Cheryl Edwards
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| Cheryl Edwards | |
|---|---|
 Cheryl Edwards.png Cheryl Edwards on the red carpet at the 42nd NAACP Image Awards | |
| Born | Pennsylvania, USA |
| 🎓 Alma mater | University of Maryland |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for |
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| Twitter= | |
Cheryl Edwards is an American screenwriter best known for the cult teen classic Save the Last Dance (2001), as well as her subsequent movies Against the Ropes (2004)[1] and Frankie & Alice (2010).[2]
Background[edit]
Cheryl Edwards was born in Pennsylvania. She attended the University of Maryland, where she studied Radio, Television, Film and Journalism. She initially worked as an account executive for WBFF Television in Baltimore and WTTG in Washington, DC, and was working on scripts in her spare time.
A friend of hers – an entertainment lawyer – read one of her sketched out TV projects, and told her she was wasting her talent by not seriously pursuing screenwriting. Inspired by this encouragement, she moved to Los Angeles in 1992.[3][unreliable source]
She got a job as an assistant to a studio executive in acquisitions, and it while working there that she sold her first script, Swap Meet just three years after she arrived in town – an almost unheard of timeline for new screenwriters trying to break into the industry.[3][unreliable source]
Save The Last Dance[edit]
Cort/Madden, the production company behind Save The Last Dance, were already working with Edwards on an original screenplay she had written – Against the Ropes, which would go on become a 2004 movie starring Meg Ryan.
The producers were such big fans of Edwards' writing that they asked if she's like to do a rewrite for them. Of the selection of scripts that Cort/Madden sent over, it was Save The Last Dance, the story of a white girl plunged into a world of gangs, teen mothers and hip hop on the south side of Chicago, which immediately connected with Edwards.
| “ | I went in and met with the director, Thomas Carter, and I told him what I thought was wrong with the script, and what I would do to change it. It's the fastest job I've ever gotten. They called the moment I came back home through the door. It was a page one rewrite.[3] | ” |
The original script had been written by Duane Adler, and another writer, Toni Ann Johnson had been previously brought on to try and bring the script to life. It was only when Edwards – the first black writer to be involved in a story about black inner-city life – rewrote the movie that it was finally got the green light.[4] Adler's original script had been about his experiences as the only white player on his basketball team.[5]
| “ | I didn't change anything thematically, but in the original version of the script, the two male friends in the opening of the story are adversarial. I made them friends. Through almost the third act, they remain friends. I wanted to address peer pressure in the urban arena, confusing excellence with selling out and not succumbing to peer pressure – even when it's someone that you really, really care about. I wanted to bring that in and not make this guy such a monster – a crazy thug. The anger that comes from someone that young, who thinks that the only way that he's going to survive is to be what he is – a drug dealer, or whatever, there's always a reason – particularly in someone that young.
I also changed the relationship with all the characters. The main problem that I found in the original script is that it was over the top in the way that it handled the racial issues. I have nieces and nephews, and they have friends from all creeds and colors and they don't come home and say "Mom, a new white kid just came to our school," etc., it's just not that way. I felt there was too much mass hysteria. I told the studio that it just doesn't ring true. So I changed that, and brought it down to a more interpersonal level. Rather than have the whole school react to this white girl coming, I brought it down to her relationships with the black kids with whom she was hanging out, didn't bang people over the head with it.[3] |
” |
She also added the scene in which Kerry Washington's character discusses how black women feel about white women dating black men, telling Julia Stiles's character: "Derek’s about something. He’s smart, he’s motivated, he’s for real. He’s not just going to make some babies and not take care of them, or run the streets messing up his life. He’s going to make something of his life, and here you come – white, so you gotta be right – and you take you take one of the few decent men we have left after jail, drugs and drive bys."[6]
| “ | One guy stopped me at the premiere and said that the scene in the clinic is the best scene in the movie. That's the scene that I'm really proud of. I know there was a lot of discussion about it, but I believe that when people read it, they were like, "we didn't know this was how black women felt." I think that some of the nuances are smaller than others. There are moments that I created to open the picture up a little more and not have it be so myopic. | ” |
| “ | Thematically, the movie is about a couple of things. One of them is, realizing this is teenage love, on a racial level; it's the fact that you have the right to love whomever you choose to love. Love is hard enough to find in this world. So when you find it, it shouldn't make any difference. It's one race, the human race. Also, one thing that I changed about the black male lead, is that I wanted to evoke more of the peer pressure thing and that sometimes, in order to move ahead, you have to leave things behind, even people that you love. You have to walk a different path sometimes, and it's not always easy and sometimes it's heartbreaking, but in order to save your own life, sometimes that's what you have to do.[3] | ” |
Fight for recognition[edit]
The script for Save The Last Dance ended up in arbitration, with Duane Adler – the film's original screenwriter – attempting to stop Edwards from receiving a shared screenwriting credit for a movie she had been working on for months. In her writer's statement to the WGA, Edwards acknowledged Adler's contribution, saying that he established the blueprint and then she built the building. Because the first set of arbiters ended up making a factual error, the case had to go to a second arbitration, by which time Edwards was much less conciliatory.[4]
| “ | "Somebody saying they wrote the whole movie - it's tantamount to plagiarism.[4] If I ever have a screenplay, that someone changes to the point where I can barely find an original word that I wrote, I will NOT contest their credit.[3] | ” |
Edwards had one and a half Xerox boxes full of drafts, to prove her case. After reviewing both Adler and Edwards' scripts, the WGA ruled that Edwards was fully deserving of her co-screenwriting credit.[4]
References[edit]
- ↑ Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "Against the Ropes". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
- ↑ Debruge, Peter (2010-11-18). "Frankie and Alice". Variety. Retrieved 2020-05-04. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 "WriteCraft: Save the Last Dance: Cheryl Edwards".
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Credit Grab: How Many Writers Does It Take to Make a Movie?". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 20, 2003.
- ↑ "Save the Last Dance". old.post-gazette.com. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
- ↑ "Save the Last Dance - Clinic Scene". YouTube.
External links[edit]
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