I'm sure major film studios will hire me for screenwriting

For the week 10 assignment, I started off writing about Black Hawk Down, got ¾ of the way through it, and thought, "This paper is awful."

So I switched tracks and chose to write about what scene I thought should have been in the film version of A Dry White Season.

Here is my response to that question:

A Dry White Season: The Scene that Should Have Been

      As much as I enjoyed the film version of A Dry White Season, after reading the book, I wish screenwriters Colin Welland and Euzhan Palcy had included more from the novel. The film never explains the title. What is a “dry white season”? What does it mean? It must be significant; Welland and Palcy do not change André Brink’s title, so they must want us to understand something from it. But what?
     If I could add a scene, it would be to combine the reminiscence of The Great Drought of ’33 that Ben du Toit shares with the narrator with his observation, later in the novel, that he might be witnessing another “dry white season.” This scene is needed for several reasons, primarily that it explains the significance of the title. It also gets us closer to Ben; he believes that he must marry his dreams to “damn hard facts.” That insight into his psyche helps explain his reluctance to help Gordon. “I don’t think there is anything we can do about it now,” he says to Gordon after Jonathan was cut on the buttocks. And after Jonathan’s death, he echoes that statement with, “There’s nothing you or I can change.”
     As Ben becomes more entwined with Gordon’s case, however, it turns out that he was quite naïve when he promoted his reliance on “damn hard facts.” Ben du Toit, it turns out, sticks to his dreams until the end. He believes the best about his daughter, Suzette, thinking her incapable of betraying him. “What sense would remain in the world if one no longer had the right to trust one’s own family,” he asks. When confronted with a mob of angry black youths, he thinks that telling them, “I’m on your side” will stop them from assaulting him. He refers to himself as Father Christmas, a make-believe character embodying goodness and generosity. He is an idealist who believes that when he cautions Colonel Stolz about “living with [his] own conscience,” Stolz will have an epiphany about the inhumanity of his and Apartheid’s cruelty. Stolz, of course, thinks Ben Is the one in need of a conscience. Perhaps most telling, Ben professes to Stanley that Stolz and his crew “wont get away with it in court … Our courts have always had a reputation for impartiality.” Contrary to what Ben would like to believe about himself, he does not always temper his dreams with “damn hard facts.”
     By having Ben explain the context of his confidence in his own opinions, as well as his later observation that he is in the grips of another crisis, we would feel closer to him. He would appear less of an icon and more of a real individual to whom we could relate.
     I think it would be effective to place the scene in the later third of the movie, after Susan has left him and after Emily has been killed. The scene should take place not in his home, but somewhere in Stanley’s orbit. Stanley’s home or Father Masonwane’s – someplace that is not comfortable for Ben. It would be a moment in the film where he has to face that he has allowed his comfort to nudge out those “damn hard facts.”
     The three men gather after Emily’s death. They are drinking some of Stanley’s liquor, and they are silent. The only sound we hear is the thunk of their glasses pounding the table and the clink of the glass bottle up against their glasses as they are refilled.

Ben (to Stanley) Why do you drive a cab?

Stanley (stares at his empty glass until Father Masonwane fills it) 

Making small talk, lanie?

Masonwane Stanley is a secret capitalist, morena.

Stanley What the reverend means is that I made my way. My bra, man, he was a real tsotsi. He was my hero, I tell you. I wanted to do everything Shorty and his gang did. But then they caught him. Zap, one time. (p. 87) 

Ben What for?

Stanley You name it. The works, left, right and centre. Robbery. Assault. Rape. Even murder. He was a real roerie guluva, I tell you, lanie.  (p. 88)

Ben And then?

Stanley Got the rope, what else? Around the neck. I went to see him, a week before, just to say good-bye and happy landings and so on. We had a good chat. I still remember it. About life in jail. And being scared of dying. That tough bra of mine who’d never feared hell or high water. I went home to my mother to tell her about my talk with Shorty. She said: ‘Is it all right with Shorty?’ And I said: ‘He’s all right, Ma. He’s just fine.’ (p. 87-88)

Masonwane refills Stanley’s glass; Ben is silent. Several seconds tick by.

Stanley I decided I’d go straight. Didn’t want to end up like him. So I became the garden boy in Booysens. Picked up a girlfriend, a nanny. Nice girl. One night her master burst in on us and beat the shit out of us before we could put our clothes on. (laughs) That night I saw something I hadn’t seen before, and that was that I wasn’t my own boss. My life belonged to my white baas. It was he who organized my job for me, and who told me where I could stay and what I must do and what I mustn’t. I had to be free. Made some money in the market. A few of us clubbed together to buy a car. Then one year, I bought my own. Never looked back.  (p. 98)

Ben Now you’re your own boss?

Stanley I’m only as free as the white bosses allow me to be. Got that? (slams glass down on table) Do you think you’re free, lanie? (p. 98)

Ben I have dreams, Stanley. But I have the advantage of having learned, from a very early age, to make allowances for damn hard facts. My father was a farmer. My grandfather – my mother’s father – made my father take over the farm, and he was quite successful. When I was ten, the Great Drought of ’33, my family had to take the sheep to Griqualand West, where we’d been told that there was some grazing left. But the drought kept coming, and there we were, in some godforsaken district of Danielskuil, and there was no way out. My father had given me a few lambs, and in ’33, they had lambs of their own. Have you ever cut the throat of a newborn lamb? Such a small white creature wriggling in your arms. Such a thin little neck. One stroke of the knife. Every single new lamb that’s born, because there’s nothing for them to eat and the ewes have no milk. The ground has turned to stone, and day after day, the sun burns away whatever remains. When you look up you see the vultures above you. It was only Pa and me. We had 2,000 sheep when we started. A year later, we had 50 left.  (p. 30-310

Stanley Damn, lanie.

Ben The funny thing is, all these years later, I feel like I did then. Pa and I and the sheep. The drought that took everything from us, leaving us alone and scorched among the white skeletons. I feel as if I’m finding myself on the edge of yet another dry white season, perhaps worse than the one I knew as a child. (turns to Stanley) What now?  (p. 163)

Masonwane We must have patience. We must learn to love even our enemies.  (p. 173)

Stanley Got to do something, man. Even if my own people will spit on me for working with a white man. We can’t win, lanie. But we needn’t lose either. What matters is to stick around. (p. 287-288)

     The reasoned voice of the minister, combined with the pragmatism of Stanley and the loss of Ben’s naivete would be a good coda to Emily’s death and a prelude to Suzette’s betrayal. I also noticed, as I re-read the passages from which some of the above narration comes, the symbolism of “small white creatures,” the vultures and the “white skeletons.” Ben is witnessing the beginning of the drought of Apartheid, and he knows how droughts end. He also knows about the loss of his own innocence, which left its own bones and carcass.