Interview (Part 2): Byron Hamel

My interview with the 2021 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Byron Hamel wrote the original screenplay “Shade of the Grapefruit Tree” which won a 2021 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Byron about his creative background, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to him.

Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Byron discusses his Nicholl-winning screenplay “Shade of the Grapefruit Tree” and how real-life experiences were the inspiration for writing it.

Scott: Let’s jump to your Nicholl‑winning script, “Shade of the Grapefruit Tree,” which is both compelling and well‑crafted. One of those screenplays you can’t put down because it moves from one gripping event to another. Plot summary:

“When a severely‑abused White boy befriends his sci‑fi‑obsessed Black landlady, his fantasy of becoming a robot empowers him to recklessly confront his murderous step‑dad.”

What was the inspiration for this, and how much of it was deriving from your own personal experience growing up?

Byron: All of it was from my own personal experience. Almost every single horrible thing that happens to the kid in the screenplay happened to me.

I was drowned in a pool. I had my head held over a lit barbecue grill. I had this jalapeno pepper shoved up my nose. I was tortured in the shower by water. I was beaten mercilessly. I was stalked around the house with a machete. All that stuff is real. This was the guy who raised me. A guy who got the death penalty in Alameda County, and ended up in San Quentin.

As a journalist, I was interested in chronicling my personal story, ending with me taking a trip to piss on his grave, but it felt kind of pointless and was too real for me. It didn’t capture the poetic truth of my growth and was too much of an ego trip to be like “This is my personal hero’s journey.” Also, if nobody claims them, death row inmates don’t get graves. They are cremated. I stopped following that case. I didn’t want to know if he lived or died, or when they were actually…

When somebody gets the death penalty, it doesn’t happen right away. It happens decades later because they appeal and they appeal and they appeal.

Scott: If I recall correctly, after he left your family, he went to another family, and he actually killed someone. Is that right?

Byron: That’s correct. I wasn’t around when he tortured that baby to death. He lived with our family before that in Palm Springs. I’ve spoken with the mother of that child, who wasn’t there while this was happening to her baby. But her mother looking after the baby, and was a very evil person as well, and she took part in this murder. She got life in prison and died in there. The impact of something like this is so unfathomable, and it hurts to even think about.

The circumstances of what happened to that baby were so tragic and so sad, and a part of me… I hate writing stories about this. I want to clarify that I fucking hate writing about kids getting hurt, but it is important to me that people see this happening and that they’re not ignoring it.

People need to see what happens to those kids. If you’re a kid who goes through something like that, people don’t believe you, first of all. They side with your abusive parents, and they guilt you into forgiveness, like you’re somehow wronging your abuser, which is not your responsibility as the victim, ever. But as a kid, if you stand up in the middle of an assembly like I did in that ‑‑ In that screenplay, I have a scene ‑‑ I know I’m leaping all over the place with this…

Scott: No, that’s all right. It’s fine.

Byron: In that screenplay, I have a scene where the kid Jamie is in an assembly. In that public assembly, there’s these goofy guys on stage singing about, if someone touches you in a place you don’t want them to touch you, or if they hit you, tell a grown‑up and everything’s going to be okay.

I stood up in the middle of that assembly ‑‑ this happened in real life, so this scene is taken directly from my real life ‑‑ I stood up in the middle of the assembly, I said, “This is happening to me at home.” Sexual abuse and the getting beaten all the time, I didn’t know that any of that was bad. I thought that was normal like every kid went through that.

I had no idea until I saw that presentation, and I stood up in the assembly. I said, “I don’t want this happening to me.” My teacher said, “Sit down. Shut up.” Nobody ever did anything about it. I was told to sit down and, “Shhh,” and shut my mouth during the assembly that was saying to do this. That’s what happens.

That is what happens when you try to get help as a kid. Nobody advocates for kids, and no one gives a shit about kids. They just hire goofy mascots to dance around on stage, so that you think the children have a way out. The fantasy is that all abused kids have to do is choose courage and speak up, and then bam, they’re safe. It’s bullshit. It’s the tooth fairy. That’s why I feel like I need to tell these stories. Because I want people to learn from Felicia, my sweet landlady who gave me a refuge and taught me some things about life. Small kindnesses make a huge difference.

Scott: Even as hard as this was on a personal level, you felt like you needed to tell the story?

Byron: I felt like I needed to tell the story for a number of reasons ‑‑ that’s one ‑‑ is that I want people to actually start listening to kids. But another is: How do you process that as an adult who went through a situation like that? How do you get to a place as a person where you’re not doing that to your own kids? How do you make a home where it’s safe to bring children into your broken world?

I wanted to tell the story of how I did it, and how I did it was I found this switch. I found this switch basically to turn off my emotions and turn them on when I want them. Turning them on was a whole other story involving that acting professor I told you about. Whole other story.
 
 When I was a kid, I turned off my emotions full-time. I didn’t know what love was. I didn’t feel bad for people. I didn’t get sad or happy. I don’t remember being scared. I don’t remember the physical pain except for some things like when he’d burn my skin. I remember faking crying to make them feel like I’d had enough punishment, so that I wouldn’t die if they escalated the abuse. This was survival. Feelings off. Of course, that leads to other problems as you age. You can’t just leave that switch off. You need emotion to make moral decisions. You need it to find compassion. You need it to relate. You need it to know love. And you need love. But back then, I was a robot, and it helped.

Scott: Because there’s this robotic element in the story, how did that emerge as a theme for the story?

Byron: I didn’t know that I was becoming robotic as a child. I just was. Felicia did introduce me to Isaac Asimov. That science fiction that I encountered piqued my interest. But I never really put it together until I started to write this story. I was a robot. What would it look like if that were intentional for me while I was still a child? Or if I really felt it literally at the time. That’s where Jamie, the character comes from. Asimov’s story “Bicentennial Man” is a lot like my story, but in reverse. It’s a robot trying to become human, and the social abuse and injustice that surrounds that transformation. Here I have a human trying to become a robot. There is a question of superiority which is also a theme in Asimov. Of the two, humans and robots, who behaves better? For me, it’s robots. They are superior in their dedication to peace, but could be seen to be inferior in other less obvious ways.

The idea came from some questions I had. Why did I turn out okay? Could the laws of robotics be what made a child programmed by a killer become a better man? What did I lose? I know a lot about this journey because I lived it. I was writing what I know.

Scott: In a way, this is like an adaptation, adapting historical truths. Because you’re willing, for example, Felicia was not Black. She was White. You were bending the historical truth in order to facilitate the emotional truth of the story. Is that a fair way to look at that?

Byron: I think in order to confront an issue that I see as very important today with the Black Lives Matter movement. I wanted to lend my voice to that. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, as a White writer, trying to lend my voice to a movement some may say I have no business talking about. And I have to accept that they might be right. Sometimes you really do need to shut the fuck up and listen. But I feel I have a unique voice because of where I’ve lived and who I’ve loved. And I have this ache. The idea that we should love one another inherently, and we’re not. We need to do it more, and for that to happen, culture needs to be driven that way. We need to feel it more in the stories we see. 
 
 I think we, and I mean White people, have been severely damaged by our own racist views about who is of good quality and who is of poor quality. My experience is that people are different and have a lot to offer, and that you don’t get to experience the fullness of that if you stick to only your own culture. You miss the beauty of civilization if you dance and sing and fuck and eat with only one race of people.

Imagine love being limited that way. That’s how it is limited right now. What right do we have to limit it? In the words of Mr. T, “I pity the fool.”

Making Felicia Black was about interracial love for me, which more reflects my current concerns with driving the world in what I feel is a better direction than it is now headed.

And I come from a racist White family. I’m not going to hide that. I’m not ashamed of it. To me, the world needs more people standing up and saying out loud that “no I won’t continue the racism of my family.” This is what reconciliation looks like. This is what social evolution is. Freedom and justice for all should apply to everybody, and also be upheld by all. So there’s an element of duty there for me too, and my attempt to repair some of the damage done by my own family. I owe it to the world to try, in my opinion.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Byron digs deep into the key characters in his prize-winning screenplay “Shade of the Grapefruit Tree.”

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.