This screenplay was the first installment in a series I called “Fictims,” whose goal was to bring attention to the anonymous victims of violence in Hollywood action films. Jim and Wanda tells the (back)story of an elderly couple that appeared for only a few seconds in John Woo’s action film Broken Arrow (1996) before being gunned down by villains. The idea with each of these “Fictims” scripts was to intersect the schematic narrative of action films with a character-driven story about the victims “last days,” always ending at the moment of their death at the hands of Hollywood.

I was thrilled when Annie Nocenti, the editor who succeeded me at Scenario, proposed that the magazine publish the script as one of their “Short Subject” features in the Winter 1998/1999 issue. My eventual goal was to turn Jim and Wanda into a short film, and to that end, I reached out to Vince Deadrick Sr., the actor who played “Jim” in Broken Arrow, to offer him the role of the lead in the film. But the project proved to be logistically untenable, due mainly to copyright concerns. 

To this day, whenever I watch a big-budget Hollywood action film, I’m always on the lookout for collateral damage.