The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.
BETH HENLEYThe next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.
BETH HENLEYAnd all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won’t have to bother doing it themselves.
BETH HENLEYI love writing for the screen.
BETH HENLEYThe impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.
BETH HENLEYI did write a couple of original screenplays, but I’d rather write plays.
BETH HENLEYPlays are so much more special if they’ve never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.
BETH HENLEYThere are probably brilliant people, geniuses, alive today who don’t even know how to say, “Hello, how do you do?” because their minds are absorbed with electronic images.
BETH HENLEYThat was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you’ll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.
BETH HENLEYI grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.
BETH HENLEYWhat I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn’t you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.
BETH HENLEYIn movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.
BETH HENLEYI tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.
BETH HENLEYSomehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.
BETH HENLEYBut when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn’t a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don’t have to be very smart.
BETH HENLEYBut here’s the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.
BETH HENLEYI just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
BETH HENLEY