Valerie Kalfrin
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I, Valerie Kalfrin, agree to the terms of this release form.
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Valerie’s Key Business Decisions
What I learned doing this assignment is … There’s a lot I can do to make my script more marketable, largely by sharpening the story. (I’m sorry to say that I have a vague concept at this point; not the finer details.)
Genre: Sci-Fi
Title: Jacqueline Hyde
Concept: A young adult woman discovers that her mental illness stems from being a descendant of Dr. Jekyll, inheriting some of his monstrous qualities — and puts those to work as a modern-day monster hunter.
Audience: I’m a little fuzzy on this one. I was aiming for a younger (teen/young adult) audience, but the viewership for “The X-Files” and “Supernatural” ranged wide.
Budget: Not sure
Lead Characters/Character Arc
Jacqueline Hyde: Jacqueline discovers her family’s shady past, specifically her ancestor Dr. Jekyll tampering with his own genetics and mind through his experiments. This doesn’t give her a split personality, but she does have a bolder, angrier, animalistic side that could benefit her in her current job as a crime scene investigator. She discovers a world beneath our own with supernatural qualities and learns to embrace who she is and what she can do.
Although this isn’t animated, I’m imagining Jacqueline a little like Marceline the Vampire Queen from “Adventure Time,” who has her monstrous moments but essentially is good to her friends. They’re accepting of her, and Jacqueline has to learn to accept herself, not try to “fix” what she believes is wrong with her.
I need a specific antagonist to clash against her on this journey. I haven’t yet thought that through.
I also don’t yet have a solid opening, but I know that the ending will be Jacqueline introducing herself with the “Hyde” last name.
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Valerie’s Genre – Sci-Fi (Second Movie)
Title: Mad Max: Fury Road
What I learned doing this assignment was … Because I love this film as a sci-fi/action movie, I’ve read a lot about the making of it, which was a mess. There was no real script, just storyboards. Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy reportedly hated each other, although that could be just because of stress from a difficult shoot. The practical stuntwork certainly wowed audiences at the time, and still does. The cinematography is beautiful, with whole scenes drenched in blue for nighttime with small spots of glowing lights.
For this assignment, though, I considered more of how it delivered those “best moments” with emotional impact, still through genre conventions.
How it delivered on the genre conventions:
Mad Max: Fury Road’s purpose is to make us consider how we treat each other in the current world compared to its post-apocalyptic landscape, especially in terms of respect toward men and women. The main antagonist, Immortan Joe, has a bevy of “wives” who are essentially his sex slaves, and another group of women who only supply breast milk for trade with nearby settlements. He and his lot train “war boys” as future warriors and dole out precious little water to the people who live under his rule. But as the wives say when they decide to leave him: We are not things.
The world is fantastic, a desert with dust storms and vehicles that are extensions of the drivers’ personalities. Max, who is a co-protagonist, stumbles upon Immortan Joe’s world when some of Joe’s followers take him captive. Max is traumatized by losing his wife and family and the events of previous films in the franchise; he has few social graces and tends to look out for himself. Joe’s war boys view his value only in terms of his blood type and call him a “blood bag.”
The other co-protagonist, Imperitor Furiosa, is a woman entrusted to drive one of Joe’s “war rigs,” or huge fuel trucks, to a nearby settlement. She has “mother’s milk” aboard the truck and Joe’s wives. During an extensive chase, as the war boys pursue her to retrieve the wives, Max winds up on the truck as well but just wants to free himself and get out of there.
The film has several setups and payoffs, such as one pursuer having a distended leg that Max later uses to weigh down a car’s accelerator. Emotionally, one of the biggest payoffs is Max telling Furiosa his name. He withholds this at first, when she grudgingly needs his help, so she calls him, “Fool” instead. When she’s severely wounded late in the film, he donates his blood to help her and then tells her his name is Max.
Another strong emotional point is the twist about two-thirds through the movie, when Furiosa discovers that the “green place,” the lush settlement of her childhood, no longer exists. She’d wanted to take the wives there and despairs that it’s gone. She, the wives, and the remaining residents plan to keep moving through the desert to find another safe place away from Joe until Max tells them to turn around and take back Joe’s settlement while he and the other main war boys have left it undefended. Furiosa had told him she’d wanted to find some redemption. By reclaiming the settlement and running it in a more compassionate way with the wives, she’ll find it, he suggests.
The social commentary here is obvious, with women being more than property and slaves. But the film also encourages us to look at what each gender and person have to offer. Only when Max and Furiosa work together do they hit upon a solution that changes their world for the better.
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Valerie’s Specialty – Sci-Fi
Title: Aliens
What I learned doing this assignment is … how one of my favorite films and screen heroes checks all the conventions for the sci-fi genre while still being groundbreaking at the time and relevant today.
How it delivered on the genre conventions:
“Aliens” definitely causes us to think outside of our own world. It’s largely set on a distant planet with colonists terraforming the atmosphere to make it hospitable for human life. While the concept of colonization isn’t new, the idea that we’re on another planet and creating a breathable atmosphere is.
There’s also the threat of aliens who want to use the colonists as hosts for their offspring.
The science grounds the movie somewhat, as does the lived-in feel of this world. Ellen Ripley, our main character, used to work on the freighter Nostromo, whose crew died because of taking an alien aboard. After no one in the sequel initially believes Ripley about her alien encounter, she takes a job as a forklift operator before the Colonial Marines call upon her as a consultant.
The film, from 1986, had some incredible visuals that still make the alien itself one of our most famous movie monsters: aliens with acid for blood. The aliens’ nest with colonists cocooned inside. The alien eggs and facehugger hatchlings. The alien queen and her massive egg sac. Ripley fighting the ticked-off queen using a power loader.
As for social commentary and the larger story: Ripley goes on this mission because she has unresolved trauma and psychological baggage over losing her crewmates in the original Alien film. That film, from 1979, still has some sexist attitudes that feel current even today. In Aliens, the authorities initially don’t believe Ripley, which plays into that sexism as well. Yet when the mission starts to fall apart, she’s the one who has the intelligence and the fortitude to carry on, saving the remaining Marines and eventually defeating the monster. She’s such a pragmatic and brave hero; she was unlike any other woman onscreen at the time, and she’s inspired generations of writers since. She’s not the “final girl” screaming and running away. She’s scared, but she forges ahead, doing what she must because she recognizes something greater than herself.
“Aliens” (and the extended saga, to some extent) has another thread of social commentary: with working-class people such as the crew of the Nostromo, the colonists, and the Colonial Marines, sent into harm’s way while the corporate bigwigs stay safely back on Earth. Burke, the seemingly nice-guy corporate rep, has no problems screwing over anyone for the financial promise of using the aliens as weapons.
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Valerie Kalfrin’s LinkedIn Profile is amazing!
Here it is:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriekalfrin/.I have some credibility as far as IMDB.com credits — a short film that a wrote, produced, and directed. I co-wrote an animated feature film that’s been in production with the co-writer/producer/director for a few years now. (He has other projects and is moving slowly on that one.) I also co-wrote a romantic comedy that my writing partner and I are marketing.
Mostly, in addition to being a content writer to pay the bills, I’m a film and culture writer. I had promoted that work heavily at the top of my LinkedIn profile, but I’ve now switched that to put “Screenwriter” first. I added my ScreenwritingU certification from the ProSeries, and I’m asking for recommendations.
Moving forward, I plan to ask for additional recommendations while working on a writing sample in my preferred specialty.
Cheers, Valerie
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Hi there,
My feature screenplay: Lovebirds. Event planner who hates kitsch falls in love with the director of a botanical garden while planning a party for a beach town’s new flamingos.
Budget: Maybe $50 million? (My estimating is probably off.)
Concept: Jacqueline Hyde. Woman discovers she’s a descendant of Dr. Jekyll and becomes a monster hunter.
Budget: $100 mil?
Re: the recording. I liked hearing more about auditioning for these jobs. I suppose for any job, you’re “auditioning.” I’ve been on try-outs at newspapers as a reporter.
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Hi, everyone!
I’m Valerie Kalfrin. I’ve co-written two feature screenplays. I’m taking this course because I’d like to learn more about finding regular screenwriting work and putting my ideas into action. I’m also a script reader and a film critic, so I tend to diagnose problems well and offer constructive solutions. One fun fact about me: I was a daily crime journalist for 10 years.
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Valerie Kalfrin
I agree to the terms of this release form.
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Hi, Dana,
Did you originally think of this idea as a “Dirty Harry” sequel? You’re probably aware that Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry is named Harry Callahan (and works in San Francisco). But if not, I wondered if a studio would consider that an intellectual property issue — in which case, it may be better to name your Harry something else.
Best, Valerie