By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Screenwriter Karen Leigh Hopkins planted some seeds in a Crim fourth grade class Wednesday. Then she stood back and watched them grow like crazy.
She teased the students with ideas swirling in her head for her next script. There’s the street dogs versus the wealthy dogs – a type of doggie Downton Abbey. There’s the entomologist forced to give up the study of bugs to become an exterminator.
“I’ve got a bazillion other ideas I could write,” she said, stretching her arms out wide. They are jotted down anywhere possible. Backs of notebooks, store receipts.
But on Wednesday, Hopkins was looking for ideas from the Crim fourth graders – feeding their imaginations then showering the seeds with praise as they blossomed before her eyes.
Hopkins is all about the “what ifs.”
What if Santa found out he was adopted and his other family was Jewish? What if you were on a ride at Cedar Point and it got stuck, leaving you stranded in a parallel universe?
That’s all she needed to say to open the flood gate of ideas.
Students in Carrie Crawford’s classroom listen to screenwriter.
Hopkins’ first idea was a pirate ride gone wrong. But she wanted something fresher, more creative. Hands shot up, and she called on students bursting with ideas.
“Polka dots,” she said, pointing to the girl dressed in dots. “Santa hat,” “red dress,” she said calling on students and reacting to each plot as the next great blockbuster.
“Instead of pirates, there could be cats,” one student offered.
“You guys blow my mind,” Hopkins said to the room full of raised hands.
The ride got stuck in its tracks in worlds of monsters, zombies, dinosaurs, former presidents.
“You guys, these are really good ideas,” she said, her eyes growing wider with each suggestion. “I like the way you think.”
Outer space, Olympics, video games, a black hole.
“Holy moly,” Hopkins said. “We may have to talk about these.”
As the ideas flowed, Hopkins frantically got a piece of paper and asked a student to record the possible movies in the making.
“Pleeeeeeease write,” she begged the student.
The imaginations were gushing. What about robots? A magician with a magic mirror?
“You just gave me goosebumps,” Hopkins said, rubbing her arms.
One student offered the first line spoken in the alternate universe. “Come with me if you want to live…”
Hopkins pointed to her newly appointed student secretary and urgently asked, “Did you get that line down?”
She told the students about her daughter’s class that will be listed in the credits for a movie idea that they developed.
Hopkins, a twin sister of Bowling Green resident Sharon Clifford, also gave the students in Carrie Crawford’s classroom at Crim a taste of the harsh reality in movie making.
Hopkins got her first big break playing a young gym teacher in the cult classic, “Breakfast Club.” But all of her scenes ended up on the editing room floor. “I was the infamous person cut out” of the movie, she said.
So she came back home to Sandusky to regroup. With $21 left to her name, and a riding lawnmower as a vehicle, she started writing scripts.
“I said, I’m not going to give up,” she told the class.
But it’s been far from easy. Hopkins, who lives in California, has written 35 movies, with eight being produced. Some of her credits include “Because I Said So,” “Stepmom,” “Miss Meadows” and “Searching for David’s Heart.”
The idea for “Because I Said So,” came from her mom, who often said those exact words to Hopkins. She is toying with writing a sequel called “And Another Thing” – another favorite saying of her mom’s.
Hopkins, who has earned an Emmy nomination, hopes to soon direct her movie “Little Black Dress.”
She finds freedom in writing. “I love to break the rules when I’m writing,” she told the class. “You gotta like what you’re doing.”
Don’t get stuck in a rut, she said. “If you’re sick with one story, you go to another one.”
Hopkins cautioned the budding writers to not sell their personal stories short.
“The best stories come from when I’m inspired by my own experiences,” she said. “A lot of times we run out of fuel” if there’s no personal investment in the story.
Never stop planting those story seeds, she told the students and their teacher.
“Any idea I have is a seed.”
When the bell rang ending the class, students swarmed around Hopkins to share one last plot, to sow one last seed. She stood listening intently, jotting down their ideas like they were the next movie blockbuster, then sent the budding writers on their way – with ideas buzzing around in their heads.
