I need a screenwriter
Budget: $5,000 – $10,000 USD
12/7/21
I want to talk to a screenwriter who would be interested in taking a book about a flyer’s experience in WW2 into a screenplay that could be made/marketed into a television series.
My father, William Rasmussen, was from a small town in northern Michigan. He served as a ball turret gunner on a B-17, was shot down over Germany, captured and interned in Stalag 17. The book, Hell’s Belle, tells the story of his personal wartime experience. The history of WW2 flyers and imprisonment in Stalag is a well-known narrative. Think the sitcom Hogan’s Heros, or Stalag 17 the movie, or even the current Amazon Prime documentary Above and Beyond.
But what makes Hell’s Belle unique comes my dad’s great gift of storytelling. He was a guest speaker at rotary clubs, library clubs and even the Detroit Free Press club. I wrote the book based on listening tapes from those events that were archived in libraries and his memoirs.
Most of the book is nonfictional although some of the characters and depictions are fictional simply because it was written after he had passed. The book was published in 2003 by Sunstone Press.
What I did, in writing the book, was attempt to retell the story he told. Details about WW2 were mostly left out of the book so the story could focus on the experience of one soldier – and in the reader’s minds be able to extrapolate what other soldiers went through.
I had help editing the final drafts by a professor in the creative writing department at UC Berkeley. She blueprinted the book similar to Tim Obrien’s “The Things they Carried” - editing it into a small good book and leaving out unnecessary historical details. For those historical buffs there are two appendixes at the end of the book that explain technical issues and details about the 8th Airforce in WW2.
In broad outline, the first part of the book deals with training for combat and final ¾’s of the book deal with his capture, life in Stalag 17 including several interesting vignettes about prison life and finally his escape and return home. It is in large part those vignettes that make Hell’s Bells a unique and captivating story and each could serve as an episode in a series.
I want to talk to a screenwriter who would be interested in taking a book about a flyer’s experience in WW2 into a screenplay that could be made/marketed into a television series.
My father, William Rasmussen, was from a small town in northern Michigan. He served as a ball turret gunner on a B-17, was shot down over Germany, captured and interned in Stalag 17. The book, Hell’s Belle, tells the story of his personal wartime experience. The history of WW2 flyers and imprisonment in Stalag is a well-known narrative. Think the sitcom Hogan’s Heros, or Stalag 17 the movie, or even the current Amazon Prime documentary Above and Beyond.
But what makes Hell’s Belle unique comes my dad’s great gift of storytelling. He was a guest speaker at rotary clubs, library clubs and even the Detroit Free Press club. I wrote the book based on listening tapes from those events that were archived in libraries and his memoirs.
Most of the book is nonfictional although some of the characters and depictions are fictional simply because it was written after he had passed. The book was published in 2003 by Sunstone Press.
What I did, in writing the book, was attempt to retell the story he told. Details about WW2 were mostly left out of the book so the story could focus on the experience of one soldier – and in the reader’s minds be able to extrapolate what other soldiers went through.
I had help editing the final drafts by a professor in the creative writing department at UC Berkeley. She blueprinted the book similar to Tim Obrien’s “The Things they Carried” - editing it into a small good book and leaving out unnecessary historical details. For those historical buffs there are two appendixes at the end of the book that explain technical issues and details about the 8th Airforce in WW2.
In broad outline, the first part of the book deals with training for combat and final ¾’s of the book deal with his capture, life in Stalag 17 including several interesting vignettes about prison life and finally his escape and return home. It is in large part those vignettes that make Hell’s Bells a unique and captivating story and each could serve as an episode in a series.
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Screenwriting