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Well, I like the new version, and I think you're right that you'll be selling this completely on the true story angle. I think it might be better, but perhaps you need someone who doesn't know as much about the event to tell you how much it interests them.
It truly is?a shame that schools?teach such a gilded version of American history.
You seem very passionate about this story. It deserves to be told(again). ?Good luck with this.
Maybe you should try posting the new version on a new thread.?
Dkpough1:
First of all, thanks for giving my logline a look-see.
I'm (too) well aware of "Iron Jawed Angels". ?My script covers more events and is truer to historical facts. ?The truth of what really happened is stranger than the fiction of the HBO movie.
As the interviews (there were 2) progressed ?Alice Paul came to realize that she was being examined for her sanity, not her health. ?But she clung to her convictions and refused to "play sane", stop her hunger strike.?This is the decisive, pivotal moment in my plot. The stakes in those 48 hours are high, politically and personally: ?if she is committed, the militant wing of the suffrage movement is decapitated. ?And Alice Paul could be locked ?up, denied her freedom and her civil rights for months, for years.
I am all tool aware that my logline does not conform to the standard form. ?But I eschewed the standard form ?because of the very point you raise: ?most people are not aware of the climactic struggle for women's suffrage in the United States. ?I concluded a by-the-formula logline won't do the job. ?I gotta dangle a hook and the most alluring hook I can think of is that they tried to get her declared insane. ?Hopefully, it is alluring enough to get readers to bite, read the script.
I'm always tweaking the logline. ?Here's one alternate version:
The true story of the woman imprisoned in 1917 for defying President Woodrow Wilson and committed to the?insane ward for the "insane" demand that women be given the right to vote.
(32 words)
Better? ?Worse?
[Clarification: ?that version is technically true. ?When Alice Paul went on a hunger strike, she was moved to the "cooler" of the insane ward in the (local) DC jail. ?But after she had served her sentence for picketing the White House, they would have to release her. ?So they conspired to commit her to the "deep freeze" of the federal asylum, St. Elizabeths. ?Given the laws for involuntary commitment in those days, she could have been deprived of her freedom for, well, who knows how long.]
>>However, anyone who would be interested in producing this script would probably at least have a passing knowledge of these events.
The news hook is the upcoming centennial ?in 2020 of the ratification of 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote. ?And if Hillary Clinton becomes the 1st woman elected President of the United States -- well, that's a bonus news hook. She?would be a capstone, an historical denouement of Alice Paul's struggle and suffering
I greatly appreciate your feedback. ? You're right that most people aren't aware of Alice Paul, and know little or less about the suffrage struggle. That's ?the primary obstacle to be overcome and for the purposes of the logline. ?I see no remedy but to bait the hook with the most dramatic, "It really happened folks" chapter in Alice Paul's struggle.
Dkpough1:
First of all, thanks for giving my logline a look-see.
I'm (too) well aware of "Iron Jawed Angels". ?My script covers more events and is truer to historical facts. ?The truth of what really happened is stranger than the fiction of the HBO movie.
As the interviews (there were 2) progressed ?Alice Paul came to realize that she was being examined for her sanity, not her health. ?But she clung to her convictions and refused to "play sane", stop her hunger strike.?This is the decisive, pivotal moment in my plot. The stakes in those 48 hours are high, politically and personally: ?if she is committed, the militant wing of the suffrage movement is decapitated. ?And Alice Paul could be locked ?up, denied her freedom and her civil rights for months, for years.
I am all tool aware that my logline does not conform to the standard form. ?But I eschewed the standard form ?because of the very point you raise: ?most people are not aware of the climactic struggle for women's suffrage in the United States. ?I concluded a by-the-formula logline won't do the job. ?I gotta dangle a hook and the most alluring hook I can think of is that they tried to get her declared insane. ?Hopefully, it is alluring enough to get readers to bite, read the script.
I'm always tweaking the logline. ?Here's one alternate version:
The true story of the woman imprisoned in 1917 for defying President Woodrow Wilson and committed to the?insane ward for the "insane" demand that women be given the right to vote.
(32 words)
Better? ?Worse?
[Clarification: ?that version is technically true. ?When Alice Paul went on a hunger strike, she was moved to the "cooler" of the insane ward in the (local) DC jail. ?But after she had served her sentence for picketing the White House, they would have to release her. ?So they conspired to commit her to the "deep freeze" of the federal asylum, St. Elizabeths. ?Given the laws for involuntary commitment in those days, she could have been deprived of her freedom for, well, who knows how long.]
>>However, anyone who would be interested in producing this script would probably at least have a passing knowledge of these events.
The news hook is the upcoming centennial ?in 2020 of the ratification of 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote. ?And if Hillary Clinton becomes the 1st woman elected President of the United States -- well, that's a bonus news hook. She?would be a capstone, an historical denouement of Alice Paul's struggle and suffering
I greatly appreciate your feedback. ? You're right that most people aren't aware of Alice Paul, and know little or less about the suffrage struggle. That's ?the primary obstacle to be overcome and for the purposes of the logline. ?I see no remedy but to bait the hook with the most dramatic, "It really happened folks" chapter in Alice Paul's struggle.