I primarily write web series scripts, but I also adapted Great Big Something, a book I wrote in 1988, for a feature film screenplay. It is almost finished.
The back story to this book is amazing, and also involves a musical evolution for me. That’s the good part. The bad part was finding out how ableist the LBGTQA community was and is.
I will not rant or whine. That’s for chumps. No, my book didn’t get picked up by a publisher, so I self-published it. I admit it, the writing wasn’t there, but for the screenplay, it is.
The book was finished by 1992, and in full circulation by '93. It is about an openly lesbian rock band against grunge, like the scene they were in. But grunge/alt rock is what I should’ve embraced from the get-go, as they were a lot more accepting of people like me.
The story includes a character with a learning disability similar to my own. The “lesbian feminist” publishers wrote me off. Apparently, in their minds, there is no such type of person as a mentally disabled lesbian. I wish I still had the nasty form rejection letters from them that told me so. In that community, the tolerance, diversity, inclusiveness, and a voice for the voiceless only applied if you weren't disabled, and they had some very strange notions about disabled people in general.
But with straight and straight feminist publishers and agents, I routinely got past the query stage to full manuscript requests. It seemed everyone was looking for the great American alt rock novel. My book wasn’t it, but that I got as far as I did with it--score 1000 for grunge/alt, straight people, and straight feminists, and 0 for the gay community.
In 2013 I hired my friend and editor since the early 2000s, Jen Grover, to edit an updated version of Great Big Something in novel form. I felt the story was worth salvaging, and I knew a lot more about writing by then. When Jen found out I had some unfounded criticisms of grunge music and fans, a scene she had been deeply involved in, she read me the riot act.
I had assumed grunge fans glorified depression, PTSD, and other disabilities as bestowing greater creativity, not knowing what real disabled people were like, only a fantasy image, and that they wouldn't have been so accepting of real disabled people. I listened to Jen, to her stories of that community, listened again to the music, and realized I had been wrong. Those fans saw in those bands someone genuine who had experienced the same problems they, themselves were living, not the hair metal fantasies of wild parties, money, and perfect Barbie women. And despite what I had let some radical feminist friends tell me back in the 90s, there were gay people, advocates, and feminists, both male and female, in grunge.
To stay true to spirit of the book, a marginalized scene fighting the good fight, the good alt scene is now adult rock, bands like Fugazi, Pavement, Sleater-Kinney, Nirvana, the Breeders, and the Loud Family, and folk singers like Dar Williams and the Nields. The rants against grunge are gone. The bad scene is now homophobic and patriarchal hard rock.
It still goes on; some people can't accept that a person is genuine if they don't fit the image. Hey, left! Mayor Pete is very gay. Just because he doesn’t dress like a member of the Village People doesn't mean he’s pretending. He just doesn’t do the stereotypes. It's like me, a disabled lesbian, not being possible.
To be fair, today it is better. I am much more accepted, and the book is now a screenplay with a real chance. My mentor in Hollywood helped me adapt it, and it’s better than ever. Second chances, and real change, can happen, for us and within us. In the end, it's good for everyone.
Andrea Weiss