HISTORICAL SCRIPT: I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND

     1963: The year John F. Kennedy was assassinated; the year Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech; the year the Beatles took over the world. As CBS news put it, 1963 was “the year that everything happened.” It changed how America functioned, it changed what America endorsed, and it socially turned the United States upside down. But what would this influential year look like from the eyes of a thirteen-year-old?

     We often examine history through a predetermined scope of factual information surrounding the most depressing, influential or transformative events. However, we forget that there are thousands, maybe millions, of different people and individual stories that surround one particular historical event. We see this clearly in Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis as she examines a very serious historical event, the Iranian Revolution. She illustrates this through less examined issues, such as a woman’s need to veil her face. Exploring this time period through her own ten-year old perspective, we begin to see a different side of the history. We begin to emotionally connect with the event because we now know someone who lived it. Similarly, in our historical screenplay, we wanted to place our character, Timothy, in the historical arena of 1963. Instead of having him experience one of the politically striking events of the time, we wanted to explore something more relevant to him: The Beatles U.S. release of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” 

     When the Beatles released “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, it was the beginning of the “British Invasion.” There had never been a song from the UK that had made an impact on the U.S. music scene until the Beatles released this hit. Researching the 1960’s world through toys, slang, and clothes, we tried to create a realistic perspective of Timothy’s world. A world that was filled with middle school drama and first crushes, but also a world that had been turned upside down by the assassination of JFK, the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement, and the intrigue of the “British Invasion.” We were inspired by our research into the year of 1963 and wanted to give Timothy his chance to make his 7^th grade year “the year everything happened” as well. What was life-changing for Timothy, a thirteen-year-old boy from Michigan, wasn’t the political turmoil that went on around him; it was the middle-school drama that is the center of every kid’s world. Talking to his crush Peggy was his number one goal, and we wanted to reflect that within our script. The major historical events that occurred during this year may be the backdrop of our story, but it isn’t the story itself. Rather than remembering and memorializing JFK, Timothy is more concerned with Gary Thermopolis and his “satellite jumping shoes,” or with how he might never get the chance to talk to Peggy. With our script, we wanted to tell a story that anyone who has ever gone to middle school could relate to, but to insert that story into an accurate depiction of the very historic and influential year of 1963; a year that may have caused political upset within the world and wracked terror throughout a nation, but also a year that could have possibly made some teenage boy’s dreams come true because of a simple song by an up-and-coming British boy band.

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"1960s Vintage Children's Toys with Prices, Descriptions and Images."Popular Vintage 1960s Toys including Photos, Descriptions and Prices. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.