Screenwriting to Heal the Earth

Recently my mother asked me if I really thought the trees were talking to me. “Not in English!” I said. Surprisingly, this response did not soothe her fear that I’d lost my proverbial marbles. I’d been relaying – perhaps a bit too casually – a conversation I’d had with an old pal who just happens to be a linden tree planted in the late 1800’s. This majestic beauty and I became acquainted last spring after I decided to start every day by sharing a cup of ethically sourced cacao (i.e. ceremonial drinking chocolate) with various trees near my home. By “sharing” I mean offering up the essence of the plant, not actually splashing the drink onto trunks, roots, and branches.

Besides being considered a “superfood,” cacao is said to make a person feel more heart centered. Its lineage goes back thousands of years to the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan peoples who, like all indigenous people, were deeply attuned to their lands. Since I started working with cacao, I’ve sat with dozens of trees, through oppressive summer heat and shocking winter cold, when the air was thick with wildfire smoke, and when it was fragrant with spring blossoms. Communing with them, away from the distraction of screens and people, did, indeed, deepen my emotions. It also heightened my senses, honed my observational skills, and made me acutely aware of bird poop.

Hokey as it may sound, I went from feeling apart from the earth to feeling a part of it. Allowing raindrops to slide down my cheeks and sap to drip onto my head connected me with some dormant part of my DNA. I can now tell you about the place where cicadas emerge from slumber, which tree the squirrels love to play in, and what it looks like when the first rays of morning sun hit the top of that one maple tree. Environmental folks would call what I’ve been doing “rewilding,” a process of restoring broken parts of the ecosystem. The broken part, in this case, being lil ole human me.

Turns out as we become wilder in the world, we become wilder on the page. (See also the Zen-like maxim: “Wherever you go, there you are.”) Working on a script recently, I was surprised to discover that Matty, a pain in the butt character who pushes people’s buttons for fun, would move heaven and earth to help stray cats. I learned that Rayna, who’s unendingly determined, loses all focus in the presence of a rare, wild plant. And I found out that Paula would risk jail time to stop someone from dumping toxins in her neighborhood, even if it meant missing family meals with the grandkids. The more entrenched I am in the wildness of the world, the more my characters reflect that.

Of course, in Hollywood talk of wildness refers to scandals, corruption, power plays, subterfuge, backstabbing, scams, abuse, opulence, and over-the-top partying. But what if we screenwriters could remind the industry of a more meaningful wildness, one that speaks of interdependence and kinship? What if, as we work on rewilding ourselves, the films and TV scripts we write help audiences rewild themselves too? And then – dream big with me here - what if all this rewilding helped everyone love the world better?

Jonas Ketterle, founder of Ora Cacao, recently said on a podcast, “A lot of the systems that we have grown up in are yesterday’s dreams. They’re somebody else’s dreams. Our job is to look beyond all the physical structures in our life and dream the new earth.” This, friends, is exactly what compels me, as a climate screenwriter, to become more deeply embedded with the nonhuman life forms around me.

If you want to give rewilding a go, start where you are. No need to retreat to a dense forest or dive to the bottom of the ocean. Plants, bugs, birds, soil, and other life forms exist in every urban and non-urban corner of the world. Bearing in mind that there’s no bad weather, only bad clothes, you’ll want to dress for the occasion, then get outside and find a nonhuman being to give your full presence and attention to for an extended period of time. Focus on sensations, observations, and emotions as opposed to your thoughts. Let your awareness expand to include theirs. Do this regularly and a long-lost wildness will start to take hold. Let it help you become a fierce, contemplative, wild visionary who writes a more deeply connected world into existence.