Screenwriter Ron Nyswaner worked on any number of interesting films ( Mrs. Soffel, Love Hurts, Gross Anatomy ) before his 1993 breakout movie, Philadelphia, brought him notoriety and critical kudos ( including an Oscar nomination ).
Philadelphia was the first mainstream Hollywood film to tackle AIDS, bringing Tom Hanks an Academy Award for Best Actor and helping to kickstart a long-overdue national conversation on the subject. Nyswaner went on to write a number of equally hard-hitting films ( including the groundbreaking, gender-questioning Soldier's Girl ), and moved into producing and directing. But he also struggled in his personal life with alcohol, drugs and an abusive relationship with a male prostitute that he recounted in his best-selling 2004 memoir Blue Days, Black Nights. Throughout his personal challenges—which he has happily overcome—the openly gay Nyswaner has continued to write screenplays and television shows.
Now, with Freeheld, he has scripted the movie version of the story of Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree. After being diagnosed with incurable cancer, Laurel, a New Jersey police detective, wanted to leave her benefits to her life partner, Stacie. Without them, Stacie, who worked as an auto mechanic, wouldn't have been able to stay in their home. But the town councilmen—or "Freeholders"—of blue-collar Freeheld, New Jersey ( where the couple resided ), refused to grant the pension. The ensuing battle to get them to change their mind was movingly told in director Cynthia Wade's Oscar-winning 2007 short film Freeheld.
Out actor Ellen Page, after seeing the short, was determined to get a feature made from the material and the result, using the same title, directed by Peter Sollett, arrives in theaters Oct. 9.
Windy City Times: How did you get involved with Freeheld?
Ron Nyswaner: Ellen [Page] teamed with some producers and, as a group, they came to me. They sent me the documentary and I really responded to it and we started the process, I think, in 2009 that I began doing my research and began to write the first draft of the script.
WCT: Can you talk about your process? It must be more immersive when you are writing about real people.
RN: I started by spending time with Cynthia and getting to know the lay of the land and hear how she created her film and what she knew about Laurel and Stacie and Dane Wells and the Freeholders; and just getting a thorough education from Cynthia. Then one day Cynthia drove me down to New Jersey and that began a couple of visits for me down there to be in the house that Stacie shared with Laurel; to spend time with Stacie; to spend time with Dane Wells, and then to read everything that was written about them.
As with any documentary, Cynthia had many, many hours recorded that didn't make it into the 25-minute short documentary film so I read the transcript of Laurel's interviews. In those transcripts, Laurel basically told her whole life story and both she and Stacie talked about their relationship. I just knew early on, and everybody came on board with it, that I wanted to tell the story of their love affair.
WCT: What a gift, right?
RN: Absolutely. It was very moving and it was also terrific to go to all the places where these things happened. I went to the restaurant that they'd eaten at, a nightclub where they had a date, and I really got to know Laurel and Stacie that way.
WCT: How is Stacie doing?
RN: I gave her a big hug when I saw her at the premiere; it had been a few years since I'd seen her. I got all teary-eyed and everything and she's doing well. She has a lovely partner; she's still living in the house that she shared with Laurel. Ellen gives a great performance but it's hard for Stacie to comment on someone playing her; it just freaks her out but she said about Julianne [Moore] that that was Laurel onscreen; that Laurel had been brought back to life. It was hard for Stacie to watch the movie but she seems to be having a good life.
WCT: I'm thrilled to be talking with the writer of Philadelphia, which was such a breakthrough for so many in our community and for the mainstream community as well. I'm curious, Ron, has the atmosphere changed in the business about gay-themed material now that you've returned to that subject? Has the acceptance level changed in the [more than] 20 years since Philadelphia?
RN: I think that in some ways it has. I'll give you an example. I worked on a show called Ray Donovan for Showtime a couple of years ago and my boss on the show told me that when she was pitching it to Showtime she pitched that Ray Donovan's son would be gay and they said, "Oh, no, he can't be gay" and she thought, "Oh, well, what is this? Homophobia?" And they said, "Oh, no, no, no. … It's just that every kid in our Showtime family is gay so we need one to be straight." [Laughs]
WCT: Wow—too much of a good thing?!
RN: Yes! I think that it's changed in a way. This is the difference, Richard: If I go out and I pitch a story about a detective or a cop or a story about a doctor, male or female. If I say, "She's brilliant, she went to Harvard, she has all these resentments against her family, she's gay, she's…" They'll say, "Wait, hold it, 'So, she's gay?'" And I'll say, "Yes, she's gay" and they're fine, they're excited and think that's great but they question, "So why is it important to the story that she's gay?" They're not trying to talk me out of it; they just want me to justify it. And I say, "But you would never say that if I said she was straight."
You don't have to justify why a character's straight. So there's still this thing that if a character is gay the theme of the material must somehow be about their sexuality. And that's not true of straight characters. They have themes in their lives other than their sexual identity. I mean Tony Soprano does not wrestle that much with issues surrounding his sexual identity. So that's one of the things I'm always trying to convince people about: that we can have a gay lead in a television show who is not wrestling with being gay. It's a fact. He or she is wrestling with other issues in life as we all do. So that's where it has yet to go—that's the next frontier to conquer.
WCT: Does part of it have to do with the financial? Because it's about money with movies and "gay" hasn't meant money very often at the box office.
RN: Everybody wants to make a movie that finds an audience. So if a movie made money, that means people saw it which I don't think is a bad thing. The movie business is so dependent on foreign sales and distribution; it's more than half the income and I think that has an influence. Also, the mid-level adult dramas like Philadelphia, like Brokeback Mountain, like Freeheld, mostly happen on television now. There aren't that many movies that are adult dramas. Movies in theaters tend to be big, theme-park action filled kind of things which, by the way, I love! I loved Mad Max; I mean, Tom Hardy—how can you not?
WCT: And Charlize Theron? I'm right there with you.
RN: Exactly … to be kidnapped by both of them. [Laughs] So, I'm very happy to be working in cable television right now for that audience. And in cable television, especially, people can be very complicated and audiences will follow along week after week. Movies you have one shot, so it's risky. It's still tough to get movies made about women and, yeah, still tough to get movies made with gay people at the center. There are not people out there saying, "Please, bring me your movies with gay main characters." They're not saying that.
