boring. I find the psychology of the person going through these moments more interesting.

Even though the judge did what he did and she was thrown for a loop because she expected a different outcome, I think it was her ego that really wanted the outcome, because at the end, she gets an outcome that she’s “satisfied” with, but she’s really not satisfied.

If the judge hadn’t done what he did, she just would have walked away and said, “OK, that’s fine. You know, I got what I wanted,” but she’s still broken. This way, she was able to realize her support system. She really had a support system like the judge who felt that his decision was not having any effect, like Imogen who felt that her case was not going to have a big effect.

She was being ostracized from everybody, but during this point of the way the judge handled it, she was able to see that she’s not going at this alone. She doesn’t have to be alone.

Scott: So there is this bittersweet ending that there is some justice, she does connect with her family or people in a deeper way. Yet, on the other hand, it’s not the justice this guy deserves.

Jane: She needed closure is what she needed. There was not going to be any closure until she was able to legally be able to close the lid on this. It says if you know you need to do something for whatever reason, you’re being compelled to do it. In your heart, you feel it, “Yes, I have to do this,” but you don’t want to do it.

It’s a process. She’s just getting up and putting literally one foot in front of the other to make sure that she completes this process, but there’s so much more than the process. It’s just the processes of surface level.

Scott: I was struck by that ending title sequence that you have which reminded me of the movie Spotlight that long scroll that they had at the end…

Jane: Oh, that’s so heartbreaking.

Scott: In some respects, it’s almost the most gut‑wrenching part of the movie. What you did…it could have been so easy to drift into melodrama, but you kept leaning into scene, after scene, after scene the complexity of it all. With that, it’s just not as simple as you think it may be. I thought that was commendable, because it really is quite compelling in that sense.

Jane: Oh, thank you. I was going through some stuff, and it was a process. It was a very long heart‑wrenching process. I had a friend at the time who was no longer friend, but when I saw her, she was like, “You’re not done with this,” and I’m thinking, “Oh, my Lord, God. Do I have a timeframe?”

It’s almost like when you mourn something, and you’re still mourning it, and people are like, “Oh, you’re still mourning? You’re still going through this? Abuse?” It’s so hard to define because it’s…Yes, you get smacked around or yes your sexually abused or whatever the case it is or psychologically abused.

There’s so much whittling down at the psyche for the woman and for the man, for the human that is receiving this. It’s so much more unless there’s the support team and a serious education, that’s where the support is.

Starting from beginning how we teach our children to interact with each other, how we teach our boys, “No means no,” or how we gently communicate our needs and wants and feelings to another person.

This is all going to stem from the way we raise our children in the future, because we can’t expect the same thing over and over again if we’re not giving them the skills in order to grow into a healthy person.

Scott: At the end of this process ‑‑ well, not end but a chapter, I guess you could say ‑‑ you discover you win the Nicholl. That must have been quite an experience for you.

Jane: Yeah. I am happy to say it’s been option. I am happy to say that it’s in the hands of people…I can say a whole lot about it, but I can’t say it’s in the hands of people who I completely trust and their sensitivity towards the storyline. I just feel that the attention that hopefully it gets also people here, the judges’ response to this.

It was this last‑ditch effort to say there is an epidemic, I want to be able to say that again. “There is an epidemic. We need to do something.” The recognition that “Sins of My Father” has received, I do want to reach out even though this judge has passed and in my heart say, “Thank you very much, I am trying to send your voice out there.”

Scott: I’d like ask some craft questions.

Jane: Sure.

Scott: I’d be interested to hear if you’ve got this journalistic background, how do you come up with story ideas? Is it like a journalist’s instinct, or what’s going on there where you see something and you go, “Ah, that seems like a screenplay”?

Jane: Yeah. Basically it’s, I guess, listen to what people are saying. I read lots of stuff. There’s always a story somewhere. There’s always something going on, and for me as a journalist, because I love telling stories so much, I look for stories every day.

Actually, I finished a recent project. I covered Delaware, which is a state that I know nothing about, but now I do. I was able to, through one of the portraits, I was documenting, moving to a short documentary of a woman who was going under facial surgery to make herself more feminine. When people see her, they’re not so prejudiced against her physically.

When I asked her to follow up, she was telling me about this, and I’m like, “Kathy, I can’t say no.” You know, if you want to go on board, this is something that really needs to be documented. We need to get this out there.” She said, “Yeah, I’m onboard.”

Things like that, they present themselves, and if we just take the time to pay attention to what’s being presented to us it could turn out to be something quite pleasant to indulge in.

Scott: How about research? Do you have any connections, Ireland, for example?

Jane: It seems like everybody is Irish. There’s a lot of mix in our family. I personally have never been to Ireland. I immersed myself in movies, language, books, images, just all of it.

My son actually did marry a woman who has relatives in Ireland. That’s the closest I can say. The script I’m writing for the fellowship, I’ve flown to the state where I’m covering and really researched it and have read numerous books on the topics that I’m covering.

It really is trying to get the facts straight, an honest way to tell the story, and that has to do with a lot of research, making sure your time period is exactly what has gone on in that time period, which means cars, fashion, songs, all of it.

Scott: Do you work from an outline, typically, or no?

Jane: I guess you could say it was an outline. Right now, I’m writing a treatment. With the Nicholl, we each get mentors. My mentor had suggested something. Even though you know your character, and you know your how, what, where, when, and why, but it was the way that the information was being presented to me that I decided that I’m going to write this story as a treatment.

I have to say, it’s so much easier writing everything down as my treatment and then going to pages. I’ll see how that turns out. It’s a completely different way of approaching a story, but I’m finding it’s going to help alleviate a lot of the problems right off the bat.

Scott: Yeah, I always give my students an option. I say, “If you want to write in TV, you pretty much have to work with outlines.” It’s all the index cards and breaking the story beforehand.

On the feature side of things, whatever works best. Some writers really do prefer to write a more literary version of the story. We see James Cameron has these things that have come to be called ‑‑ I don’t think he calls them, but it’s come to be known as a scriptment, which are like treatments with dialogue things in them.

Jane: Yes.

Scott: It’s whatever works best, and evidently, for this particular project, you’re finding it freeing to work more from a treatment type of a perspective.

Jane: Yes, mainly because the topic at hand, I knew nothing of, which I found really interesting and then began to ask myself, “Well, you don’t know anything about this. Are you sure?” and I thought, “Yes, I am sure. This is how I need to do this.”

The research and the treatment and outline that way helps me visualize this story a lot easier in my mind than, let’s say, “Sins of My Father,” which I was able to do the outline and just go, “OK, this, this, this, and this needs to happen,” and I was able to then readjust the scenes a lot easier through that outline.

Yeah, it’s however you can tell the story to the best of its ability. I don’t think there’s a right way or a wrong way.

Scott: Time for one last question, which I’ve asked all your fellow fellows. You’ll probably be getting asked this by people who intersect with you and find out that you’ve had some success in screenwriting, but what advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and just trying to break into the business?

Jane: What could I offer? It’s a job. For anybody who thinks this isn’t a job, then I just think for me personally, that would be kind of a rude awakening. It’s a job. You need to treat it as a job. We all have jobs outside of our home, we all have families, we all have this, that, and the other thing. We’re not a unique ‑‑ we are all doing the same thing.

If we want to follow our passion and follow our bliss, it means putting in the hard work and doing it and doing it and doing it, and do not do it with an ego, and don’t think you’re above it all.

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner since 2012, go here.