The KCET Cinema Series continued its spring season on Tuesday, March 8, at the ArcLight Cinemas Sherman Oaks with a screening of forthcoming comedy, The Bronze. The film stars Melissa Rauch (Big Bang Theory) as fictional former gymnast Hope Ann Greggory, who rides on bronze medal-winning fame in a small, Ohio town. Greggorys life changes when shes coerced into coaching an up-and-comer who may steal her place as hometown hero.
Co-writers Melissa and Winston Rauch were on hand for a Q&A session led by Deadline columnist and KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond following the screening of the film. Listen to the full conservation in this weeks Cinema Series podcast and read an edited version of the chat here.
The KCET Cinema Series is generously sponsored by E. Hofert Dailey Trust and gives audiences the chance to view films prior to their theatrical release and sit-in on conversations with the creative minds behind these movies.
On the inspiration for The Bronze.
Melissa Rauch: There were a couple things that inspired the idea, two little seeds. One was, were huge fans of the Olympics and have always loved watching them and we always thought it was funny that the announcer would have to say, Ah, theyll have to settle for the bronze.
Its third best in the world! Its still amazing, but theres this negative connotation with that. We thought what if someone hung their hat on that.
Then, there was this moment that happened, years ago, when I had one of my very first jobs on TV and I went back to my small town in New Jersey. We were at the mall and we went to the pretzel stand and the manager there said that he really liked the show and he gave me a free pretzel and Winston and I shared it. We were so excited. That pretzel tasted so good.
Winston Rauch: I asked for extra cheese sauce.
M: He did. He tried to get extra cheese.
W: Pushing my luck.
M: It tasted very doughy and delicious and then, a few months later, the show I was on was canceled. We went back to the same mall. The manager sort of acted like he didnt know me. He charged me full price for the pretzel. It sort of highlighted how I was feeling in my life for the moment. I was really scared that I wasnt going to get that next job and him not giving me the pretzel was like pouring salt into my wounds-- pretzel salt in my wounds.
We just started talking about celebrity and the fickle nature of celebrity and what that could do to the psyche, especially on a grander scale, so we sort of melded those ideas together.
On writing together as a married couple.
W: Our story is, 14 years ago-- thats when we became a couple-- I used us writing together as an excuse to hang out with this girl that I really had a crush on, but I think, for her, it was more about sharpening her craft and actually writing and taking it seriously. I like to write, but I wanted to hang out with her more.
We actually ended up writing our first project in a 200 square foot New York apartment, fifth floor walk-up. When you do that and you dont have any place to write except your bed-- thats where were writing-- its like boot camp or the most extreme situation.
Now that were in L.A., space is a little bit more liberally allocated and everything feels palatial compared to the 200 square feet.
M: We started writing together even before we were a couple, so we had this sort of best-idea-wins mentality that has carried us through, which should bleed into our marriage. I actually use it in an unfair way, Best idea is for you to take out the garbage.
On creating Hope Ann Greggory.
M: It was important to us that the story we were telling was truthful to her circumstances and we didnt want to make her likable just for the sake of, well maybe it will be a little more palatable, shell be a little easier to swallow, because she is in such a bad place in her life. Shes bitter and shes angry. Shes unable to reset and reengage in this stage of her life and shes not likable because she doesnt like herself and whats going on in her circumstances.
We talked about it a lot. I think even for female characters, theres even more pressure for them to be likable, potentially. I think thats also because theres pressure on women to be likable in general.
We didnt want her to make this huge journey to, all of a sudden, at the end of the movie, be a totally different character and put a big, fancy bow on it at the end. We wanted her to move baby steps. In real life we, many of us, if were going through something and it could take years for us to move a little bit, much less in an hour-and-a-half. We wanted it to be truthful to her circumstances.
On outlining their stories.
W: We do a lot of hard work, sort of structuring. The show you mentioned, the Miseducation of Jenna Bush, where Melissa portrayed the wayward daughter of George W. Bush. At the time, she had two drinking citations over a five-week period. We thought, this is pretty fertile for satirizing the presidency through a fictionalized perspective of the daughter.
We did that by looking at the structure of the events that had happened throughout the Bush presidency and we used that as a way in of structuring what Jennas experiences would have been like in a Forrest Gump kind of thread, as she watched all that happened. What was she thinking at the time? We just kind of imagined that.
We try to structure the stories as much as we can. We do improvise some as well. Like that coach bait scene was Melissa improvising how a famous coach would try to teach the protoge stage presence.
M: We outline like crazy. You can sort of tell our moods by where we are in the script because we both, we really love writing the dialogue, but the outline is always something where were constantly thinking and because we live together, theres really no breaks from that. We cant lie to each other and say, Im busy this aft
