Pam Powell - Screenplays

“The Blooming Earth”

“The Blooming Earth” – optioned

Writing this was my learning curve not only in screenwriting but in trying to combine screenwriting with a job that required absolute concentration. I was working as an Information Technology consultant – a systems analyst, to be specific – and meeting with my client’s head of confidential payroll.

Really, I tried to listen to him but … I was in the middle of an 1880s train robbery! My screenplay characters charged into the mail car. What was I to do? The head of payroll continued to talk.  Clearly, I saw his mouth forming words but nothing – but nothing! – was coming through.

That was when I learned that writing and consulting didn’t mix. From that point on, if I was working for a client, that client had to be my focus. Between clients, I could safely write.

“The Blooming Earth” finally earned its final page’s “THE END”. The script was optioned. The option wasn’t picked up – there was an actor’s strike going on. The option did, however, provide enough footing to get me into the Graduate Cinema program at the University of Southern California. Ta-Da!

“Becoming Kenya”

Bronze Award winner for Historical/Biographical Genre in the 2013 Beverly Hills Screenplay Contest.

Research for this screenplay took me to Kenya for 5 weeks, with another 3 weeks in England as well as a trip to Canada to interview dozens of people about the true story of a white settler who early on befriended the man who became the first African head of state of independent Kenya.

The most amazing interview I had was with a group of Embus who had gone through the Mau Mau Rebellion. One man who worked for the railroad was driving a truck when he was stopped by British troops. One of the soldiers shot him – for no reason. Fortunately, this man had a woman and her son in the cab with him and the child cried out. When the man asked the soldier why he shot him, the soldier – no doubt startled by the cry of the child – said, “Keep moving!”

Many British soldiers believed that if a person was black, he was Mau Mau. This misconception led to such confrontations as my Embu man experienced.