Day four of the 13th Annual ReelHeART International Film and Screenplay Festival begins at Woodsworth College with the live script read of the second of three feature screenplays competing for first, second, and third place in the Best Feature Screenplay award category.
The screenwriters Tamara Herman and Cindy Aronson, (who are both teachers and native Torontonian’s) were both present for the live script read of the 110 page screenplay Jagged Edge.
It begins with a shocking start. There is a scream that surprises the audience. There is sudden confusion as a woman wakes up, and whatever nightmare she just had manages to carry through into her waking life. It begins like a jagged edge, thrusting the audience against its sharpness.
And then a flashback begins. Introducing a young female character, and a creepy man whose sexual innuendo is barely concealed. And when the audience is thrust out of the flashback they are confronted by a rougher, harder young woman. One who swears and is nothing like the young innocent girl who played with Barbie’s years earlier.
Set in Toronto, Lily is presented as someone unlucky in love whose last relationships have been with people she identified as creeps.
And the rich businessman, Ryder Bishop, is shown as wanting more than just the sex he has had. He wants love and is willing to reject what is easy in order to get what he needs. A young valet asks for advice and Ryder, lays out what to him is important: a grown up image and attitude.
Nightmares about Hunter, the one who abused her (whose accurate name captures the theme of what happened to her) continue to disturb Lily to her core. Lily in therapy is told she should share her struggle with her family.
Ryder Bishop and Jack Jordan talk about Lily, expressing the fact that business and pleasure should never meet. Jordan sums her up as someone who is “sweet and cerebral” and Ryder is looking for a genuine connection with a genuine person.
The work examines the value of a person’s life regardless of who they are and when Lily’s friend tells her that: “You’re just as important a person as he is.”
There’s unknown knowledge, secrets and hidden pasts that fit into the story, and how exactly people know each other is something that has yet to be revealed.
Her past affects her future in subtle and realistic ways such as the way in which she does her hair. And actions such as Ryder brushing her hair to the side, takes on dark overtones in view of the fact that the memories of what Hunter did to her, is still fresh in the mind of the audience and, of course, Lily herself.
Ryder presents himself as ethical, and a man who built himself up from nothing. And looking deeper at Ryder’s last name, ‘bishop’, which in chess is a piece only capable of staying on one colour and who can’t break its ways, is like Ryder because he continues to be a supportive gentleman who wants to protect Lily. Four other characters have names based on nature. The writers mentioned after the live read that they chose the characters names very carefully, keeping contained within them some sort of significance and meaning, as seen with Ryder’s name.
At the core of his being is an interest in being relevant to himself and others.
During a dinner the two of them meet a group who support abused youth. And Ryder gives a generous donation, taking only for himself, a single lily. And it becomes clear that Ryder has also been abused as a youth.
Humour carries through the piece, there are interjections of jokes into the work which keep the seriousness of the work and its dark themes light. Willow, a joyful positive friend of Lily’s has a deeper character developed by a mom who is in the hospital for a terminal illness. This works to show how no person has a monopoly on pain, at the same time, her secret dread hides under her optimism, reinforces the theme that there is a difference between the facade people put up, and the reality that lurks behind it. A jagged sort of reality, that continues to cut. The audience laughed at some of the sexual innuendo, and the writers afterwards mentioned how the cringed at some of the lines.
And when it is revealed that Lily is not prepared for sex, and the wounds that have stayed with her for a while, continue to hurt. And Ryder is presented as the ideal gentleman who is perfectly fine with that.
When she was eight Hunter abused her, and for four years after he continued to abuse her. And Willow, upon hearing this is shocked but supportive. The depth of the trauma Lily suffered permeates so much of her life, and when it is revealed she is still a virgin, and that she is possessed of a great fear of trusting people, the true cost of what was done to her becomes clear in a way that even those who haven’t experienced abuse, can understand.
Lily, when going to a bachelorette party is thrust into a world of sexual difference and Lily is further characterized by how uncomfortable she is in this place. And the humour again invades like when Lily and Willow see a glory hole and are shocked by it.
The script develops the relationship between Ryder and Lily in such a way that it is clear how the two of them feel the freedom necessary for them to be themselves. And when the sexual scene actually begins it is narrated by the actors putting on the roles of cheesy sports announcers. This happens until that is interrupted by Lily and Ryder who give much lighter comments, more real heartfelt and genuine.
They enjoy months together but the peace in their paradise does not endure forever and when people from the past reappear who the two of them are, and what they have built, is threatened.
The mysterious character Viktor becomes a secret that Ryder needs to share with Lily. Overlapping his own personal feelings is Lily’s persistent insecurity which Ryder is constantly trying to assuage it. But still things recur, feelings and memories, and there is a totality to the scripts continuity because things that happened in the past continue to matter and the fears in the past endure like the scars they both wear inside.
And the grief and pain in Lily runs deep. Her father died when she was young, but she wants to move on. She tells Ryder that it isn’t sustainable to live with the horrors of her past, and is finally able to move on because of the strength others have given her. Her worldview changes through the script and the person she is becomes shaped by the people around her. And she begins to believe that love doesn’t come because someone gives it to her, but because she is inherently deserving of it.
And the story, deep with twists, reveals that Viktor, who is soon to be released is Ryder’s father, whose unknown actions against his son and family has left Ryder scarred.
Ryder’s own flashbacks present a fractured family, a beaten son, and an abusive drunk of a father who crashed after driving his son home. And in yet another twist, the person Viktor killed in the accident is revealed is to be Lily’s father.
Friends of Ryder’s point out that the lies one tells and the secrets one keeps can become like a prison cell. And he too is focused on moving forward, changing his name in the hope that might wash away his past.
The story rests on coincidences, but is more focused on examining how the characters deal with the revelations that are, in some ways, just as surprising as they are for the characters involved.
The families try to tear the two of them apart, and Lily’s mother confronts Ryder espousing the value of the truth, offering an ultimatum, and arguing that lying to someone is not protecting them.
And when Viktor inserts himself Lily’s life, telling her all the secrets that Ryder hadn’t in what seems like a ploy to take away happiness from his son. And the relationship that they’ve built over six months unravels in moments. Lily says the same thing, and equates the betrayal of Ryder to what Hunter did to her and the audience watches as whatever changes Lily underwent up to this point collapses.
Lily returns to her therapy and bears her soul while realizing that she isn’t to blame for anything that happened to her. And things come back to the question of whether she can forgive Ryder.
There is death in the story, but when Lily’s brother has a child, life and the importance of new beginnings intrude, and the nature name Violet, which matches with the other names, seems to reference the circular nature of existence, the life and death that is constantly alternating. And there is an interest in subtlety exploring the idea that despite the death, pain and endings, there will always be new starts.
The story falls back on some levels of familiarity, Lily realizes what she had after it is gone, and the characters come together with everything resolved, but the powerful emotions that the actors allow to transcend beyond the pages.
In the future they are about to get married and the happiness they feel permeates the final scenes as people do manage to move past and move into joy and a new happy future together.
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It’s hard to watch it without thinking of 50 Shades of Grey but, according to the writers, drawing that comparison would make sense, since, after all, Jagged Edge was in some ways inspired by that story.
“We watched 50 Shades of Grey and I was mocking it at the time, and we decided that we wanted to write 50 Shades of Grey. But we wanted to write it better,” Tamara Herman said.
But the script was also heavily influenced by the real lives of both writers.
“A lot of characters were based on people in our own lives, because you write best what you know. And the situations were real, not the man-slaughter, but the abuse was real. A lot of the psychology behind what we’ve written was real,” Herman said.
The two writers also took a moment to talk about why they chose to set the story in Toronto.
“We are both very proud Torontonian’s and so it was important of us to set all the scenes in Toronto.” Many characters are real and the names are variations on the names of students we teach. It is realistic for us, because the story is real for us,” Herman said.
“It is very cathartic,” Cindy Aronson added.
ReelHeART, a festival that does more than simply host the live script read, but also incorporates some changes into the script in order to fulfill its mandate as a “mentoring festival,” that works to use its years of experience and knowledge of successful screenplays to help cultivate a script. The writers commented on the changes ReelHeART made such as changing the gender of one of the minor characters to a woman.
“Some of the changes were interesting. Some were great. One thing I wanted to do and I know it’s the same for Cindy is that we wanted to make this as diverse as possible. We want to show off more LGBTQ characters and mainstream that more.”
The writers told the actors that they had taken a lot of notes on the performance and now had some excellent ideas on how to improve the script.
In including this screenplay in the award competition ReelHeART highlights its no-niche attitude and its love of stories that deal with powerful characters and the real heart that comes from genuine relationships and people finding love regardless of whatever differences that set them apart.