Interview with Screenwriter Heather Farlinger (NO GOOD DEED)

Matthew Toffolo: What is your screenplay about?

Heather Farlinger: My screenplay is based on the life of Oliver Wellington Sipple, who was a decorated marine and wounded Vietnam veteran with PTSD, who heroically saved the life of President Ford from an assassin’s bullet. The would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, actually fired twice, and Mr. Sipple intervened, with no thought to his own physical danger. This one heroic act, a split-second reflex, landed Mr. Sipple directly in the crosshairs of history, with major irreversible and terrible consequences for his own life.

Living as a gay man in San Francisco in the 1970s, he was working for gay rights in perhaps the most transformative decade in American gay and lesbian history, especially in New York and San Francisco. That time in history was tense, with the US in the midst of a cold war with Russia, and there was much violence against…