Interview (Part 3): Gillian Weeks

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for her script OH THE HUMANITY.

Gillian Weeks wrote the screenplay OH THE HUMANITY which landed on the 2022 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Gillian about her creative background, writing a Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 3 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Gillian discusses some of the key characters in her script, many of them based on real life people.

Scott: Let’s talk about some of the characters in the story, the key players, why you chose them, and whether some of them were based in historical fact while some may have been fictionalized. It’s an ensemble story, but the Protagonist is Gertrud. She’s a German citizen. She was a passenger on the Hindenburg. She survived. She got hurt This is how you introduce her in the script:

“The pursuer is Gertrud Adelt, 34 German. On better day, she’s a glamorous globetrotter and acid tongue sauce box. One hell of a good time. Now her red skirt is covered in mud and ash. Her white blouse smeared with blood. She’s hysterical.”

Is this based on an actual individual?

Gillian: It is based on a real person. Gertrud Adelt was a journalist. She was married to Leonard Adelt, who was also a writer, and was writing the biography of one of the ships captains. That’s why they were on board. I talked to her grandson who is a professor in the US now. He filled me in a little bit more about his relationship with her and how she struck him.

So Gertrud is based on a real person and the fact that they as a couple had unique insight about the true cause of the explosion, and that insight was suppressed. In the days and the months following the disaster, they were surveyed and monitored by the Nazi government. They had visits from the SS. Their family back in Germany were threatened and intimidated.

The liberty I took is that, although she was a journalist, and she wrote for Film und Frau Magazine, she wasn’t a gossip reporter specifically. Yet she did have the set of skills that would make her capable of finding the truth.

Scott: You’re on two lists in Hollywood: midcentury male scientists and brassy broads. There you go. [laughs] OK. Then there’s Hugo Eckener also a historical figure. Here’s how you introduce him:

“We consider a portrait of visionary, Adolf Hitler. This is in Germany after the conflagration in New Jersey. Then we consider the scowling man sitting directly beneath Hugo Eckener 67, Germany, tall barrel-chested with silver hair mustache and an urbane soul patch. A man who will never get used to not being in charge.”

He literally was the guy behind the Hindenburg?

Gillian: Yes. Hugo Eckener was extremely famous. He’s not a household name these days, but it is difficult to overstate what a worldwide celebrity he was at the time. He was on the cover of “Time” magazine. When he came to New York for the first time, they threw a ticker tape parade for him.

He was hugely famous in that time because he had captained the Graf Zeppelin, which was the predecessor to the Hindenburg, that flew around the world. It was a great feat. It had this flawless record of flights between Germany and Brazil, back and forth. It went everywhere. It was a real point of pride for the nation.

Then he worked with engineers to design the Hindenburg. But most of what we’ve known about his involvement with the Hindenburg was based on his memoirs, called “My Zeppelins.” His version of his own life story is one where he had stood proudly against the Third Reich. He was a thorn in Hitler’s side from the beginning, he never quite got in line, so he says. It’s true that he was not a member of the Nazi Party officially. But based on Mike McCarthy’s investigation, there’s a very different telling of events. He was much more of a collaborator than he presented himself.

Scott: Not to minimize this, but a lot of those people who were Nazi sympathizers and involved in that are sort of like the Hollywood producers when a movie bombs, “No, I had nothing to do with it.” They run away from it.

Gillian: “It’s true, I was barely there.”

Scott: “It wasn’t my fault.”

Gillian: “Oh, I always said it was a bad idea”

I will say that, although Gertrud is the protagonist, it was Hugo’s character that inspired me, and the script is almost a two-hander.

Hugo begins as a guy who’s not a fan of Hitler or Goebbels. He’s doing this reluctantly. He’s doing what he has to give himself a shot at having a career in the future and building another airship. But in the end he becomes the person that he claims to hate in the beginning. When push comes to shove, he will do anything for power.

Scott: That’s an interesting point, a connection between the two. They haven’t yet met, but both of them are essentially fired, and yet they’re given an opportunity, like the guy says, “Well, you go to the United States, massage this thing, plant this conspiracy theory,” or whatever, going back to the Hindenburg, “We’ll let you build a bigger one.”

Then for her, she’s fired from her gig as a journalist, “Well, if you go and massage this thing, then we can…” They’re both bound at the hip with the same sort of survival instinct, in terms of their professional careers.

Gillian: Yeah. They’re both given assignments to clean up the mess, and they should be on the same team, but then their paths diverge. He chooses to follow those orders and she decides that instead of accepting this assignment, she’s going to do the right thing, which is to find the truth. She realizes that, in spite of being this gossip reporter who doesn’t care about the truth, in this case, she has to make that choice. It’s a choice that everyone in Nazi Germany had to make in some way along the way.

Scott: From a morality standpoint, I suppose, it’s interesting. You’ve got these two characters, one’s in a descent, one’s in an ascent. It’s smart writing. You’re a good writer!

Gillian: [laughs] Boy, I’m going to write that on the wall, so I can glance up at it when I frequently doubt my abilities on the page.

Scott: That’s a proof that you’re a writer, that you frequently doubt. [laughs]

Gillian: Yes, every day.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Gillian talks about why she thinks so-called screenwriting rules are “fairly intuitive.”

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

Gillian is repped by The Gersh Agency and Entertainment 360.

Twitter: @gillmw

Instagram: @thegillface

For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.