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The Bitter Bush

Welcome to the interior of Liberia, West Africa. This is the setting for my first full-length screenplay, THE BITTER BUSH (previously called The Beckoning Bush and The Beautiful Unknown).

It is 1965. As the movie opens, John, Judy, and Michal Lundgren are leaving Minneapolis, Minnesota, to start a Lutheran mission in a village in Bandiland, in the hinterland of Liberia. 

Many people who read The Bitter Bush assume I lived in Liberia and am the 12-year-old protagonist, Michal. But the Liberia of 1965 lives in my imagination only. It is a world created by years of studying Liberia, reading first-hand accounts, and interviewing people who were missionaries there. It is to these people, especially, that I owe such a debt of gratitude.

Here are some photographs my missionary friends shared with me to help me create the fictional village in the script. Please note that while they shared their personal story with me, they are nothing like John and Judy Lundgren, who in the movie end up doing almost more harm than good. My missionary friends are people who made many personal sacrifices to better the lives of others half-way across the world.

Sadly, the Liberian civil war in the 1980s destroyed many villages in the interior. The photos you see here are a glimpse into a world that may never exist again.

  Fishing is women's work. These ladies make these nets.

People of all ages carrying staggeringly heavy loads on their heads.

  This is how the villagers wash their clothes.

  Bricks of mud and straw, drying in the sun.

This is the house that was built with the above bricks. It was the inspiration for the Lundgren house in the screenplay.

 

A young Bandi man—the inspiration for the character Nafua in the screenplay.

 A typical Liberian village. The women are beating the husk off of rice. Goats wander around freely.

 

Joy.

Hildy and Me

HILDY AND ME is a short script that tells the poignant true story about a day in the life of two sisters when one—a little person—goes missing.

What you can't tell from the above log line is that the incident happened during the Great Depression in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and that the girls in the script are my mother, Louise, and her sister, Marie.

The script was most recently a Top 100 Semifinalist in the 2015 Table Read My Screenplay Competition. I'm hoping that this and other competitions attract the attention of someone interested in producing this inspiring story.

Here are some pictures of my mother and her sister, the character Hildy in the script.

My mother, Louise Mastaglio (left), and her older sister, Marie (right), in the early 1930s.

 

Marie (left) and Louise.