In the long-term, I figure this can be a thread about story research in general, people's approach to it, their views on its necessity, strategies for it, and whatever. But I'm starting this thread because I'm having a very specific issue and I want to vent about it.
I little while back, maybe 2-ish years ago, I read [something] that talked about the treatment of the immigrant Chinese population in Seattle during the influenza epidemic of 1918. It sparked an idea in my head that's been bouncing around ever since, and it's just recently coalesced into shape enough that I want to start turning it into a script; sort of a semi-topical take on America's history of abuse toward immigrants, through the lens of essentially a haunted house flick set in a 120-year-old Chinatown apartment building. The problem is: I can no longer find that original source of information! I can't remember if it was an article in something, some random web page, or what form I originally found it in, and nothing I can find in my Googling goes into any real detail about the specific issues I'm looking for. I can find stuff about the influenza epidemic in Seattle, I can find stuff about the treatment of Chinese immigrants in general, but I can't find anything that covers the confluence of the two (specifically related to quarantining), which I know is out there, because it's how I got the damn idea in the first place!
Don't get me wrong, I'll happily make shit up if I need to (I wrote a whole WWII movie where the most extensive research I did was looking up how to say "shut up" in German), but there are a couple reasons I want to work with real information in this case. One, because the story is going to be touching on real issues, and particularly touchy ones, I want to be as respectful as possible to the context and the history involved. And two, I have a distinct memory of reading whatever the fuck I was reading and thinking, "These would be great details to include in a story." I remember thinking that, but I don't remember what those details were. You see my dilemma.
I'm still going to write the script one way or another, but if anyone has any ideas for tracking this info down beyond my current strategy of Googling every combination of the words "Seattle," "Chinese," "Chinatown," "influenza," "epidemic," and "quarantine," I am open to any incoming suggestions.
I found this, but I'm sure you've seen it already:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862341/
QuoteIn San Francisco, where nativists had stigmatized the Chinese at various times for leprosy, venereal disease, and bubonic plague, there seemed no inclination to blame the Chinese for influenza in 1918
QuoteChinatown was quarantined, though some San Franciscans wanted to burn it to the ground. Physicians authorized by the Board of Health forcibly inoculated Asians on Chinatown's streets with Haffkine's serum, which at the time was still in the testing stage, to determine its efficacy
Source:
21. Shah N. Contagious divides: epidemics and race in San Francisco's Chinatown. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press; 2001
It doesn't mention Seattle tho.
I think I had skipped past that because I knew it wasn't the specific article I was searching for, but there is some good, useful info in there. It's also got me wondering if maybe I was wrong about the epidemic... if what I had read was actually about the 1907 plague outbreak, not the influenza epidemic.
But I don't think so, because the real-life buildings that I'm basing this around, which are historic hotels that were later converted into low-income apartments, were originally built between 1910-1915, and the key detail I remember that kicked this whole thing off was that people were being essentially imprisoned in these buildings under quarantine. So by the timeline, I'm pretty sure it has to have been the influenza epidemic. So I'll keep searching. Thanks for your help, though!
You might find some info in that book:
https://www.amazon.com/Reflections-Seattles-Chinese-Americans-First/dp/0295974125
Oh, nice. That's definitely worth checking out.
This one looks good, too: https://www.amazon.com/Seattles-International-District-Pan-Asian-Community/dp/0295981970/
Seattle, Washington and the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic (https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-seattle.html#)
QuoteWorried that a second wave of the epidemic was hitting Seattle, on December 2 Hanson and McBride drafted a resolution requiring the quarantine of all suspected cases of influenza and presented it to the city counsel for a vote. Hanson, who had just returned from a trip to Spokane, was particularly concerned by the recurrence of influenza he witnessed in that city. McBride felt the disease was making its way back into the community via outsiders arriving by boat and train. He believed that if these suspected carriers could be quarantined, Seattle might be spared another round without having to resort to a new set of closures. Presenting his case before an emergency session of the City Council on December 5, McBride told members of how fifteen men from cheap lodging houses were recently removed to hospitals. All had been severely ill for several days, but no one had contacted a physician. Under the new rule, the lodging house owners would be required to contact the Board of Health in such cases. The City Council passed the quarantine resolution.
Health inspectors were soon very busy quarantining homes. By noon the day after the City Council passed the resolution, more than 100 placards had been posted. The health department was quickly flooded with phone calls from physicians and private citizens reporting cases. By December 10, nearly 1,000 placards had been posted on Seattle homes. Residents, perhaps worried that the gathering bans and public closures they had come to detest might be enacted again, seemed eager and willing to do anything to help the Health Department rout the disease once and for all. In the public schools, attendance was more than fifty-percent below normal enrollment, in part due to illness but largely because worried parents kept their healthy children home. School officials considered closing the schools completely as a result of the low attendance.
It doesn't have that Chinatown-specific information I'm still hoping to find, but there's a ton of good, usable background in that. Thanks!
Side note, through this process I found out about a 1983 massacre of 13 people in a Chinatown gambling club that I had never known about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wah_Mee_massacre
I used to do pest control for the building right on the other side of the alley. Crazy that I had never heard of it.
Well, I went down the rabbit hole for several hours and didn't found anything either. They did put a lot of Seattle in quarantine during 1918, but nothing specific about chinatown. The plague (starting in San Francisco) believed to originate from chinese areas, so during that time Seattle put resources into preventing diseases in Chinatown. It's not exactly what you are looking for, but there's probably tons of useful information about that. Have you tried to get hold on a expert on the subject and ask them?
I haven't yet, but that's definitely my next step. I actually have a contact who works at this museum https://www.wingluke.org/ which is right in the heart of Chinatown and that honestly should have been my first move, but I thought it would be easy to re-find the information I had already stumbled across in the past. Thanks for putting the time in trying to help! I really appreciate the effort, even if we're all coming up empty handed.
Nothing like a holiday treasure hunt. Alas, I wasn't able to find what you're after even with resorting to Bing. I did find this resource (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/f/flu?type=boolean&rgn=full+text&q1=seattle&op2=and&q2=china&op3=and&q3=&cite1=&cite1restrict=citation&cite2=&cite2restrict=citation&Submit=Search) which might be useful to you at some point.
Also, potentially interesting: the deadliest week of the 1918 pandemic coincided with Halloween (https://besoksaja.blogspot.com/2014/10/october-31-1918-spanish-flu-virus-kills.html).
Project sounds interesting though, I look forward to reading it!
How is this progressing? (:
Shelved for the moment. Less than a week after I posted about this, I was contracted to do a rewrite of a slasher flick this guy wrote that, if things go according to plan, will go into production this spring or summer. Pretty basic "group of young people partying in an abandoned creepy building get killed off one by one" sort of thing, but I'm doing everything I can to try and shoehorn some themes and meaning into the thing. It won't be great, but I think it has the potential to be good, which is a massive step up from the original draft they had.
can slashers be meta now? i'd love to hear a killer complimenting themself aloud. "oh i nailed this." or a killing that is a little harder, "okay i got this, i got this." a look at the blood scene, "beautiful." the theme is that everybody knows how to be a killer, anybody can be a killer, just act natural and try your best
of course that's a whole thing and all i did was mention it
Scream(s) are slashers, no?
yeah and that's meta but they're normal people i'm daydreaming the mythical killer but with self-referencing. in fact the line "i'm so fucking mythical"
Quote from: jenkins on January 09, 2020, 02:27:31 PM
can slashers be meta now? i'd love to hear a killer complimenting themself aloud. "oh i nailed this." or a killing that is a little harder, "okay i got this, i got this." a look at the blood scene, "beautiful." the theme is that everybody knows how to be a killer, anybody can be a killer, just act natural and try your best
of course that's a whole thing and all i did was mention it
I thought about taking the meta route, but the original writer envisioned it as a very straight-forward throwback slasher film, and that was the pitch that the investors who are on board got on board with, so that's the direction I'm going with it. And anyway, I couldn't think of a self-referential route that didn't already feel played out. Between your Screams, your Hatchets, your Cabin in the Woodses, your Tucker & Dales, etc., it's an angle that's been fully covered.
And I recommend checking out Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. It's pretty much the exact movie you're describing.
obvi i'm looking forward to your slasher movie btw, um incredibly
i just get myself all excited and follow tangents. i see (i read about) Behind the Mask there and that sounds great btw. but this one is still different. i'd write it with you as another slasher movie idea if you would want to write such a thing: there's no Leslie Vernon, there's no revelation of who it is. one of this person's heroes is the Zodiac killer. in fact i imagine writing a zodiac letter with the v.o. line "[laughter] i'm just making up crazy symbols as i go along you dumb fucks.' there's this person watching news about them and laughing but you never see the person and they get away with it like the Zodiac killer. the kills would take place in notorious slasher places across the country
I'm intrigued by it. I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around how it looks as a story, but that's an issue for another day.
i'm prepared and let me know and best wishes to your current endeavor
Quote from: polkablues on January 09, 2020, 01:16:37 PM
Shelved for the moment. Less than a week after I posted about this, I was contracted to do a rewrite of a slasher flick this guy wrote that, if things go according to plan, will go into production this spring or summer. Pretty basic "group of young people partying in an abandoned creepy building get killed off one by one" sort of thing, but I'm doing everything I can to try and shoehorn some themes and meaning into the thing. It won't be great, but I think it has the potential to be good, which is a massive step up from the original draft they had.
you'll make it good i'm sure!
Thanks, man! I'm pretty happy with how it's coming together, actually. I don't think it brings anything new to the slasher subgenre, but at the very least it's a well-executed example of the subgenre, which in and of itself makes it somewhat novel these days.
how do one approach rewrites, especially you with this one? do you get creative freedom or do you mostly just polish what's already there?
(EDIT)
anyway, I am doing research about the porn industry in general (it's ruining porn for me!) and child abuse (it was already ruined) so please let me know if you have any recommendations of things I should read or watch on those subjects!
That is probably entirely unrelated but: I was listening to a podcast about Leaving Neverland, and this dude talked about how it made him realize that he had been abused by his baby-sitter when he was, like, eleven. She used to make him touch her naked body, and he thought he "wanted" to, but...
Well. I might use it for a story of my own, haha. Meeting the baby sitter years later and understanding the past, the Alice Munro way...
Quote from: Robyn on January 12, 2020, 12:14:30 PM
how do one approach rewrites, especially you with this one? do you get creative freedom or do you mostly just polish what's already there?
To me, it depends a lot on the state of the original script. I did a rewrite in a similar situation about a year and a half ago (that project has been shelved indefinitely, as far as I know), where the original writer's draft was fairly strong, but it was very high-concept and overly preoccupied with the action elements, at the expense of any sort of character development. So in that case, my role was mainly to figure out a compelling character arc for the protagonist that I could then fill into the cracks (and also do a big polish on the dialogue, mostly to try and distinguish the different characters better). It still turned into a fairly significant undertaking, as changing one element often leads to needing to change another element, and so on and so on, but at least in that case, a significant amount of the original writer's writing survived to the end.
This one was different, in that the script just didn't work. There was no real sense to the structure, events happened randomly with no greater significance to what happened before or after, characters would talk and act completely differently from scene to scene, and the whole thing culminated in a "twist" that came out of nowhere and meant nothing, revealing the killer to be a minor character who had been introduced for half a page in the first ten minutes of the story, never seen or mentioned again, and whose motive had no greater relevance to the overall story.
So step one of the process was: what are the elements of the story that are necessary to keep it recognizable as that story? In this case, it was the setting, the general group of characters (taking a lot of liberty in fleshing out and differentiating those characters), and the initial setup for how the events of the story kick off. After that, I tried to figure out what the story is actually
about. Beyond the series of events that
happens in the story, what is the actual purpose of telling this particular story? Reading the original script a second time, I started glomming onto this undercurrent of classism that was present in the story, but seemingly by accident -- it went entirely unexplored. So I decided to build that up, give the story (at least to a certain extent) a metaphorical level about the economically privileged having their bubble of safety being burst by the economically oppressed.
With all of that in place, I threw out the original script entirely and started writing a whole new one. Starting out, I had that draft open in another window while I worked, and I would click over and consult it every so often, but pretty quickly I realized there was no point in it. So when it's all said and done, the rewrite will still be the same "story" on the level that it's a group of characters with the same names in the same setting having roughly similar things happen to them, but everything beneath that superficial layer is different.
Quote from: Robyn on January 12, 2020, 12:14:30 PM
anyway, I am doing research about the porn industry in general (it's ruining porn for me!) and child abuse (it was already ruined) so please let me know if you have any recommendations of things I should read or watch on those subjects!
I very highly recommend the blog of Jennifer Ketcham, who performed in porn as Penny Flame: https://becomingjennie.wordpress.com/
She writes incredibly eloquently about her experiences, the addictions that fed them, and the difficulties of readjusting to the world outside it all. I recommend starting with the oldest posts and working your way up. She also has a book published, but I haven't read it. I'm presuming it mostly covers the same points as the blog does.
Also, this is fucking harrowing: https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/ex-porn-star-jenni-lee-found-living-in-las-vegas-homeless-tunnel/
thanks for the reply! that was an interesting read, though I don't have anything to add myself... always felt like it would be kind of fun to try it out someday, tho.
Quote from: polkablues on January 12, 2020, 02:34:08 PM
I very highly recommend the blog of Jennifer Ketcham, who performed in porn as Penny Flame: https://becomingjennie.wordpress.com/
She writes incredibly eloquently about her experiences, the addictions that fed them, and the difficulties of readjusting to the world outside it all. I recommend starting with the oldest posts and working your way up. She also has a book published, but I haven't read it. I'm presuming it mostly covers the same points as the blog does.
Also, this is fucking harrowing: https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/ex-porn-star-jenni-lee-found-living-in-las-vegas-homeless-tunnel/
yay!
these links are super helpful.
Quote from: Robyn on January 12, 2020, 12:14:30 PM
(EDIT)
anyway, I am doing research about the porn industry in general (it's ruining porn for me!) and child abuse (it was already ruined) so please let me know if you have any recommendations of things I should read or watch on those subjects!
Recently I watched what is now one of the most disturbing documentaries I've ever seen, "Body Without Soul." It's about teen male prostitutes in Prague who work in the porn industry and features one of the most truly evil characters you will ever encounter in a documentary in the director of these films. It's NSFL and I wouldn't recommend anyone ever see it besides you or maybe Wilder.
Quote from: Reelist on January 14, 2020, 12:41:21 PM
Quote from: Robyn on January 12, 2020, 12:14:30 PM
(EDIT)
anyway, I am doing research about the porn industry in general (it's ruining porn for me!) and child abuse (it was already ruined) so please let me know if you have any recommendations of things I should read or watch on those subjects!
Recently I watched what is now one of the most disturbing documentaries I've ever seen, "Body Without Soul." It's about teen male prostitutes in Prague who work in the porn industry and features one of the most truly evil characters you will ever encounter in a documentary in the director of these films. It's NSFL and I wouldn't recommend anyone ever see it besides you or maybe Wilder.
sounds like an awful watch, but the evil characters you mention feels intriguing. where did you watch it?
Quote from: Robyn on January 14, 2020, 02:03:16 PM
Quote from: Reelist on January 14, 2020, 12:41:21 PM
Quote from: Robyn on January 12, 2020, 12:14:30 PM
(EDIT)
anyway, I am doing research about the porn industry in general (it's ruining porn for me!) and child abuse (it was already ruined) so please let me know if you have any recommendations of things I should read or watch on those subjects!
Recently I watched what is now one of the most disturbing documentaries I've ever seen, "Body Without Soul." It's about teen male prostitutes in Prague who work in the porn industry and features one of the most truly evil characters you will ever encounter in a documentary in the director of these films. It's NSFL and I wouldn't recommend anyone ever see it besides you or maybe Wilder.
sounds like an awful watch, but the evil characters you mention feels intriguing. where did you watch it?
In the States it's available through Amazon Prime's subscription, on instant video. Don't know if it's available in any other region, though.
Quote from: Reelist on January 14, 2020, 12:41:21 PMRecently I watched what is now one of the most disturbing documentaries I've ever seen, "Body Without Soul." It's about teen male prostitutes in Prague who work in the porn industry and features one of the most truly evil characters you will ever encounter in a documentary in the director of these films. It's NSFL and I wouldn't recommend anyone ever see it besides you or maybe Wilder.
I've seen it and it's as dark as you say it is. One thing to see an accounting of a horrible event that at least has some finality, but these kid's lives are just ongoing, black holes of suffering. I was around their age when I first saw the documentary, so maybe it hit me especially hard, but I remember it inspiring deeper feelings of hopelessness and despair than I thought were possible for a movie to create.
Quote from: WorldForgot on January 14, 2020, 02:13:45 PMIn the States it's available through Amazon Prime's subscription, on instant video. Don't know if it's available in any other region, though.
Also
on vimeo (https://vimeo.com/51027346).
But like Reelist said, don't watch it.
Quote from: wilder on January 14, 2020, 11:00:04 PM
But like Reelist said, don't watch it.
My dumb troll brain has taken this as a challenge, and I will almost definitely end up watching this tomorrow.
On a positive note, I finished my draft of the script and sent it off yesterday. Now I just wait and see what happens with it from here.
i'm not going through a twelve step program and i'm at the amends stage. it's just the twelve steps are pretty chill and i know what the ninth one is. anyway tonight i'm clearing regrets because it's a random wave i'm riding and i've always regretted when my own slasher film idea interrupted polka's. that's actually behind us now and it seems to me like the amends stage interrupts always forward but that's tricky, how do you know when it's you alone who's holding something behind and when the other person is too. "i'm not even thinking about you," that's such a classic diss. honestly in my own life, from my own experience, i tend to forget having done the thing a person holds against me. so now that's all settled
Quote from: jenkins on May 12, 2020, 12:27:04 AM
anyway tonight i'm clearing regrets because it's a random wave i'm riding and i've always regretted when my own slasher film idea interrupted polka's.
Genuinely water off a duck's back. I had just thought it was a fun conversation we were having.