Make Something with a Heartbeat

“Make Something with a Heartbeat” Will Graham on ‘A League of Their Own’:

“I was a queer kid and I didn’t really have a vocabulary for that — I don’t know what was ‘wrong’ with me — but I had this sense I wasn’t right for the world exactly as it was around me,” said screenwriter Will Graham. “So I think stories, movies, TV, comic books, novels…they were a place I could escape and process what was happening to me.”

Graham continued, “I think that’s the impulse that brought me to making things. The idea of taking people somewhere outside the space of their normal lives… that’s special. Not just giving them a fun adventure but something they can take back with them.”

These projects include Movie 43, Alpha House, Mozart in the Jungle, and the new TV series A League of Their Own. The latest series is a comedy about the WWII All-American professional women’s baseball league. The ensemble stars Abbi Jacobson, D’Arcy Carden, Chanté Adams, Molly Emphraim, and Nick Offerman.

“I think the writing process is therapeutic, but that’s not how I approach it. I’m drawn to write about things I don’t know much about. With Mozart in the Jungle, the draw was this world of classical music and these traditions that went back centuries and writing about creative people.”

Graham experienced a similar set of challenges with an upcoming project called Daisy Jones & The Six, a mini series about a 70s rock band. “Then, with A League of Their Own, it’s this world of women’s baseball in the 1940s, but there’s also a deeper story of queer people finding themselves and finding a community.”

“In the process of writing those things, I always find myself and there’s always a moment in the process where I’m writing about my childhood, or a relationship, but it’s more of an inevitable part of the process rather than something I’m looking for.”

Researching Ensemble Pieces

“Find questions that you need answer to,” said Graham about the research phase of the writing. “I think it’s always something I’ve done from both ends. I read a lot while writing and absorb a lot while writing. You don’t know how it’s going to come out, but you want to make something with a heartbeat — something that feels real. I make it personal while taking in a lot of knowledge.”

Beyond the research phase, Graham is often working on ensemble pieces, be it a baseball team or an orchestra. “I’m very drawn to writing about people who care about something more than they care about themselves. I’m drawn to writing about teams, not just sports teams, but communities like a band or orchestra.”

“That means you’re going to have a lot of characters bouncing off each other,” he added. “That is part of the fun. I was a huge comic book nerd, so I sort of approach everything with a sense of mythology. I want there to be a lore and depth to the world, even if we don’t see all of it. You want to feel like you have a satisfying experience with each character, even if you’re not getting the whole story.”

To reach this goal, he often thinks about which characters the audience is seeing the story through and how to navigate those waters. Following this fascination eventually led to Graham working on A League of Their Own.

The screenwriter grew up with a fascination for the original Penny Marshall film by the same name. “My dad, trying to help me, thought there was an athlete in there somewhere, so I played like seven years of little league baseball, but I felt undercover as a boy, like these kids were going to figure out there was something wrong with me.”

Adapting A League of Their Own

Watching that movie as a kid, Graham saw subtext that matched his own life. “I thought it said it’s okay to be on the field even if it doesn’t feel like you’re supposed to be there. I came back to it a few years ago and started to wonder about the stories underneath it.”

As he started to dig around more into the true stories, there were queer stories to uncover and many more paths to chase. “There’s a universal, yet incredibly specific story here that people haven’t heard before. It didn’t start about approaching the movie again, but finding the stories underneath the movie.”

Still a big fan of the movie, Graham notes there are things the movie couldn’t do or maybe wouldn’t think to do when it came out in 1992. “What if we did those things, even if they’re a little scary?” he said of the reboot.

By the time the 1992 film got made, most people had forgotten about the true story. In fact, some of the real female athletes stopped telling their stories because most people didn’t believe them. The movie was made after Marshall acquired the rights to a documentary on the subject from Kelly Candaele.

“At the same time, the movie doesn’t tell another set of stories that this was an opportunity for women, especially queer women who didn’t necessarily have space in the world to live a life they couldn’t imagine—and now to find each other.” The same is true for Mamie Johnson, in real life, who was turned away because she was black. “So it’s really about a generation of women who wanted to play baseball.”

Joyful with Hard Things

Overall, Graham described the series as “a love letter in the show to the movie, but it’s also telling a fundamentally different story.” Another interesting connection to the original story is that of former athlete Maybelle Blair, originally played by Madonna as “All The Way Mae,” who came out publicly at the age of 95 at the Tribeca premiere of the series.

When Graham’s staff interviewed Maybelle Blair, she described her past as “a party.” Although the original movie felt more bittersweet, this perspective somewhat changed the overall perspective of the show. “We wanted to tell a story that was celebratory that told through a lens of joy that these women got to do the thing they loved, but also that there’s a lot of pain underneath that statement.”

“We wanted to tell the story joyfully, but without looking away from the hard things. In the 40s, there is no coming out of the closet. It’s really like, how do you design your closet, how big is it, what kinds of things do you let in, and there are risks and heroisms in those choices. Find a way to live and love and do the thing you want to do. Ultimately, they are flawed and funny characters, but they’re also heroes.”

While walking this tightrope, the characters were able to showcase how the real women found joy, opportunity, and ways to explore who they were and they “refused to change back.” And this fits the types of stories that most interests the screenwriter. This, along with his “no going back” once you start a draft, has inspired him to finish every first draft and “always get to the end” of a particular idea or story to see if it has legs. 

“I’m drawn to stories that might be dark, might be hard, but they have real emotion, a sense of joy, and that it’s worth it, whatever the struggle is. There has to be a ‘why’. It doesn’t all have to be capital ‘I’ important, but I want to put something in the world that isn’t already there. That’s how I feel about A League of Their Own and how I look at my projects. I want to use my platform to make sure stories are getting told that haven’t been told and that they’re told for an audience. Let yourself feel what’s important to you and learn to hear that voice.”