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Project DescriptionAll materials ©2008, 2009, 2010 by Boxelder Productions, LLC
Wanda the Wonderful is a feature length documentary about a passionate and volatile Wild West sharpshooter. Wanda was a woman of the 1920’s, a rebel who toted guns and wore pants when skirts were the norm. She bore seven children by four different men, performed as a stunt woman and actress in Hollywood, traveled the world as “Wanda Savage” with her shooting act, was the temporary Madame of a brothel, met and married a sheep rancher named Carl Hampton and then "high-tailed it out of town 'til the heat died down" after she shot this same man in the shoulder. This film is about a woman who actually lived the Wild West, following her passions at whatever cost.
Dramatic re-enactments, interviews, atmospheric footage and archival imagery combine to tell Wanda’s story. Forming the narrative arc of the film, scripted dramatic scenes will cover specific moments in Wanda's life in detail, exploring her character, emotions and psyche, as well as defining events. The narrative will center on the relationship between Wanda and Carl Hampton, Wanda’s last husband (and the filmmaker's Grandfather). Through their love story we learn of Wanda's show business career as a sharp shooter and other adventures. As time progresses however, the ghosts of Wanda's past surface and need to be reckoned with.
Narrative Storyline
A small figure makes her way across vast windswept fields. Wearing breeches with cowboy boots, a jacket stretched tight over the swollen belly of her petite frame, she is sporting a Marcel wave hairstyle of the period, the late nineteen twenties. Struggling to get through a barbed wire fence, we see that she is pregnant. Wanda, alone and desperate, is rallying all her strength to get to a hospital in time to have her baby.
A day later, Wanda steals quietly from the hospital in the middle of the night. She has taken her newborn daughter LaMonda with her, sneaking away in the shadow of darkness because she is unable to pay the doctor's bill.
It is the following year, 1929, and the Great Depression is underway. During a winter stopover in the hot springs resort town of Thermopolis, Wyoming, Wanda is filling in for a friend as the Madame of a brothel called The Ritz. The place is quiet and local cowboys are challenging Wanda about her shooting skills they've heard so much about. They eventually tire of teasing her and after they are no longer paying her any mind, Wanda shoots the cigarette out of the mouth of one of the cowboys, telling him it's impolite to brag. Local sheep rancher Carl Hampton is duly impressed with this new, feisty lady. He approaches her and they begin to flirt, their two strong personalities igniting each other. Wanda proceeds to charm Carl, telling him of her exciting and adventurous life as a sharp shooter.
Wanda is beautiful, magnetic and exciting and Carl falls for her. They court, fall in love, and want to marry. But due to her disreputable background, Carl's family is against the union and they chase Wanda out of town. Undaunted and strong headed, Carl pursues Wanda, marries her and brings her back. Wanda forgoes her show business career for a ranching life with Carl.
Carl and Wanda start their life together in a sheep wagon out on the range in the middle of the winter in the badlands of Wyoming, along with Carl's herd of sheep. The country is in the grips of the Great Depression and they are lucky to have this much. Not long after they marry, Wanda informs Carl that she has a baby, LaMonda, whom she was forced to leave behind with a friend who can no longer keep her. Taken aback but ever generous, Carl agrees to collect the infant LaMonda and raise her as his own daughter. This is our first hint that there is more to Wanda's past than the glamour and excitement that she has revealed so far.
Through a lot of hard work and persistence, Carl and Wanda slowly build their assets and after some years purchase a homestead outside the town of Worland, Wyoming. They spend summers on the range in the Big Horn Mountains with the ever-expanding herd of sheep and the rest of the year at the homestead. They have two children together, Carla Mae and Sam. Wanda is eager to be well considered in the community. She is an excellent hunter, gardener, seamstress, rancher, homemaker and mother. Perhaps it is her popularity with men that sparks jealousy, or maybe because she wears pants when the rest of the women are in dresses that sets her apart, or her background as an "entertainer" - something prevents Wanda from entirely fitting in.
Through flashbacks we learn more about Wanda's exciting past and how she learned to shoot from her father and uncle who were lawmen in Chickasaw Indian Territory where she grew up. Wanda is proud of her Native American heritage and teaches her son Sam to speak some of the Chickasaw language. She reveals that using her talent with guns, she later joined the circus as a sharpshooter and went on from there to Vaudeville. Lured by Hollywood, she worked as a stunt double in silent western films for Anna Q. Nilsson and Mildred Harris, and performed with Tom Mix, Jack Hoxie and others.
It eventually surfaces however that Wanda's exciting life in show business has come at huge sacrifice. It turns out LaMonda wasn't the only child that Wanda left behind. Carl inadvertently finds out that Wanda has yet three more children. Two are from a marriage that ended when she was widowed at just twenty two, and one from a marriage with a “ne’er do well” who was after her “Indian money.” Was it her choice to leave her children behind or were they taken away from her? Wanda is filled with regret and guilt over these lost children, but never had the courage to contact them. Once settled with Carl she writes letters but is too afraid to actually send them. One day the cook finds one of these letters and shows Carl, thinking it is to another man. The shameful secret is out and Wanda finally contacts her three children whom she hasn't seen for close to twenty years.
Carl invites Wanda's other three children out to the ranch and they accept, coming out at different times for varying durations. Bonnie Jean, the third of the children, comes out to visit and stays. She is a naïve and attractive twenty-one old and is thrilled with the attention she is receiving from the hired hands and Carl. She and Carl go on long drives together and Wanda has good reason to be jealous. Meanwhile, Wanda has become ill with colon cancer. She is undergoing chemotherapy and must carry a colostomy bag. She drinks to ease her pain. Wanda is impassioned and volatile and stories surface about her willfulness and hot temper. How this bodes for her future with Carl is the last act of the film.
In the final re-enactment scene, an eleven-year-old Carla Mae watches a hired hand “Lucky” butcher a sheep. Yelling is heard from inside the house when the screen door opens and Carl emerges. He ducks just as a shot rings out, and he gets hit in the left shoulder. Grasping his bloody arm Carl yells for Lucky to take him to town. Wanda emerges from the house and as they load Carl into the pickup Wanda yells out, “You’re lucky, if I’d wanted to kill you, I would have!” Carl’s father Cyrus has Wanda arrested and taken to jail. Carl makes her bail the next day and she is released. Leaving Sam with his father Carl, Wanda packs her daughters Carla Mae and LaMonda into the car and then, in her words, they "hightailed it out of town 'til the heat died down."
Stylistic approach
The character driven dramatic re-enactments will have a close, personal approach in order to get to know Wanda and Carl as thinking, feeling individuals. Their intimacy will contrast with the vast open spaces of the majestic Wyoming landscape that will serve as the primary backdrop. In addition to being the authentic location for much of the story, the uncompromising Wyoming terrain serves as a metaphor for that which is raw and untamable, a reference to Wanda's persona. The re-enactments will visually reference Western films from the 1960's and 1970's for that genre’s effective combination of Western nostalgia, romance and emotional rawness. It is important that people understand Wanda not only as a figure from the past but as a person not so distanced from ourselves. There are truths to the mythologies of the Wild West and Wanda represents some of these. Her stories also reveal a darker side of what a Wild West lifestyle required on a human level. Performance of Wanda’s character within these mythologies as well as references to actual past events allows the audience an intimate engagement with Wanda as a character and human.
The re-enactment aspect of the project will constitute approximately sixty percent of the film and will intertwine with archival, primary source and contemporary elements, linking the dramatized story to reality. These elements include: film footage representing Wanda's career in Hollywood; photographic still imagery from Wanda's show business career and ranching life; interviews shot on High Definition video with descendents and friends; voice-over of Wanda's letters to her children; family home movies; site specific "atmospheric" footage shot on 16mm film with a home made lens used to evoke an abstract, removed reality representative of a past long gone. In addition to having already provided Carl's voice over for the trailer, famed Texan singer/songwriter James McMurtry is composing original songs for the project and performing within the film. The original songs and atmospheric footage are emotionally evocative elements that add a creative edge and texture to the piece as a whole. Additionally, they serve as visual and aural bridges between the different types of media.
By including documentary-style "real" media, the idea is to bring home the fact that Wanda was a real woman and that her actions still reverberate with her family today. Through the interviews we will get to know Wanda’s offspring, other descendants and friends. The interviews will also show the varying versions of the stories about Wanda relative to the perspective and proximity to the event and people involved.
The film combines a creative hybrid of forms through which to explore the complexity of Wanda's story: Exposition of her adventurous and varied life; how the ensuing generations understand Wanda, are an extension of her and have been affected by her; Wanda's experience as a woman within the context of the Wild West; exploration of Wanda's character as an amazing yet fallible human. Together they create a vivid and multifaceted portrait.
Themes
Restless, talented and extremely energetic, Wanda opted for career and independence over motherhood. Perhaps children and domesticity were a prison to Wanda’s restless soul when she was young, their desertion a mistake that would plague her deeply for the rest of her life. In a letter to her first son Paul, Wanda wrote: “You see Paul, I had you children on my mind so many years… They were mighty long years son to have something locked up in your heart …I was afraid to write to you as I didn't know if you would want to hear from me. How wrong I did my babies.”
Wanda the Wonderful explores the idea that an extreme and exciting life can come at great sacrifice. Mistakes made on the way up are generally covered over and left buried, yet Wanda's are laid bare with the discovery of her first three children. The choices women had in those days were few, and it is easy to pass judgment from a modern perspective. Yet can we blame her? We don't know the circumstances surrounding the "ne'er do well" husband who himself disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again by his own family. It seems Wanda found her way out of a bad situation and was haunted by this fateful action for the rest of her life. Wanda's tale is important to tell because it offers an unseen side of American Western history – a woman who pursued her passions, fled her mistakes, and survived.
Significance, Target Audience and Distribution:
The stories and accomplishments of strong female characters of the past have been left behind in favor of their male counterparts. It is critical that we begin to uncover these hidden stories of women's lives that reach beyond the confines of beauty and husbands. By bringing Wanda's amazing story to light, we aim to chip a little bit away from the usual stereotypes of women presented by the media and offer up a different, exciting and challenging option.
The principal audience for this film will be women, girls and men interested in stories of daring, glamorous women of the Wild West. Guns are an important element of the film; hence those interested in guns and sharpshooting will also be a viable audience. People interested in Wyoming, sheep ranching, homesteading, life in the Old West, documentaries about the West, pioneer women of the West, Indian Territory in Oklahoma, Native America, and Western lore in general will find interest in this film. An additional audience will be those interested in the silent era of Western films, vaudeville and early forms of Western-style showmanship and entertainment in America. James McMurty has a large fan base who will also be interested in this project for both his music and his appearance within the film itself.
Distribution will take a multiplatform approach that will include theatrical and festival screenings, television broadcast, web presence, educational distribution and museum exhibits. The film is being made with theatrical scope in mind in terms of quality and production value. Broadcasters that are likely targets for the film include Independent Lens and POV on PBS, The Sundance Channel, HBO, IFC, and the History Channel. Film festivals such as Sundance, Telluride, Jackson Hole, Big Sky, Hot Springs Documentary, Silver Lake, Trail Dance, Luna Fest and Madcat Women's International are likely to be interested in this film. We are researching the possibility of making a special exhibit about Wanda and the film at the Museum of Firearms in Cody, Wyoming, the Cowgirl Museum in Fort Worth, and the Western Museum and National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma. We already have a website with downloadable trailers, information about the film, crew, sponsorship and donations. The site will be updated with a behind the scenes blog during the narrative re-enactment production. In the future the site will include historical background, photo collection, user content upload space, music, story vignettes, etc. We are also investigating educational distribution possibilities.
Production Plan and Current Status:
Through grants, donations and an award we have been able to shoot HD interview footage and 16mm atmospheric footage over the summers of 2007, 2008 and 2009, travelling to seven Western and West Coast states to do so. Using this footage and other archival elements, we completed a fundraising trailer, viewable on the website, www.wandathewonderful.com. We secured fiscal sponsorship for the project through San Francisco Film Society. Fundraising continues as we prepare for the final production phase of the project, the dramatic re-enactment shoot, scheduled for summer 2010. Editing and post-production will see the film’s completion in 2011 with festival screenings beginning that same year.
Conclusion:
Wanda's passion was her driving force and magnetism. It was also her demise. In pursuit of her career and independence, Wanda was years ahead of her time. Yet it was the sacrifices she made in order to follow her passion that were to haunt her for the rest her life. Wanda's compelling and tragic story is particular to that period in American history when the West was still raw. Wanda was a maverick, a heroine who made mistakes, a real Wild West woman.