True Stories 16: 00s—Erin Brockovich

Where do true stories come from? Like last week’s Almost Famous they’re often inspired by one person’s real life story. Or they come from history—famous people who accomplished something or infamous people who became well known for committing a crime, for example. Often books are written about the person who inspires a film. But the genesis of a film can be… varied. Such is the case with Erin Brockovich.

The rumor is that a studio executive’s wife heard about this woman’s story at her hair dresser’s. The project was put into development at the studio and eventually became the famous film.

What does that mean to an aspiring writer? Never underestimate luck. And I’m serious. If that studio exec’s wife hadn’t been at the hairdresser’s and heard about the story on that particular day, would there have even been a film Erin Brockovich? I’d guess not.

So just a little aside before we get to the film. Don’t let anyone tell you that you ‘make your own luck’ when it comes to the film business. Sure, you can move to L.A. if you want to be a writer and do all the right things to both work on your craft and foster connections that could lead to a career as a writer, but luck is a HUGE part of the equation. Your work needs to get to the right people, it needs to be the right moment in the industry for your script’s genre to seem marketable, and even if you get the film sold there’s a whole other level of lucky things that need to happen for it to get made. And once made, you need to hope that it doesn’t open on the same weekend as the next Spiderman movie or something. Luck—an absolute necessity in the film business.

Now, back to Erin.

This is the classic story of a woman who had to buck convention to make a difference in the world. Take a look at the trailer for the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=jjqUUxIy_yk

It’s a story of a woman against the world. She’s low on the societal totem pole—single mother, three kids, unemployed, and she even dresses unlike everyone else in the staid business world she’s thrown into.

But the most important thing about the film isn’t just what she’s like, it’s the classic plot of the underdog against the corporate world. And, of course, we’re rooting for the underdog. We want Erin to beat these corporate bozos and thereby see some justice done.

Not all “issue” sorts of films have time to go into the kind of personal detail concerning the main character that Erin Brockovich does. But in this film, her personal characteristics are so intertwined with how she’s trying to get justice for the ‘little people’ that the film is richer for being about both issue and her.

Next week we’ll look at a con-man—and, more importantly, how he came to be that way, in Catch Me if You Can.

Copyright © Diane Lake

25Sep22

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