I caught up with filmmaker Jessica Sharzer, who directed The Wormhole, the winner of the Imagine Science Film Festival’s Scientific Merit Award. Ms. Sharzer made The Wormhole seven years ago while a film student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The 19-minute short tackles the emotions of a boy, Wally, who is mourning his beloved kidnapped brother. Wally wants to rewrite the past. The present if fraught with tension between him and his mother, who, in her despair, is afraid for her one remaining son’s safety. She is warring with his father and they are in the process of separating. After Wally hears his astrophysicist grandmother lecture to her class about wormholes that connect black holes to white holes, he interprets the science literally to try to resolve his feelings of loss.

Here’s what Ms. Sharzer told me about the dawn of her career and the inspiration for The Wormhole:

KAF: How and when did you decide to become a filmmaker?

JS: I always loved film, but there wasn’t a “eureka” moment when I decided to become a filmmaker. It was a process. When I graduated from film school, I was fully prepared to continue working as an editor if I couldn’t make a go of it as a writer/director. I got a few lucky breaks early in my career that encouraged me to keep at it. It’s been seven years since I finished The Wormhole and I’m only now beginning to feel like I know what I’m doing.

KAF: What was the inspiration for The Wormhole?

JS: I knew about the Sloan Foundation Grant and was in the process of finishing a feature script to submit in 2001. I found out that very few people applied for the production grants, which were substantial, especially for a struggling film student already in debt. I had very little money to make my thesis film and racked by brain for a topic. The problem was I knew nothing about science and had no time to learn anything new. I came across the expression “wormhole” and it immediately conjured up a funny image if taken literally. I thought, if my hero were a child, he could be literal with it as well. I just needed a reason for him to have to travel back in time. I woke up in the middle of the night and scribbled out the script. It varied very little from that first draft. I thought about a moment in my childhood that had a distinct “before” and “after”––the death of my aunt. It gave me the emotional charge of the story, though the circumstance is purely fictional.

KAF: Why did you choose to make a film with science integral to the plot?

JS: The production grant was the initial inspiration, but I found that the science opened up the film to be about something more than simply a personal family story. The science brought a little scope and fantasy into it.</p>

KAF: How much did you know about black holes before?

JS: Very little. I took a basic astronomy course in college and that was about it.

KAF: What inspired you to depict the grandmother as a scientist?

JS: The part was originally written for a man. At the time, I was auditing an incredible acting class taught by Suzanne Shepherd and it suddenly occurred to me that the character could be a woman and it would be so much more interesting and unexpected. I asked Suzanne to be in the film and thankfully she said yes. She also insisted that we shoot at her country house which is the location you see in the film.

KAF: Was it a challenge to find the right balance of emotional content with scientific content?

JS: I didn’t want the movie to be preachy or pedagogical with respect to the science. I wanted us to get just enough of her lecture to spark the idea in the boy’s mind. Some people were surprised I received the grant for a movie with so little science in it. But I’ve found the Sloan Foundation, to their credit, to be very broad in their expectations of what’s scientific and what may make for a good film. At the end of the day, the story matters most and they understand that.

KAF: What does the award mean to you?

JS: I’m ashamed to admit I got a D in high school Physics, so the award of Scientific Merit is the ultimate irony. And I’m thrilled that the film holds up after a number of years. If the film is a success, the credit goes to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for inspiring us film geeks to think outside the box.

KAF: What area you working on now?

JS: I’m currently writing two dance movies and a TV pilot for MTV. I’m also casting two different independent films, hoping to shoot at least one of them in 2009.

- Karen A. Frenkel
For information about me please visit my website, www.karenafrenkel.com