Grant Writing Confidential Goes to the Movies Part Deux: Twisters!

Last week I wrote about going to see the exceptional recently released romantic comedy, Fly Me to the Moon, to help me cope with the awful news of the attempted Trump assassination. The weird political and world news continues so last night I went to see another new film for distraction—Twisters, billed as this summer’s blockbuster. Not a bad film but not exactly a blockbuster.

I saw the original and much better original, Twister, when it came out in the summer of ’96 with my then three pre-teen kids at the Factoria Multiplex in Bellevue, WA. To save money, the drill was to go to a matinee, stoping first at the drug store to buy movie candy (my fave Boston Baked Beans, but Milk Duds, Good ‘n Plenty, Junior Mints, and Peanut M & Ms are allowed) and pop (I grew up in MN so soda is not in my lexicon) to sneak in. This was before the days of reserved seats, so I’d send my oldest son to claim seats around the eighth row center, while I got a very large popcorn (butter in the middle, please) to distribute slowly to the kids during the movie. Factoria was a typical suburban multiplex of the era, but Twister was showing in one of the two auditoriums with THX sound (“Quiet, the audience is listening!” on the screen before the opening credits), and a relatively large screen. After the movie, we’d stop at McDonald’s or Burger King for a sack of burgers and fries to take home.*

I’ve seen Twister a few times since ’96 and it’s a rousing true summer blockbuster with the great Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt showing lots of screen chemistry, good supporting cast, and witty screenplay by Michael Crichton. While the CGI was relatively primitive (remember the flying cow?), the story was strong and, unlike Twisters, at least somewhat plausible.

Almost three decades later, we get the tardy sequel with three uninteresting leads in an awkward love triangle, a supporting cast with vague ethnicities straight out of an ’80s Benetton ad, and a screenplay of weather nonsense, subtle references to the unnamed climate crisis bogeyman, and lots of typical movie hokum. We begin with the heroine as a teen storm chaser (apparently no parents or adults handy to interfere) who makes a terrible mistake leading to the death of one of her friends. Flash forward five years and she’s reluctantly drawn back into storm chasing but will she make another terrible mistake again? Unless you’ve never seen a movie, you know the answer to this question. We also get a bad dude who we all know will eventually be revealed as a good dude to romance the girl, an evil corporation trying to steal farms, small Oklahoma towns with no storm shelters and few first responders, and so on. Pass the popcorn.

Like last week’s post, now that you’ve gotten this far, you may be wondering what all of this has to do with grant writing.

Since our intrepid young storm chasing team has a fleet of tricked out SUVs and lots of gear, but no paying jobs or income other than selling some merch to the local yokels, the obvious question is where does the money come from. The script solves this conundrum with two mentions of possible “grants,” including a “fat grant.” Not that they have any grants, but the screenwriters had to fill this huge plot hole with a device that takes less than 30 seconds of screen time. When “grants” are mentioned, the other characters look quizzical, since I’m sure the actors and director, like the screenwriters, have no understanding of grants. This is like the warp drive as a plot device in Star Trek to zip around the galaxy in a few minutes of screen time (many years ago, I used the mythical dilithium crystals as my own plot device in this post: No Experience, No Problem: Why Writing a Department of Energy (DOE) Proposal Is Not Hard For A Good Grant Writer).

When I get a call from a nonprofit CEO who is not familiar with the wonderful world of grants, this first thing I tell them is to disregard everything they’ve heard about grants in the media, TV, movies, etc., because the topic is never covered correctly. Reporters and screenwriters simply don’t take the time to understand the actual relatively simple grant seeking process. I know because from time to time I’ll get calls from reporters looking for background—in 2009 during the Great Recession, Obamacare, and the Stimulus Bill, I served as one of those “unnamed sources” for a Wall Street Journal reporter on a number of front page stories over many months.

Back to Twisters, the implication is that anyone with a good idea can somehow get a “fat grant,” whatever that is. The truth, of course, is quite different. Individuals are rarely eligible for most grant programs and the applicant usually must be a 501(c)3 nonprofit, public agency, or, in some cases, a for-profit business. And, the time between preparing/submitting the proposal and notice of grant award/executing a grant agreement can take many months. Then, there’s fiduciary and reporting requirements and the sad reality that grant periods are generally five years at most, so once one starts down the grant road one soon finds out that that the road never ends (good news for us grant writers).

Still, it’s always fun for a grizzled grant writer to see or read any mention of grants in the media, TV, and movies. If today’s news of President Biden going off into the sunset makes you feel poorly, you could do worse that spending two hours in a dark theater watching Twisters.

* In honor of that tradition, I stopped at a White Castle to bring a sack of sliders home to share with my big Golden Retriever, two for me and two for him.