About the Documentary Pretty Ugly
B. A. Steele is creating a documentary based on her life experiencing Crohn's Disease and Private Health Insurance. This feature-length documentary has a very informational and serious undertone but throughout, B. A. Steele sprinkles in her humor with skits and interesting cutaways.
This documentary is meant to help people understand individuals with disabilities better and bring out the dark side of American Healthcare that doctors hate for their patients, but capitalists love for their customers.
When applying for grants or getting a project together, having a detailed outline is a good start. Below is a proposal for the documentary project, Pretty Ugly. All documentaries have an outline or basic script to help construct a conclusive story. Of course, those outlines may change as the story unravels itself in real life. Below is what B. A. Steele has started and hopes to finish before 2030.
Pretty Ugly Documentary and Grant Proposal from 2022
PRETTY UGLY
Documentary Proposal by B. A. Steele
Brief Overview:
Good day to you! My name is Beth Steele, and I am a 25-year-old American filmmaker with severe Crohn’s Disease. I’d love to show you my day-to-day struggle in the life as a young mother with constant chronic pain and an ileostomy.
I’ve had Crohn’s symptoms since I was 10, and over the roller coaster of health issues, I’ve learned a lot about myself and developed empathy for everyone struggling from a traumatizing disease or come up.
My goal is to spread awareness about the embarrassing symptoms and what it’s like having an invisible illness. It is important that I give props to everyone struggling with a mental, internal, or physical sicknesses and acknowledge the exhausting struggle it is to simply stay alive in a society. Sharing the suffering from my pain and medical procedures will resonate with people all over the world. Thanks to climate scientists being ignored and lobbied out of necessity, I expect diseases to arise in more young and old individuals giving them something to relate to.
The issue of handling healthcare as a business relates on a national and global scale. However, the brutal tactics in America are typically illegal in other first world countries, for example: I will lose my healthcare in a few months when I turn 26. Simply for turning 26.
In this documentary, I include the problems I’ve had with drugs, relationships, managing symptoms, staying mentally strong, and hiding my illness from friends and the workplace. Also in this narrative, real doctors will discuss what Irritable Bowel Disease is and what it has done to many patients. Please follow me on my continuous fight with my eternal illness and how I handle the every-day hurdles of life as a toddler mom with a disability.
Logline
This documentary follows Beth Steele and her ongoing battle with her invisible illness, Crohn’s Disease. Crohn’s is an irritable bowel disease that is autoimmune which can cause painful, damaging inflammation throughout the entire G.I. tract. The young mother has suffered from Crohn’s Disease since she was a child and we follow her struggle even after her 26th birthday, which is when her private health insurance, which gives her access to good care, is terminated. Most recently, Beth had her entire colon, rectum, and anus removed. Surgeons placed a permanent ileostomy on her left side however; this isn’t a cure and she has a high risk of her Crohn’s coming back…
Synopsis
Beth Steele has recently gained back her quality of life with an ileostomy (she shits in a bag out of her stomach). Her Crohn’s has been aggressive her entire life and she is on her last hope for a long-term remission with a biologic drug (administered once a month by a shot). Her new challenges are her healthcare being terminated soon, finding new affordable healthcare, and possibly using new drugs that are still in the experimental phase. Please see the expanded synopsis broken up by Acts below.
Act I:
Beth confides the harsh and embarrassing symptoms of her Crohn’s that she has had since elementary school. She discusses the mental battle and many other challenges she faced while being so young. Her important story from ages 10-22 (up until her first surgery and getting her first, temporary ileostomy reversed) Testimonials from doctors, nurses, patients, etc. will be sprinkled in to give their points of views with chronic illnesses.
Act 2:
Beth brings in the new way her body works and adjusting to life after having two sections of her colon removed and physical scars. She then brings in the horror of how bad her disease exacerbates over the next few years up until she is almost dead – needing immediate dissection of her colon, rectum, and anus resulting in a permanent ileostomy. She discusses her internal, physical, mental suffering and dealing with her health insurance, along with severe medical trauma.
Act 3:
The future of not knowing if you will feel normal or go back to living in chronic pain for the rest of your life is dreadful and Beth recaps that as her routine experience. The goal is to have great information on coping techniques Beth has used (like humor), bringing awareness to what disability really looks like in America, and to inspire others with chronic illnesses to keep fighting!!
Facts on disability and health care facts will be included in hopes to help citizens get the better care they need. An emotional conclusion will be constructed about her future with her disease and trying to be the best mother she can be.
Overall things mentioned throughout Beth’s Crohn’s journey include; barium X-ray’s, corticosteroids, cancer meds, serious side effects like face swelling, stomach pain, acid reflux, depression, anxiety, relationships, being dismissed, and suicidal thoughts. But wait there's more: other topics like barium enemas, colonoscopies, endoscopies, NG tubes, anesthesia effects, bladder catheters, puking your own feces out, shitting your pants on the regular, dealing with health insurance, buying the right adult diapers at 25, hiding symptoms until one can’t, forced anorexia, 3-day fasting, NPO's, Crohn’s dieting/daily pain, chronic pain, medical trauma, bowel resections, ileostomy care, removal of colon to anus, ileostomy revision, C-section, panic attacks, asthma, drug use, workplace environments, pregnancy, and motherhood…for a short list…
The Opportunity:
There is opportunity to help others feel more comfortable talking with their doctors, not feeling so isolated, and learning new ways to help improve their quality of life. As for people who do not have to deal with chronic pain, they can be more sympathetic and helpful when learning about how diverse our bodies can be.
Artistic Approach and Topic Summary:
To make the documentary have some comic relief instead of a pity party, Cleveland Filmmaker, Beth Steele, will add in comedic bits about her dealing with her disease to set it apart from other documentaries.
Examples, more will build as script and interviews become more concrete:
Skit #1: A short cooking show bit of making the greatest of foods in the Crohn’s diet world – Saltine crackers and toast. (to be displayed after Beth discusses her diet and food disorders with disease)
Skit #2: Stand Up Comedy bit - Beth jokes about having her asshole removed, having an ileostomy, and dealing with surgery. (to be displayed after she says she does not care that she was born with a terrible disease/uses humor to cope)
Skit #3: Beth demonstrates changing her ileostomy (to be displayed after her gastroenterologist describes the disease and what it can do to people)
*Medical records and real background research will go into all subjects interviewed. Names may be changed for privacy. Data will be fact checked twice to ensure accuracy and credibility. Anything inconclusive will be mentioned or not shown.
CONCLUSION
Beth is the main character guiding the documentary narrative and the healthcare workers add a professional, serious, and credible tone to the disability topic, Crohn’s.
The audience this documentary will appeal to are people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, healthcare employees, and everyone in America that has been affected negatively by their health insurance. In addition, this may do well at foreign festivals/broadcasts since it is so strange to not have universal healthcare in a first world country. This story is urgent, contemporary, and important for the understanding of empathy needed for people with disabilities and the disability process in America.
Beth hopes this creates a domino effect in the effort for universal healthcare in the United States. Beth and her line up of doctors are excited to be interviewed to tell their point of view working in the midst of America’s healthcare system and the medical professional perspective of IBD.
More About The Work
B. A. Steele plans to film the healthcare professionals soon after finishing her outline. The synopsis above was written for a grant and has since been slightly updated as she thinks about the execution of this film.
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What To Read Next?
Click Back To Works to view all of the available written stories or Blog to view other content made by B. A. Steele.
If you've enjoyed visiting basteelepublishing.com then you may like B. A. Steele's first and only published screenplay, The Marigold List. If you'd like to support the author, you can buy the eBook on Amazon!
