In 2011, I was working with Hollywood producer on a screenplay titled America, A Love Story.
The project came out of a much older impulse. My original title was America, The Beautiful. I meant that literally and philosophically. The protagonist was beautiful inside and out—not flawless, not symbolic in a heavy-handed way, but recognizably human. Producer Chris pushed back on the title. After a long discussion, he convinced me to change it. Looking back, I think he was right. America, A Love Story left room for contradiction, tension, and earned meaning.
At its core, America is a woman.
She is in her thirties. She is a traveler. A witness. Something close to a “traveling angel” trope, but grounded and contemporary. She moves quietly from town to town and, in this story, finds herself in a small American community at a moment when people are being tested—politically, morally, emotionally.
She goes by the name Lucy.
Lucy appears to have amnesia. Or something like it. She does not fully know who she is or where she comes from, but she has an unshakable instinct for when something is wrong. She listens more than she speaks. She notices what people say when they think no one important is listening.
The story follows Max, the town’s mayor. He is not corrupt in the cartoon sense, but he is worn down. Pressured. Pulled between civic responsibility, political compromise, and personal doubt. Max wants to do the right thing, but the right thing has consequences—financial, political, social—and those consequences don’t fall evenly.
Lucy’s relationship with Max is not a conventional romance. It is revelatory. She reflects back to him what leadership actually costs when it is real, and what happens when compromise quietly becomes abdication.
Around them is a community under strain. There is an old Vietnam veteran. There are children watching and absorbing more than adults realize. There is a powerful local employer, a respected community figure whose greed and self-interest threaten to hollow out the town while being publicly justified as “necessary.”
The film isn’t really about patriotism in the chest-thumping sense. If anything, patriotism sits below more fundamental values: community, friendship, empathy, responsibility. It asks what love of country even means when it is separated from care for the people who live in it.
Lucy does not embody power. She embodies conscience. Compassion. Quiet wisdom. And unresolved promise.
The ending is unapologetically hopeful. It leans toward a Frank Capra resolution. Some people would call that trite. Maybe it is. But I’ve come to believe that hope, when it is earned rather than declared, is not naïve. In moments like the one we’re living through now, it may be necessary.
I don’t think America has needed a film like this more than it does right now.
And that’s why I’m giving serious thought to finishing it.
Not because it would be easy. Not because it would be fashionable. But because stories that center community over spectacle, conscience over power, and people over slogans are becoming rarer—and more necessary.
Some stories wait for their moment.
This one might finally be there
Author’s Note
This screenplay was initially composed and mostly written during a very different moment in American life. Revisiting it now has been less about nostalgia and more about recognizing how certain questions never really go away. If anything, they sharpen with time. I’m sharing these thoughts not as a promise, but as an acknowledgment that some stories wait until they are needed.
— JZ Murdock
FYI, I'm going to go back to once a week blogs for a while as I'm busy with projects. Two small documentary films and a much bigger one.
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
No comments:
Post a Comment