When Anna Klassen, BA ’12, heard her script had made both the 2017 Black List and Hit List, the annual lists of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays, she screamed.
“I’ve always dreamed of making this list, but never, ever thought I actually would,” said Klassen. “It was certainly a career highlight.”
Her script, When Lightning Strikes, is a biopic about J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. When Lightning Strikes is in prestigious company: numerous critically acclaimed films, including eight-time Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire, four-time Oscar winner The King’s Speech, and, most recently, Oscar winner I, Tonya, have appeared on the Black List.
Klassen wanted to work in film from the time she was a child, but with no connections in the industry, opted to pursue a journalism degree from the UO instead. She was the editor-in-chief of FLUX magazine, associate editor of Ethos magazine, and an arts and entertainment reporter for the Daily Emerald. She received the Outstanding Leadership Award for her time at FLUX.
Following graduation, Klassen moved to Los Angeles and has contributed to Buzzfeed, Newsweek, and the Daily Beast, and until recently was the West Coast entertainment editor at Bustle. Those jobs gave her access to some of Hollywood’s top talent, and while learning more about the industry, she became determined to get more involved.
“Being able to pick the brains of the people who made my favorite films was a dream come true, but it also left me hungry to create my own content,” Klassen said. “I decided I would write a script, and if it was horrible, no one would need to see it—let alone know I even wrote it. My first script was absolutely awful, but the process of writing it was undeniably enjoyable, so I just kept writing and somehow got a bit better along the way.”
Last year she won the 2017 ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship for her TV pilot 14 Words, which tells the story of a woman who infiltrates a white supremacy group to conduct research for an exposé. 14 Words was inspired by the rape and murder of her grandmother in 1969, a crime Klassen believes may have been committed by the KKK as a result of her grandparents’ outspoken support of the Civil Rights Movement; after inviting Medgar Evers to speak at the facility where he worked, one extreme-right group labeled Klassen’s grandfather the most dangerous man in the country.
Perhaps subliminally inspired by her grandmother, Klassen’s scripts frequently focus on women who have had to confront hardships throughout their lives. A Harry Potter fan since the first book hit the shelves in 1997, Klassen’s own journey as a screenwriter eventually led her to the story of Harry Potter’s author, J.K. Rowling, who—before becoming the world’s only billionaire author—suffered a miscarriage, a brief marriage with a husband alleged to be abusive, unemployment, and thoughts of suicide.
When Lightning Strikes spans roughly two years in the early 1990s. It begins with a young Joanne Rowling (the “K” for “Kathleen” in her pseudonym comes from her grandmother, as Rowling did not have a middle name) stuck on a train traveling from Manchester to London. A tree, felled by a Ford Anglia (an Easter egg Harry Potter fans will recognize), lies across the tracks while crewmembers desperately search for a solution. Joanne stares absently out into the English countryside, seemingly oblivious. It was on this journey that Rowling says Harry Potter “came fully formed” into her mind.
A few months later, Rowling’s mother, Anne, died of multiple sclerosis. For Rowling, it was a crushing loss—she had a difficult relationship with her father, and felt her mother was the only one supportive of her writing. The loss impacted her writing, too, deepening the grief Harry feels after losing his own parents.
Rowling took a job teaching English in Portugal, where she met journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar. Rowling miscarried a few months into their relationship, but they married in 1992 and Rowling gave birth to a daughter, Jessica. Their marriage was tumultuous and only lasted 13 months. After divorcing Arantes, Rowling and Jessica—and three chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—moved to Edinburgh to be close to Rowling’s sister. Plagued by depression, Rowling considered herself a failure and contemplated suicide.
The first Harry Potter novel was completed in 1995, and was subsequently rejected by 12 publishers before finally finding a home at Bloomsbury Publishing. Rowling was paid a meager £1,500 advance (approximately $2,400); today, the brand is worth US $15 billion.
Klassen wanted her screenplay to be as accurate as possible, and she researched Rowling’s life by exhaustively reviewing articles and interviews.
“J.K. Rowling is one of the most talented, prolific, and flat-out impressive writers of our generation,” said Klassen. “She had every odd stacked against her and yet she refused to give up and surrender her passion. I find that remarkably inspiring … If she can succeed against all odds, I have no excuse not to try.”
Whether or not the script makes it to the big screen depends on first, a studio’s interest, and second, Rowling’s consent. Blond Ambition, a biopic about Madonna that made the 2016 Black List, was quickly picked up by Universal but brought to a standstill by Madonna’s vocal objection. Should Rowling give When Lighting Strikes the green light, it could follow the path of other recent Black List scripts. I, Tonya—which joined Blond Ambition on the 2016 Black List, and chronicles the rise and fall of infamous Olympic figure skater and Clackamas native Tonya Harding—was released in 2017 to critical acclaim. Nominated for more than 90 film awards around the world, including three Academy Awards, five BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, three Independent Spirit Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, it has so far taken home 32, including Allison Janney’s Oscar for Best Supporting Actress earlier this year for her role as Harding’s mother.
Klassen recently resigned from Bustle to screen write full time and has several other projects in the works, though while she is dialing back the journalism, she is still leaning on the skills she learned at the UO’s School of Journalism and Communication.
“Because I am invested in doing research and conducting interviews for my scripts,” Klassen said, “the skills utilized in journalism will always be crucial to the stories I want to tell.”
- Abby Keep, student associate