Welcome to the Screening Room of...
MOLLY VIROSTEK
Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
I live between Los Angeles, California and Playa Maderas, Nicaragua. Your script or media entry stood out among hundreds of others. What was the inspiration for your project ? I first heard about Grace Hall Hemingway (Ernest’s mother) while spending summers with my family on Walloon Lake in Northern Michigan. The Hemingway family had spent their summers on the same lake. Here, Grace had built a 1-person cottage across from the family’s lakehouse: a haven to make music, sing, paint, escape the noise of her 6 growing children, and harbor a lesbian love affair with her music-student-turned-nanny. Grace was an ex-Opera star and made more money on her music lessons than her doctor husband. She built the cottage, against Dr. Hemingway’s will, with her own money. Grace’s notorious cottage stands intact (now a historically preserved structure) on the back of my uncle’s property. When I started to ask about Grace around town, barbacks and store owners who are used to parroting back answers about Papa Hemingway, whipped their heads around. She was a force of nature, they told me. A misunderstood matriarch. A woman before her time. |
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So, I sat down on the little porch of ‘Grace Cottage’ and began to follow the threads of Grace’s life. Those threads took me on a journey through a loud, loving, complicated, “cursed” family whose fierce loyalties & hidden struggles remind me plenty of my own. I developed this project from the shores of Walloon Lake: a place that has always been (for me, and Grace, and Ernest) a collision of summer love and family feuds, freedom and confinement, imagination and initiation.
How long did it take you to write your script or produce your pitch deck/sizzle reel/trailer...and what was your development process? The script for THE HEMINGWAYS is the culmination of a 5-year research project that included interviews with Hemingway professors in Northern Michigan cabins, boat rides with surviving relatives who shared conflicting memories of their grandmother, and hours scouring library collections for letters from Grace to her children, her husband, and her lover. There is no biography on Grace; just her angry son’s blame-stained records of her life. Ernest wrote Grace off as a monster, but one peek beneath the surface reveals so much more. A pattern that I found ripples through the generations of this family that sits misunderstood inside the American zeitgeist. Much of the development process was spent intuiting family dynamics in the subtext of old letters and redacted family memories. I developed the pitch deck over two months last winter. The visuals were the most important element to me, as most people associate Ernest Hemingway with high school English class or a PBS documentary. The records of this family’s legacy often lack a warmth, a sensuality, a sense of humor, or an accurate portrayal of the talent and quirks possessed by so many family members beyond Ernest Hemingway. A shadow of death has been cast over their story. This project aims to unearth the LIFE that blazed before and after tragedy struck, again and again. What is your ultimate ambition as a writer or filmmaker? My ultimate ambition as a writer is to invite my audience to challenge the outer limits of their worldview and to change their minds courageously, when a story or a character earns it. I love to discover strange stories and quirky characters left out of the history books, and to examine their legacies through a modern lens. These characters are usually misunderstood women, marginalized artists, or anti-heroes whose mistakes can teach us a lot about our own humanity. I believe much can be learned by traveling back in time – to past events or history-twisted mythologies – and untangling these tales with honesty, humor, and heart as our excavation tools. Which film directors or screenwriters inspire you? Why? I am inspired by Agnes Varda’s genre-blurring storytelling and visually-rich worlds, Mia Hansen Løve’s intimate characters and emotionally-nuanced scripts, and the overall spirit of French New Wave films: playful and experimental stories told by clever, bold women. What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show? My all-time favorite movie is Daisies by Věra Chytilov. I think about the show Russian Doll often. What advice do you have for others hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have? A wise friend told me many years ago that screenwriting is a spiritual journey. I have come to learn that that means: isolating, non-linear, totally maddening, and the very thing that will help you become the person you are meant to be. None of that growth and self-knowing comes from winning contests or selling scripts. It comes from the drafts and the self-imposed deadlines and the unseen work. Be grateful for the process. It’s a gift. What else are you working on that the world needs to know about? I am developing a television series about the Daily Lotto game in 16th century Italy (a game of hope and regret, dubbed the “Opium of Naples”) and writing a feature film about a writer questioning the purpose of art; a psychological exploration of our collective dreams and our Soul’s desires, based on the ancient Greek myths of Psyche and Parsifal. Professional Bio: Drawn to historical dramas and character-driven narratives, Molly Virostek's writing explores the untold stories of misunderstood women, marginalized artists, and anti-heroes. Molly employs honesty, humor, mythology, and heart to revise historical legacies through a modern lens and to excavate universal truths within unusual universes and outlandish tales. Molly studied Creative Writing at UCLA and is a storytelling strategist for brands, artists, and thought leaders. Her short screenplays & television pilots have placed in the Shore Scripts' Short Film Fund, the Annual Fade In Awards Drama competition, and the 2023 Script Pipeline TV Pilot Contest. She is currently developing two historical dramas for television, writing a feature film, living out of a suitcase, and bouncing between the jungle and the city. CONTACT Email: [email protected] Instagram: @mollyviro |
