"I Will Be Her Witness"
Episode 1
"I Will Be Her Witness" Episode 1
Nov. 1972 – San Francisco
A white Ford Econoline van pulls up in front of the TransAmerica building and five college students get out. Three men in army jackets with long hair and beards, two women in long tie-dyed skirts. They all have knapsacks. A cab driver calls out to them, “Take a bath, ya fucking hippies!” One of the young women looks back at him, but they all keep walking. Moments later, the lobby of the TransAmerica building is rocked by an explosion.
Nov. 1975 – Boca Grande
Grace Strasser-Mendana delivers a slide show presentation to an unseen audience. Her subject is Charlotte Douglas, a mysterious and beautiful turista who visited Boca Grande sometime in the recent past. Grace starts with some basic facts: she’s a tourist, a mother, a North American. She says, “Charlotte would call her story one of passion. I believe I would call it one of delusion.”
Then she makes a solemn vow: “I will be her witness.”
Nov. 1973 – Boca Grande
Charlotte – newly arrived in Boca Grande – takes in the “sights,” such as they are. As Grace narrates, we see Charlotte wander dusty streets, attend a moribund Independence Day “celebration,” and pay a visit to the Boca Grande Intellectual Union (basically a used book and magazine shop). She asks the librarian for a good book on the history of Boca Grande. The librarian laughs: “Boca Grande has no history.” While confusing to Charlotte, this is actually a very telling and insightful response.
Nov. 1975 – Boca Grande
Grace explains to the audience, that when Charlotte first arrived in Boca Grande, the locals were captivated by her mystery. She was beautiful and stylish, but she spent all her time alone – no husband or lover, no family. She was apparently wealthy, but her expensive Irish linen skirt was unraveling at the hem and her $600 handbag had a broken clasp. Strange. And then there was her behavior.
Nov. 1973 – Boca Grande
According to hotel staff, Charlotte was up all night pounding on the typewriter in her room. One night, during a power outage, she wandered through the hotel corridors with a candle, dressed only in her nightgown, like some Victorian ghost. Then she sat at the piano in the darkened ballroom, played a song and sobbed softly. And for the first two weeks that she was in Boca Grande, she went to the airport every day -- not to catch a flight, or to meet anyone – just to sit in the café, read magazines and wait. But for what? Or whom?
Dec. 1973 – Boca Grande:
Charlotte is the guest of honor at The U.S. Embassy Christmas party. Grace, Victor and the rest of their family, as well as other V.I.P.s listen as Charlotte holds court, telling odd, confusing stories about her jet-setting lifestyle with her husband, Leonard and her daughter, Marin. Victor asks her what Leonard does. “He’s an attorney,” she says, “He also run guns, I wish they had caviar.” Victor -- who was already suspicious of the mysterious norteamericana -- is now on high-alert. He is also attracted to Charlotte. For her part, Charlotte is open to his advances. Grace interrupts their mating ritual to ask Victor to introduce them, which he reluctantly does. Grace invites Charlotte to dinner, and she accepts. Then, as Charlotte and Victor leave the party arm-in-arm, Grace asks the U.S. Ambassador what he knows about Charlotte Douglas. “It’s a tragic situation. Just don’t ask her about her daughter…”
Nov. 1972 – San Francisco
Flashback to the opening scene, slow-motion. The five students walk toward the TransAmerica building. Cabbie: “Take a bath, ya fucking hippies?” They all keep walking, but one of the women, the smaller one, with strawberry blonde hair, turns back toward camera. FREEZE FRAME. This is Marin Bogart, Charlotte’s daughter. GRACE (V.O.) “Charlotte Douglas had arranged her life to avoid the backward glance. Her daughter Marin’s disappearance was the single event that resisted Charlotte’s erasures and revisions, and blew apart that carefully arranged life.”
Marin unfreezes and turns away from camera, walking in slow motion with her compatriots toward the TransAmerica building, toward the explosion, toward the unknown.
“THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED” by GIL SCOTT-HERON PLAS AS WE…
CUT TO BLACK.
END OF EPISODE.
Grace’s brother-in-law, Victor -- the Boca Grande Minister of Defense -- tells Grace that Charlotte Douglas is on a U.S. State Department watch list. He’s not sure what it means, but he’s suspicious. He asks Grace to get close to Charlotte and find out why she is on this list. Victor is paranoid, and Grace has no desire to spy for him, but she welcomes the chance to get close to la norteamericana and learn more about her.
Photos are intended to represent approximate ages and physical types only.
No actors are involved with, or attached to this project at this time.
Aug. 1924 – Denver
Grace is 10, a quiet, pretty, studious girl. In VO, she explains that her mother died of influenza when Grace was 8. After that, she lived in a suite at the Brown Palace Hotel with her father, a wealthy landowner and coal mine operator. One day, as she returns from school, there are policeman in the lobby of the hotel, and the doorman will not let Grace go up to their suite. We see that her father has been shot in the chest and killed.
Mar. 1930 – Denver
Grace, now 16, lives alone in the hotel suite. She receives a letter informing her that she has been accepted to Berkeley’s anthropology program. She is happy but has no one with which to share the news. In VO, she explains that she studied under Alfred Kroeber at Berkeley and managed to get accepted for graduate studies at the University of São Paulo, to study under Claude Levi-Strauss.
Sep. 1940 – São Paulo
Grace, mid-20s, walks the streets of São Paulo where she stayed after receiving her PhD. We see Grace getting soaked by a sudden downpour. She arrives at shelter just as a man carrying an umbrella exits the building. This happens to be the Boca Grande Consulate, and the man is Edgar Strasser-Mendana. He is older -- almost 40 -- but he is handsome, gracious, well-educated and protective. He offers his umbrella and to walk with her anywhere.
Dec. 1973 – Boca Grande
Grace and Charlotte are having their first dinner together. Grace is sharing the story of Edgar. Charlotte assumes that Grace gave up her career “for love,” but Grace clarifies that she had lost faith in her own method: "I studied the behavior of female children for over a year, and I still didn’t know why any one of them did or did not do anything at all. For that matter, I did not know why I did or did not do anything at all.” But yes, she “retired” and married a man who owned palm groves and belonged to the ruling family of Boca Grande. And she took up the amateur study of biochemistry. Charlotte asks about their wedding…
Jun. 1941 – Boca Grande
Black-and-white newsreel footage of the wedding at the National Cathedral, which in Boca Grande is a corrugated tin Quonset hut.
Jun. 1944 – Boca Grande
Grace is in labor at the hospital. Meanwhile, Edgar drinks whiskey and smokes cigars with his father, Don Victor, the president of Boca Grande, and his younger brother, Luis. The two youngest brothers (“los mosquitos”), Victor and Antonio, 20s, wear college sweaters and drink beer. Grace gives birth. It’s a boy, Gerardo.
Nov. 1975 – Boca Grande
A photo of an adorable baby Gerardo is on the screen behind her as Grace tells her audience Gerardo is now 31, and though she still sees him occasionally, speaks to him on the phone regularly, he feels lost to her. That sweet baby has grown into a man she doesn’t recognize – a man of ambition without purpose, a political game player obsessed with power – so unlike his father.
Dec. 1956 – Boca Grande
Don Victor visits Grace and Edgar. Gerardo, now 12, is a pimply pre-teen. Don Victor and Edgar sit down in the den to discuss business, so Grace excuses herself, but Don Victor asks her to stay – this concerns her too. Don Victor tells them that he is planning to retire. Luis is immature, impetuous and the business is too important to leave in his hands. So, Don Victor is turning over the business to Edgar, and letting the country -- which is much less important – be run by Luis. Grace is disappointed, but Edgar seems to take it in stride.
Jan. 1958 – Boca Grande
Luis’s inauguration. Don Victor holds the bible as Luis takes his oath. In VO, Grace explains that Luis was a very active president, initiating many reforms and infrastructure projects, many of which were unpopular or underfunded. Don Victor and Edgar are supportive. But just fifteen months after taking office --
Mar. 1959 – Boca Grande
The Presidential Palace. A black 1957 Cadillac Brougham pulls up and a phalanx of military guards surround the vehicle as Luis gets out and waves to a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk. As Luis starts to ascend the stairs, surrounded by guards, a non-descript man steps out of the crowd, fires two shots, drops the gun and disappears back into the crowd. Luis lays bleeding on the steps.
Nov. 1975 – Boca Grande
A photo of Luis’s funeral is on the screen. Grace explains that the shooter was never captured. Who ordered the assassination – and why? – remains a mystery until this day. Edgar was colder after he lost his brother, less spontaneous, more distant. He took over the duties of running the country but did so from the relative safety of the Ministry of Defense. After Luis’s assassination, no Strasser-Mendana placed himself in so precarious a position as president. After 1959, that position was held by a series of expendable cousins by marriage. Edgar died (of natural causes) in 1970, and --- in a move endorsed by Don Victor before his death in 1965 – he left all of the wealth and land (and power) to Grace. Like Luis before him, Victor got the much less important job of running the country.
Nov. 1975 – Boca Grande
Grace tells her audience that she will now tell them about herself, but only to legitimize her voice. “We are uneasy about a story until we know who is telling it.”
Dec. 1973 – Boca Grande
We are back at Grace and Charlotte’s first dinner together. Grace explains to Charlotte why she prefers her hobby — biochemistry — to her former professional field, anthropology. In biochemistry, personality is absent. She draws a diagram on a napkin and show it to Charlotte. She says the drawing represents fear of the dark. It is a series of amino acids that causes a person to be fear of the dark, irrespective of where they are from or how they were raised. Charlotte says, “By the way, Marin and I are inseparable.”