It's really about realizing we can own a piece of each other's successes, and in so doing, learn to become successful ourselves. Lois Shelton, Foxglove Films         Film Rap with Steven Rivele By Ward Serrill “Find that one moment in their character’s story that contains the seed of the character’s entire life.” Then he said, “Write from that seed to revel the character’s true nature.” – S. Rivele It’s not every Saturday that I get to climb out of an invitingly warm bed, slog through a monsoon, battle a horde of Husky football fans and discover that JFK slept with an East German police agent posing as a prostitute. But that was only part of the story at a recent Film Rap put on by the Warren Report at The Henry Art Gallery. As a guest of Women in Film, co–partner of the event, I sat enraptured for two hours of tales and insights from Academy nominated screenwriter Stephen Rivele. Rivele and his writing partner Christopher Wilkinson specialize in high profile biography pics such as Ali, (which he clamed Michael Mann absolutely butchered), Nixon, and upcoming films on Miles Davis and Jackie Kennedy. At the event, he screened Copying Beethoven, a labor of love released in 2005, a film that he turned down Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Michael Douglas before settling on Ed Harris to play the belligerent composer in the last days of his life. Ed Harris could drink a Coke for ten minutes and I would be fascinated. Seeing him play the irascible genius composer in a race to complete his 9th symphony before he kicked the bucket was a thrill. But it was the two hours with Rivele that was more valuable than a year in film school. A man who told Robert Redford to get lost and calls Anthony Hopkins “Tony”, walked to the front of the theater as if he had just come off a seine boat at Fisherman’s Terminal. He has that old soldier, tough writer look about him that can only be etched on a face that has worked hard at one’s craft. Stimulated by the pithy incisive questioning of Warren Etheridge, Rivele told stories and delivered screenwriting gems one after the other. He challenged writers to “find that one moment in their character’s story that contains the seed of the character’s entire life.” Then he said, “Write from that seed to revel the character’s true nature.” “The spiritual destiny of man is the only thing that interests me. It’s what I want to write about”, he said. He told how each of his subjects has found a specific vehicle to search for their “otherness” or soul. Miles had his trumpet, Ali, the fight, Nixon used politics, etc. “Ultimately”, he said, “your work has to connect with something that transcends mortal existence. And if you can feel that mystery and you have a gift to express it, then it is your responsibility to do so”. Rivele works over a character, spending years sometimes in research. The goal he told us is to be able to distill each of our characters and film down to one sentence or a single word. Beethoven is about “a prizefight over an empty grave”. Rivele’s Cleopatra script was about one word: motherhood. He described Diane Kruger’s role in Beethoven as, “a young woman falling in love with a man who is trying to become God.” After this distillation, Rivele still doesn’t begin to write until his character starts to talk to him–literally. In response to a question of why he writes, Rivele related the Biblical story of the demon who upon Christ’s command to identify itself said, ‘My name is Legion because there are many of us.’ “That wasn’t a demon,” Rivele said, “it was a writer possessed by many voices”. Since childhood, Rivele himself has been haunted and harrowed by inner voices, sometimes, waking him up in the middle of the night, arguing with him that he doesn’t have their story right yet. “I have to write to relive the pressure of these voices in my head,” he said. At heart Rivele is a great storyteller. He told about JFK’s whoring around that was about to get him impeached, especially his sleeping unknowingly with the German spy. A fact that Nixon knew but kept secret for the good of the country. And he convinced many of us in the audience that Lee Harvey Oswald was not alone, that the assassination of JFK involved organized crime and the CIA. Rivele’s own life has been a study in character. He’s worked in any job you can imagine and decided at one point in his life that he wouldn’t accept another dollar unless it came from writing. “Until you have that,” he said, “Until you don’t want to live unless you can write, don’t call yourself a writer. Writing is not a career, it is an identity”. It is not what you do, but what you are. He also said that a writer must be unflinchingly and brutally honest with his or her self. I’ll be honest with you. I’m a little afraid. As someone who will no longer accept another dollar unless it comes from writing, I realize I might have many nights ahead of me where characters get me out of bed to tell me I don’t have their story down right yet. Ward Serrill is the writer Director of The Heart of the Game (Miramax 2006) and is currently writing a film about tango. Women in Film is a co-sponsor of Warren Etheridge’s Film Rap Click to view poster for Film Rap at the Henry Art Gallery More info on The Warren Report Website»