Why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Engagement Hits Home With Me

I’ve never understood America’s fascination with British royalty. But the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has captured my attention — along with the rest of the world. 

This past Monday morning when I glanced over the headlines I may have missed over the long Thanksgiving break, of course all the top stories were all about Prince Harry and Meghan.

My initial reaction was one of apathy. Why should we care what the British Royals are up to? What do these pending nuptials have to do with the everyday life of the average American? Hell, how does this engagement affect the everyday life of the average UK citizen?

Apparently, a lot of people do care about the Royals. An African-American female friend told me that her social media feed was buzzing with excitement about the history-making event: a black girl becoming a real-life princess. 

After talking to my friend, I decided to actually read one of the articles about the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle engagement. A New York Times piece revealed several things I didn’t know — mainly, that Meghan is American.

But the main detail in the article that jumped out to me is that Prince Harry and Meghan will be known as the Duke and Duchess of Essex once they’re married.

Reading this detail, I had a sense of deja vu and art imitating life. I flashed back to early drafts of my novel “The Chloe Chronicles” from the ‘90s. In that version of my novel, a character named Gigi, who is a mixed-race young woman like the main character Chloe, runs off and marries a duke she meets while the girls are attending a prep school in London. Where do Gigi and Duke D'Arbanville live after they elope? Essex.

Or maybe it was Sussex. It was one of those British places that end with “-ex.”

Why, you ask, did I write a plot line involving a young nobleman if I don’t care about royalty? Well, the Duke D’Arbanville character in the early draft of “The Chloe Chronicles” is a villain who abuses Gigi. I was trying to show that just because someone is rich and famous doesn’t necessarily make him “Mr. Right.”

My novel aside, another detail about Prince Harry and Meghan that is of even greater interest to me is that I am now seeing my own family reflected among British royalty. I'm an African-American man who grew up with three white stepparents and four biracial siblings. The fact that a young woman who resembles my sisters is marrying into arguably the most famous family in the world is pretty cool.

And seeing a cross-cultural union among such powerful people with a global profile is important in these times where we all seem to be so divided. 

So, as someone who never really cared much about the Royals, I guess I’ve come to realize that what they do and the example they set for the world is kinda important after all.

(I will be publishing a new, updated edition of "The Chloe Chronicles" in 2018. Check my website, Chrisbournea.com, for details.) 

Learn Screenwriting By Rewriting A Movie You Love

As a writer and filmmaker, I've always been inspired by movies like "Whiplash" about people overcoming obstacles to pursue dreams in the arts. 

Imagine my delight when, while attending the American Film Market (AFM) in Los Angeles earlier this month, I got the opportunity to rewrite a scene from "Whiplash." 

AFM brings together filmmakers and distribution companies from all over the world to strike deals. In addition to the business side of the movie industry, the conference also features a wide variety of workshops on everything from the art and science of pitching an idea to how to tap into the rapidly growing faith-based movie market.

During a workshop titled "Revision: Seeing Your Script With New Eyes," instructor Ken LeZebnik offered some very useful tips on how to tighten up a script. This was truly a master class, since LeZebnik is an instructor at the prestigious University of Southern California, director of Stephens College master of fine arts in screenwriting program, and a successful screenwriter and playwright himself.

I was part of a group of about 400 workshop participants who filled the cavernous conference room at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. LeZebnik passed out copies of a scene from "Whiplash," in which Miles Teller plays an aspiring drummer who will stop at nothing to be the very best at his highly competitive music school. He also nearly kills himself to win the approval of his drill sergeant-like instructor, played by J.K. Simmons in an Oscar-winning performance.

In the exercise, LeZebnik had us break off into small groups and analyze the scene, in which Simmons calls Teller to his office to discourage him from transferring to a different school. LeZebnik added extra dialogue that did not appear in the final "Whiplash" script, which was written and directed by Damien Chazelle (who went on to direct the equally riveting, Oscar-nominated "La La Land").

My fellow workshop attendees and I all came up with different ideas on how to prune the scene to its bare essentials, mostly by cutting extraneous small talk between the student and professor.  The single biggest takeaway I got from the workshop was LeZebnik's recommendation to begin and end scenes earlier. No matter how important you think dialogue is at the beginning and end of a scene, it can always be trimmed. 

This blog post is part of a series about my experience at the 2017 AFM. To view the video version of this blog post, click here. 

To read the first blog in the series about a panel discussion with Oscar winner Geena Davis talking about the status of women in film, click here. 

(Chris Bournea is the writer/director of the forthcoming documentary "Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring.")

A Surefire Way To Increase Screen Time For Female Characters

Here's one surefire way to increase screen time for female characters in film and television:

Before casting, creative teams should go through their scripts and simply change some of the male characters to female. 

Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning actress Geena Davis offered this solution during a Nov. 5 panel discussion on the status of women in film during the 2017 American Film Market. The panel also featured filmmaker Jen McGowan ("Kelly & Cal") and producers Catherine Hand and Jim Whitaker (co-producers of the forthcoming movie "A Wrinkle In Time" directed by Ava DuVernay and starring Oprah Winfrey).

Changing a male character to female has been done before to great success. Whitaker shared that the lead character in the 2005 movie "Flightplan," which he produced, was originally written as a man. But when Oscar winner Jodie Foster expressed an interest in the project, Whitaker and others backing the movie gladly changed the protagonist to a woman. They even kept the character's masculine-sounding name "Kyle Pratt" at Foster's suggestion.

"Flightplan" went on to earn more than $100 million at the worldwide box office, proving that movies with female leads can be blockbusters.

In addition to the success of female-led movies like "Flightplan," much of the conversation at the panel discussion centered on the pioneering research conducted by the Geena Davis Institute for Gender In Media. Davis shared that the institute has found that despite gains in recent years, the problem of fewer roles for female characters persists in everything from children's programming to grown-up action movies.

Not only do women get less screen time and fewer lines of dialogue, Davis said, but when female characters are onscreen, editors tend to cut away to the reaction of male characters rather than focusing on the women talking.

This issue is of particular interest to me, since I directed the forthcoming documentary "Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring," which portrays a little-known chapter in women's history.

The pervasive problem of inequity in Hollywood unfortunately doesn't seem to going away, but it's good to know that people like Davis, Whitaker and the other panelists are working to bring about parity.

This is the first in a series of blog posts about my experiences at the 2017 American Film Market. The annual conference brings together filmmakers and film buffs from all over the world to sunny Santa Monica, Calif.

To view the video version of this blog post, click here.