Interview (Part 2): Beth Curry

My interview with the 2020 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

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

Today in Part 2 of a 6 part series to run each day through Saturday, Beth reveals the inspiration behind her award-winning screenplay “Lemon.”

Scott: I segue into your Nicholl-winning script, Lemon, which features this little girl who is absolutely an underdog and trying to navigate her life. The logline: “When Lemon’s agoraphobic mother dies suddenly, six-year-old Lemon goes outside for the first time in search of her father.”

You say Beasts of a Southern Wild meets Room. What was the original inspiration for the story? Was it Lemon, or was it some other character? How did you come up with this?

Beth: My husband is my muse. He hates talking about writing, but I somehow and sometimes get him to talk about stories and whatnot. He sublet his room in Florida years and years ago. He sublet to this woman and her little girl. They would just stay in their room, day and night, and hardly come out.

He said that they were very sweet, and they coexisted together. I’ve just used that image and created a story around them.

I’m also selfish with my writing sometimes. I work through my own personal issues in a camouflaged way when I write. I have hypochondria. I used Lemon’s fear of the unknown to work through my own hypochondria.

She goes from being conditioned to fear what she doesn’t know, believing that the world is going to steal her soul, to a loving place of unconditional trust. Watching Lemon go from fear to trust…that’s a lesson I want to learn. And writing through my issues is cheaper than therapy.

Scott: There are four primary characters I’d like to discuss with you and get your impressions of each. Of course, the first one is Lemon. How would you describe her personality beyond the fact that she’s raised in such a way that she’s got this fear-based attitude about the outside world?

Beth: We’re all born with a certain fire inside of us. Lemon is born with a warrior spirit. She is conditioned to fear from her mom. She’s taught that that’s how you survive in this world, is to fear what you can’t control or what you don’t know, but inside of her, she innately has this warrior spirit.

For me, she’s a survivor. She’s somebody who, like myself, uses her imagination to put herself at ease. As you see in the draft, her imagination is really active in the beginning, and fades away because she doesn’t need it as much in the end.

For me, my imagination is my salve. It’s something that just soothes me, especially right now in a world that’s so crazy. I love sitting down to my computer and writing a world that I can control. For Lemon, her imagination is her best friend.

Scott: She’s creative. I noticed in the first ten pages, there are four moments where she’s looking at the world or things around her, and they become alive in a way. How are you imagining that? Is it like an animation thing, or is it like live action in her mind, that she’s a character in it?

Beth: It would be live action. It’s so interesting because when I first did one draft of this, I had all her little drawn-out characters coming to life and saying things. Tonally, it was getting all over the place. All those heightened moments or surreal moments are definitely live action, like when her duck comes to life in the bath and says something to her.

I’m a very visual writer. I will see things very clearly as I write. I don’t know how people can’t see things clearly.

Scott: As I tell my film school students all the time — and they get sick of it — I say movies and TV are primarily visual media. As you say, Lemon draws these little paper figures. She has an interactive life with them. She’s a drawer. She sees things visually. They come to life.

Yet she has been, in a way, conditioned by her mother, Pip, to see the world in a very scary and frightening way. In fact, you have a wonderful setup and payoff of this book that they read together, a children’s book, “Mr. Pancake’s Pets,” which is going along like any children’s book, and then Pip has rewritten the ending of the book to read: “The world is evil. We must never go outside, but in here, we are happy. Let’s eat.”

Beth: Yeah. [laughs]

Scott: That really says something about the mother character, Pip. Could you talk to me about this agoraphobic, this obese woman — what’s going on with her?

Beth: I played that her husband was shot and killed early on, and it just made her fear going outdoors, fear the world, making herself numb out with food. I think it’s her form of love, instilling all of this fear into Lemon. She feels like she’s protecting Lemon.

I just wanted to create a character — who is doing her best to just survive. She doesn’t have a lot of resources to help herself out of this. She’s just doing her best.

Scott: That’s one thing I think that’s terrific about the story, is that each of your characters has a plausible rationale for why they are the way they are. The mom, even though you really feel badly for Lemon that she’s living this — I mean, her dream is to go outside and hug a tree, literally, at the beginning. You feel awful that that’s literally the height of your aspirations.

Yet you do get a feeling that the mother is doing something that she feels is being protective of her daughter.

Beth: Yes.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Beth describes how the Protagonist’s dire circumstances led to the unfolding of the plot.

Beth is repped by Jenny Wood and Raquelle David at Elevate Entertainment.

Beth’s website: LINK

Totsy website: LINK

Twitter: @bethcurrywagner

For Part 1, go here.

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

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.