Writer/ director/ producers A.W. “Tony” Scott and his life and work partner Jean Qing Su focus on grounded, character-driven stories. They are based in Los Angeles and repped by Jon Brown of Ensemble Entertainment.
Tony’s first directorial effort, the proof of concept short Together, won multiple Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Director awards. Born in New Orleans and raised in Mississippi, Tony is a rich gumbo of ethnicities and cultures, including the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
Jean Qing Su was born and raised in Beijing, China. She was EP of the theatrically released Grey Lady, producer of the short Together, and producer and co-director of the short Representation Matters…?
They discuss their winning script in the Creative Screenwriting Unique Voices Screenplay Competition called Silver Wings. It tells the true story of Hazel Ying Lee, a Chinese-American, who overcomes all odds to fly fighter planes during World War ll as a member of the WASP – the Women’s Air Service Pilots.
Why is now the right time to tell this story?
Tony: This is a story that is universal in timeliness. The heroine, Hazel Ying Lee, had to overcome many obstacles in her life to achieve her dream of learning to fly, and ultimately flying what many consider the most difficult and dangerous to fly – fighter planes. Her success in spite of those obstacles and her life story should be an inspiration to all.
Hazel faced opposition from her own family when she started learning to fly, as flying was not something considered ladylike or proper in the 1930s, particularly not for Asian-American women. She had to overcome inherent sexism, and having to prove herself more than worthy to male pilots on multiple occasions throughout her flying career. For example, she was not accepted by the Chinese Air Force when a group of Chinese-American licensed pilots went to China to volunteer to fly for China after China was attacked by Japan. After returning to the United States, she had to overcome the prejudice against Asians at that time to be considered a “true American” and as worthy as any other female pilot of joining the Women’s Auxiliary Service Pilots – the WASP.
Jean: Her story is one that is heroic in terms of overcoming personal, family and societal obstacles to achieve great things – the story of a real hero, not a superhero.
What was the genesis and your personal connection to Silver Wings?
Jean: Tony and I were tasked with rewriting an action-adventure screenplay set in dangerous environments in China and Mongolia in 1947. A key scene at the ending had the American heroes fly out of Mongolia in a plane they commandeered. Originally, one of the men flew the plane to save our heroes – typical. We wanted to change the story to have one of the women fly them to safety.
Tony: I remembered my mother telling me stories about the WASP. My father flew for the U.S. Navy during WWII, and my mother stayed in Long Beach, CA and worked for Naval Intelligence on Terminal Island. At the time, the WASP were transporting planes from the factories in middle America to Long Beach to be shipped out to the Pacific, and would land on the Terminal Island airstrip.
As there were no barracks for women, and housing was very short already, women like my mother volunteered to let WASP stay with them overnight after their transport flights. My mom was a total tomgirl from the Mississippi countryside, who could outride and outshoot all the boys in her area. She loved the women in the WASP, even though she thought they were crazy for getting into airplanes. I grew up hearing stories about those amazing women, and I modeled the character in that action-adventure screenplay after my own mother (if she hadn’t been afraid of flying).
As we were doing research about the WASP for that character, we found out that there had been two Chinese-American women in the WASP. The first was Hazel Ying Lee.
Jean: When Tony showed me the true story of Hazel, I was fascinated. Here was a Chinese-American woman who flew fighter planes when some women in China who could barely walk because their feet had been bound when they were young. Hazel was determined to do what she wanted, and felt there was no reason she should be limited because she was female. I was born and grew up in Beijing. In many ways, I was like Hazel. Both Tony and I thought this would make an excellent movie. We think her almost untold story should be inspiring to women and men around the world. And it would show the period of WWII from a perspective that is almost never seen on screen – from the perspective of women involved in the war effort, doing really cool things that had historically only been the domain of men.
Tony: We also thought this could be a great way to remind people that there was a time in the not so distant past when the U.S. and China were allies, fighting against a common enemy. We like to tell stories that can help be a bridge across cultures.
What are the most unique aspects of Silver Wings in comparison to other war films?
Tony: We’re showing what was going on mostly away from the front lines. Most war films focus on battles – on ground, in the air, or at sea for drama and action. This story is dramatic, but the drama and action aren’t in battle scenes. There is definitely danger – flying warplanes is dangerous at any time, and 38 of the 1102 WASP died in flying accidents during their service.
Jean: We also tried to show the emotional toll these women faced knowing their brothers, boyfriends and husbands were on the front lines fighting thousands of miles away, and the huge toll when one of their “sisters in flight” paid the ultimate sacrifice and were killed in service. One of the things I found amazing was that since the WASP were not official military members, they had no military benefits, were paid less than their civilian male counterparts, and even had to pay for their own uniforms and room and board. When a WASP died in service, the other WASP had to take up a collection to pay to have the body of their fallen comrade shipped home.
How close did you stick to the original story? Did you take any creative liberties?
Tony: This is based on the true story of Hazel Ying Lee, but it is not an absolutely true story. As Mark Twain famously said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” We needed to take some creative liberties to make it work as a movie, but there is nothing in the script that either didn’t happen to one or more of the WASP, or that couldn’t have happened. No one knows the exact true story here, as there are no records of dialogues between characters who are based on real people. Beyond Hazel and the leader of the WASP, Jackie Cochran (who is an amazing person worthy of a biopic!), and Hazel’s boyfriend and ultimate husband “Clifford” Yim-qun Louie, the rest of the WASP are amalgams of members of the WASP and their stories.
So yes, we did take creative liberties in a few scenes and sequences. Certain stories are absolutely true about Hazel, such as when she had to land her plane in farmer’s field, and the farmer thought she was a Japanese invader and chased her around the plane with a pitchfork until she convinced him she wasn’t Japanese. Some of the other great scenes happened to other women in the WASP, such as a group of WASP pilots trying to land P-51 fighters in New York City, but when the tower heard a woman’s voice over the radio asking for permission to land, the controller said, “Lady, get off this radio frequency, I’m trying to land a squadron of P-51s!” And there was a group of WASP pilots in uniform who were initially denied entry into Jack Dempsey’s restaurant in Manhattan, which was famous at the time for welcoming all service people. The Maitre’d thought the women were impersonating service people (a crime) – as he “knew” there were no women pilots – and almost called the police on them.
Jean: A big change was that we put Hazel in Nanking instead of Canton during the Japanese invasion of China. We didn’t want to focus on the brutality of the “Rape of Nanking,” but it allowed us to create a very dramatic confrontation between a Japanese Army officer against Hazel and the real American missionary who smuggled out film footage of the atrocities being committed against civilians in Nanking to try to persuade the U.S. to help China.
Tony: We want to tell stories grounded in truth that could have happened and are believable, showing people overcoming the odds against them. Again, telling a historic story in a movie doesn’t have to be perfectly accurate – it is about the intent and underlying truth of the story. Nothing in this story would have been impossible to happen. We have no characters with magical or superhero powers, and we didn’t put any of the WASP into combat missions, which would not have been true (although they all wanted to fly in combat).
Jean: We create stories about real heroes, not superheroes.
Describe Hazel Ying Lee and her emotional journey.
The overall emotional journey is that Hazel goes from obeying her parents’ (and in particular her mother’s) wishes to making decisions for herself to do what she loves no matter how “inappropriate” it may be for a Chinese woman, and regardless of how dangerous it may be. And we see Hazel transform from self-sufficient and somewhat self-centered, to selfless.
Jean: Hazel is a very dynamic character. She was a tomboy who loved to run races against boys, ride bikes and ultimately drive cars fast (and somewhat recklessly). She wanted to be a “New Woman” or “Modern American Girl” – as feminists called themselves in the 1920s, shortly after women earned the right to vote in the U.S. Hazel had a great sense of humor, and was well-liked by her fellow members of the WASP. One of story we didn’t put in the screenplay (you never have enough space to put everything you’d like in a script) is that she would write in lipstick nicknames of her fellow WASP in Chinese characters on the planes they transported. Once, a male pilot the women didn’t like much asked Hazel to give him a Chinese nickname, and she wrote “Da Pigu” in Chinese characters on his plane – which means “Fat Ass.” She told the other WASP, who loved it.
Tony: One of the things about Hazel was that she was very independent. But her independence and self-reliance could be self-centered and selfish – at times she thought of herself before others in her driving goal to be a great pilot. But to be a great WASP, she had to reel in her own desires in order to be part of something bigger, that was itself part of a much bigger and critically important war effort. Ultimately, Hazel realized that being a member of the WASP was more important than being a ”hot pilot”, and becomes truly selfless.
Jean: A secondary story Hazel learning to fully accept the love of fellow pilot “Clifford” Yim-Qun Louie, finally agreeing to marry him after his devotion to her over the years.
Describe the main iterations of the story as it evolved over the course of multiple drafts.
Tony: The current story hasn’t changed that much from the very first outlines. Since we are basing the story on a true story, we had constraints we had to work within.
Jean: There were some scenes in the original outline that didn’t make it to the later versions that showed a bit more of Hazel’s life before joining the WASP – particularly of her Chinese-American family in Portland before WWII. Those are interesting, but didn’t really drive the main story forward, so we chose to put more emphasis on her journey as a pilot.
Tony: Some of those scenes were great, but as the old sayings go: “Writing is re-writing” and “Kill your Darlings.” If a scene doesn’t drive the story forward and show us something key about our characters, it doesn’t need to be in the script.
How does your writing collaboration work? What are each of your strengths/ weaknesses?
Jean: We start with a story idea we both like. These tend to come up when we are enjoying long dinners. During this time we do a lot of research on the time period, location and anything technical that needs to be covered in the story, as well as what was happening on a bigger picture in the world we are portraying.
We’ll share with each what we’ve learned in our research, and go back and forth on the story plot, as well as key characters and their arcs.
Tony: Then we start the outlining process. We believe that if you have a great beginning and a great ending, we’ll know where the story goes and won’t get lost in the middle. We come up with the beginning, middle and end in classic three act structure – typically a one to two page document.
Once we are in agreement on that, we’ll start a scene by scene step outline. This outline will include the location of each scene and key characters in the scene. We usually have some bits of dialogue in key scenes in the step outline. We continue to revise the step outline until we think we have something that will work for a movie. The outlining process can take several weeks once the basic story concept is agreed.
Jean: This is the same process we use when we’re hired to write a screenplay by a producer. They usually have a basic story idea, and they want us to create a screenplay from that idea. We’ll give them a two page synopsis, then a more detailed outline/ treatment, then a scene-by-scene step outline. That way we can make sure we’re all in agreement throughout the process – not just wait until a first draft is completed to find out if we are on the right path. We add, delete and move scenes around at this outline stage before any actual dialogue or action lines are committed to the script in Final Draft.
Tony: Once we have an agreed outline, we put the outline into Final Draft and create scene headings for each scene. As my native language is English, I’m the one who takes the outline and starts expanding it into real scenes. Sometimes I follow the outline step by step, but many times we may have a great idea for a scene later in the script and I’ll jump to that scene or sequence and write it. If there is a scene we are having trouble with, we’ll skip it and come back to it later.
Jean: When Tony has a new scene or sequence of scenes completed, he’ll share it with me. I’m editing for content and grammar. Do the characters sound natural? Is the dialogue too “on the nose”? Is the writing grammatical? He typically cranks out five to fifteen pages a day of new scenes, after incorporating our edits to already written scenes. I like to read from the start each time to make sure the existing scenes flow into the new scenes. Then I’ll make my edits and give them back to him.
Tony: Jean is a great editor, and like many foreigners who studied English, her grammar is stronger than most native speakers. If we have female characters, or Asian characters, she’s also making sure the emotions expressed are realistic.
Jean: More often than not, we’ll discuss the new scenes and edits over dinner each evening.
Tony: Good food and wine help soften the blow of criticisms sometimes!
Jean: Typically if we are on assignment to write a feature, we will have an outline in three to four weeks, and first draft three weeks after that. Our first drafts are usually very close to the final screenplay, at least in structure.
We will go back and re-read and revise multiple times. Then we will send the script out for independent screenplay coverage, hiring three different analysts to provide feedback to avoid the worry of one analyst hating the story and therefore hating everything about the script, or falling in love with it so much they can’t give good suggestions for improvement. We look for the common areas pointed out by the analysts and make revisions. Then we send the script out again to three analysts. We often request one of the initial three analysts who seemed to understand the story and like it but were tough on us to read and comment on the newly revised draft. We’ll continue this process until we feel we can’t revise any further, and after we receive at least one or more “recommend” ratings from script analysts.
Tony: Once we’ve received strong independent feedback, we’ll send the script to “civilian” friends and family who aren’t in the industry but whose judgment we trust, as well as fellow screenwriters. We’ll take their notes and suggestions and incorporate them into the script to get it ready to send to our manager, producers or very select competitions like Unique Voices.
What is the current status of the Women’s Air Service Pilots after Lee’s involvement?
Jean and Tony: The story of the WASP is a great one that more people should know about. Over 25,000 women applied, 1830 were admitted, and 1074 completed the Army Air Corps Pilot Training for the WASP. The WASP ferried over 12,650 planes over 60 million miles, flying every type of aircraft used by the U.S. military. At first, women were not allowed to fly fighter planes, as they were considered “too difficult” for women to handle. But after their success flying every other type of aircraft, 132 members of the WASP were chosen to fighter planes, including Hazel Ying Lee.
Hazel Ying Lee was the last of 38 members of the WASP who died serving our country, in a mid-air collision caused by a control tower error while transporting P-63 fighters,
Jackie Cochran, the leader of the WASP, had been pushing Congress for official recognition for the women as members of the military. There was resistance in Congress because of their gender, and in addition, by this time it was clear the war in Europe at least was drawing to the end. There were more male pilots than needed, and men who had signed up to be pilots were assigned to ground combat roles. Civilian commercial pilots in the U.S. were worried about losing their jobs when U.S. military pilots eventually returned home.
Congress denied giving the WASP military status and the WASP were officially disbanded at the end of 1944. This was announced to the WASP just before Hazel died. After the WASP were disbanded, the military sealed the records of the WASP and classified them until 1976.
The success of the WASP led to women serving as pilots today – including combat pilots – in all branches of the U.S. Military; in the militaries of China, India, the U.K., and dozens of other countries; and as pilots for major commercial airlines around the world.
In 1977, women who served in the WASP finally received military status and veteran’s benefits, including the right to be buried in National Cemeteries.
But in 2015, the Secretary of the Army announced WASPs could no longer be buried in Arlington National Cemetery because they were “running out of room.”
Over 200,000 Americans signed a petition against this injustice.
Representative Martha McSally of Arizona, retired U.S. Air Force Captain and America’s first female combat pilot, introduced a bill in Congress to ensure WASPs could be buried in Arlington.
The measure passed unanimously.
What did you learn most about screenwriting during the course of writing Silver Wings?
Tony: For period pieces, make sure you do your research! Listen to the most popular music of the period, read articles from the period, and watch movies and newsreels from the period to hear the way people talked. Find lists of colloquial phrases and slang from that period to include in your dialogue.
Jean: Incorporate big news in the world into your story and have characters discuss what is going on in the world – just like people do today. Your story is almost never the only thing going on the world – having the backdrop of other events in the story helps keep it realistic.
Tony: All of the above will help put you into the time and place of the story, and get you into the minds of the characters. And if you’re doing something that is highly technical (like flying) and you aren’t an expert, find an expert to talk to and read the scenes that require technical knowledge. Nothing is worse than getting something highly technical wrong, as it will throw those who know better out of the story, and cause them to question your story.
What advice can you offer to other screenwriters?
Keep on writing and rewriting! Don’t think you have a masterpiece on your first draft. Also, take the time to outline your story and develop written bios of your characters. The time spent up front on this will make the writing of actual scenes much easier and quicker. Learn to take notes from others, and dig for the “note beneath the note” – to find out what that reader is really bumping on. Then take the best of the notes, incorporate them into your script, and don’t worry about the rest – you’ll never please everyone.
