*****presents, Ini Edo (Stephanie Jones, Mike Ezuruonye (Jude), Uche Jombo (Uju); Director, Charles Inojie DGN; Screenplay, Uche Jombo. Producer/Executive Producer, John Nkeiruka Nwatu; Editor, Linus Akubuilo NSC: Assoc. Producer Joe Okoh; DOP, Lucky Eromosele NSC. (C****)
The first time I rebelled against my primary school teacher’s mode of composing an essay of, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation, ” was when I was forced to start for instance, with: the school closed and we got in our cars and left the campus for our villages…” I was never impressed with the opening of such essays. I wanted an opportunity that would take me by my ears and shoved me into the story and stayed hooked to it until something happened and I took a relief. Whatever happened to, the weather the day our school closed? The matron’s tearful eyes at us as we were leaving her all alone for three months. She’s going to miss the pranks we pulled on her. What of my room-mate who’s not coming back to our school? The night-watchman who has saved our behinds for truancy, so many times from our headmaster’s rattans. The smell of half-cooked cassava leaves and potato leaves, swimming in uncooked palm oil; the parting hugs from friends going away and the car full of friends and school-mates going in the same direction up the road, the looking forward to the home cooked meal and the grand old vacation ball dance.
How I Became Famous have such a secondary school composition title. I invented so many ways as to how to start essays or pieces like this: I will compose scenes like this: I went for an audition, and I sang this tune, and everybody was laughing at me. But the producer came out from the recording room, shook my hands and told me she loved my voice; she loved my demeanor; the camera loves my funny face and so on. I believe I stick with the premise or the theme, just here.
I wrote the screenplay for Watchin’ Lydia, now on Youtube. You can watch at no cost. Lydia, from the other side of town (ghetto), goes into an audition and won a spot to sing in a high society nightclub, and fortunately for her, a talent scout, working for a famous recording studio discovers her in the club. She booked her from Atlanta to all the great organizations in the US. Eventually, she becomes famous. Most Tv shows booked and interviewed her. In no time, Lydia was on the cover of major magazines in the country. Now, Lydia’s rise to fame isn’t meteoric but systematic and logical.
Stephanie Jones’ (Ini Edo) rise to fame is not systematic and consistent. She gallops to the tv screen. The first time we meet her on the tv screen, most fans disdained her for giving away her child into adoption, and most of her fans got turned off when they came to know that. She has a bodyguard or a woman who totes her pocketbook as she goes looking for her daughter, a sign of being famous. She approaches the adopting mother, Uju (Uche Jombo), and there’s fallout. They both later come to terms with each other. Uju has cancer, and she’s about to die. She gives back Eve to Steph.
Looking at this movie doesn’t tell how Stephanie Jones takes a precise, logical steps to becoming famous. She has already been famous. By being a familiar face on Nollywood tv screen, in our living rooms, every evening is not less than being famous. The premise of this movie is false. Steph was brilliant before the film started. What I believe would have been an honest premise for the script was to honestly follow the custody struggle with Eve’s adopted mother, Uju, giving us Steph’s celebrity status as a backdrop. Barber shops would have been arguing the case. Churches would have been debating the right of the mother or the adopted mother during Sunday sermons. Community institutions would have been holding a tv debate on the issue. Hateful fans would be throwing garbage at Steph in the traffic. Young women in favor for the adopting mother would have been holding placard at the fork of the road, that reads: LET UJU KEEP EVE! The entire country will divide over this issue; and what of Eve, whoever cares for her emotional characteristic?
The custody issue here got me interested in the theme, but not the way Stephanie Jones becomes famous. I would have loved an ordinary childless housewife Uju, putting on a fight to retain a child she has adopted since the first weeks of her life. And on the other side of the aisle, a celebrity, Stephanie Jones loved by so many and hated by few, to jostle in court with her to win over custody of Eve. Steph has had Eve at the tender age of sixteen (constitutionally a minor, at such age), and now that she’s grown and has money, she ‘s about to lay claim to her. A beautiful story it would have been in that sense. In fact, it would have been a constitutional test case in Nollywood. Why then should we kill Uju by cancer, so early in the story?
Stephanie Jones: I was a child myself, I was only sixteen… I could have had an abortion, you know.
The Lawyer: You have an angle there. But the only chance we have is to establish the fact, Mrs. Dan Phillips is incapable of raising a child.
Why then should we kill the adopted mother so early in the story by cancer? The fallacy here is, when the writer kills the adopted mother, she kills the story as well. This story is like taking the easy way out when as writers we’re sometimes entangled by the plots of our stories, and we kill someone so that we take the easy way out of a literary quagmire. The adopted mother here holds on to the fabric of the story. She and Steph are at the opposite end of the scale of the plot. When you press your thumb on the scale in either direction, that sways the story to one side, especially so for Stephanie Jones.
There’s one thing I believe I’ll have to revisit and that is the title of the story, How I Became Famous. I just can’t go on with this title without convincing myself that it is justifiable. Maybe, just perhaps, the title isn’t appropriate. The title neither makes Steph famous nor makes her a celeb. Of course, we see a woman in a restaurant swooning over her, but at the same time, we see the notoriety of her status as a star, in another scene where the adopted mother dismisses her: “Girls like you make me sick…I don’t even watch your movies since I found out what you did,” she blurts. Purportedly, Stephanie Jones had become a regular face on tv before the film started and we weren’t witnessing her rise to fame, but a fight or struggle to hold on to that fame.
A theme of a movie tells exclusively what the topic says, even though some movies howler one title and goes on to tell a different story. We cannot extend our concern here for the theme to the character, style, plot and texture-Mike Ezuruonye and Ini Edo and the film itself have plenty of those. I tried to center my analysis on the emotional aspect or effect. Boy, am I disappointed! The story runs from laying emphasis on the emotional aspect (theme) and places too much emphasis on the life of a celebrity. We never have a look at Eve again from when she runs back into the house for Uju’s pills. Is Eve not the link-pin that locks in the plot of the story? What about a title like, “All about Eve?”
In another scene where Stephanie Jones, meets with her parents would have said so much had we been given a chance to hear the family together in a living room setting, warming up to each other and catching up on lost time. I was expecting us to see that. In stories like this, a family dialogue could go a long way in making expositions. We only see them going into the house, and we never see them again after. That scene is convoluted because it never advances the story nor demonstrates anything.
Believability in a film is critical. In this movie, I found the location of Child Custody office unbelievable. It is a social service agency that keeps so many important adoption documents and records, and it shouldn’t have a brown cardboard on the window, looking so shabby and all. Nollywood, Nollywood, how art thou!