“Writing A Screenplay for Hollywood:  An Interview About The Goddess of Butterflies,”    by Bobbi McKenna with Actress and Director Elizabeth Sung and Screenwriter Peter Tulipan.

Elizabeth Sung has appeared on TV in House, MD, Crossing Jordan, NYPD Blue, Touched by an Angel, ER, Charmed, Murder She Wrote, and The Equalizer as well as daytime dramas like The Young and The Restless and feature films like Joy Luck Club, Memoirs of a Geisha, Jet Li's Hero and Lethal Weapon 4.  She is a graduate of The Julliard School, who danced with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and is an award winning director, with a masters degree from The American Film Institute.  And for those of you who asked, "Yes, that was Elizabeth you saw earlier this season in an episode of 'Desperate Housewives.'”

Bobbi:    It seems like I meet someone every week who has written a screenplay or who wants to write a screenplay, and it isn’t only when I’m in Los Angeles.  People in Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico and Colorado as well as Hollywood are aspiring screenwriters.    Because screenwriting is not something that most of us know much about, I asked my neighbors Elizabeth Sung and Peter Tulipan to share some the process with us.    We’re sitting in the living room of my house near Studio City, California.  It’s a beautiful warm southern California day.   ********************************************************   “Elizabeth, I know you were a dancer, then an actor, a director, a teacher and now you’re also a screenwriter.  Please tell me about the screenplay “The Goddess of Butterflies” that you and Peter have written.   Elizabeth:    “A businessman, who we’ll identify only as Charles, sought out Peter and me because he knew that we were a husband and wife team.  I direct and Peter writes.”   “For the longest time he and his wife felt that something was missing in their marriage, and they figured out that they really wanted to have a child.  The idea of adoption came to them. They applied to adopt a child from China from a reputable agency, but it still took a long time before the adoption actually moved forward.  They waited close to two years.  By the time they went to China to get their daughter, she was a little over a year old.”   ”They went to a hilly region of China…not a busy city like Beijing or Shanghai.  They came to us with this story because he journaled a lot writing about all the ups and downs of what it was like to start the adoption process, the waiting period, the anxiety, and how it changed him after the baby came into their lives. Later, as he read his journal, it made him want to turn it into a film."      Peter:   “Charles really wanted to tell the story of how it came to be. He recounted to us lots of funny and touching anecdotes about the road to adoption and about the little girl, some of which ended up in the script.”   "He found Elizabeth and me through a mutual friend, an actress, a director, and a well established acting teacher here in town. Originally, she contacted Elizabeth about the idea of doing the story. Soon after, I came on board as the screenwriter."   "The three of us (Elizabeth, Charles, and I) got together at the Mondrian Hotel where he often stayed when in LA. We talked about the possibilities and the challenges of adapting his experience into a compelling screenplay since most of the material in his journal lent itself to more episodic story telling because it was true to life, so we added a fantasy element to it."   "This new idea now became the main thrust that threads all of the three acts of the screenplay. We recorded our meetings and then I went off and developed the Goddess story."   Elizabeth:   "The fantasy element came about because this little baby is only one year old and she can’t talk, so we needed to create a way for the audience to see her talk and show her personality.  The screen play unfolds as a bedtime story between the father and his young adoptive daughter when she is six years old."   "One day, the little girl began to cry, and asked her father, 'Do I have a Chinese Mommy?'”   "Her father tried to sooth his child’s pain and so together, he and his daughter, co-created the fantasy story called The Goddess of Butterflies which explained that she was a princess many, many thousands of years ago, and how fate and destiny had brought her into their lives."

Bobbi:   "For those of us who’ve never written a screen play, how long did it take you to write ‘The Goddess of Butterflies?’”

Elizabeth:   "For Peter, the biggest challenge was coming up with the structure and making Goddess a compelling family movie."    Peter:   “The first draft of the script took about 4 months to write, pretty much full time. I had Elizabeth review pages as I wrote, so we were constantly making revisions."

"Charles read everything as well, but I sent it to him in thirty page blocks. He would make suggestions and even contributed dialogue here and there. A couple of scenes were replaced because of his suggestions. In general, however, he let me do my thing and encouraged me to keep on the track I had found for the story.”   Bobbi:   “I’ve read your screenplay, and I really love it.  What I love most about it is that it shows that adoption is really a love story.”   Elizabeth:   “It is a love story.  Ultimately what Peter and I want to say is that love has no boundaries, and no limits.  It is unconditional.”    Bobbi:   “How did you come up with the idea of The Goddess of Butterflies character?”   Elizabeth:   “The credit for that goes to Peter.”   Peter:   “Actually, I’m not sure how that came to me.  Elizabeth and I were originally talking about having a Buddhist monk as the mentor figure, but as I was writing, it just felt like a more maternal character would work better since this is the story of a girl and her questions about her Chinese mother.  The Goddess is a metaphor for the mother the little girl loses and the adoptive mother she gains."    Elizabeth:   “When Peter told me he wanted to add the Butterfly character, I said ‘brilliant.’”  Because the butterfly is so colorful and light. It is everywhere and nowhere…it has the sort of visual symbolism of possibilities in life.    Bobbi:   “When I read your screenplay, it seemed to me to be ‘Shrek Meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.’”   Elizabeth:   “Yes, with Shrek it all starts with self acceptance.”   Bobbi:   “Now that the creative part of the process is over, what’s next?  How do you go from the page to the screen?”   Elizabeth:   “After you write the screenplay, the next thing which can take no time or a long time is to find the funding to make the movie.  And that’s the most magical and up-in-the air kind of thing.  Sometimes you may meet a producer right away who is the right producer for the project."    "Sometimes it’s a long journey to find the right producer or the right financier to come on board.  The biggest challenge is getting the first dollar in.  After you get the first part of the money, then the second and the third part can come a lot easier.”   Bobbi:   You can contact Elizabeth and Peter about their screenplay:   efsung@earthlink.net   ptul@earthlink.net.

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