-Who is Timothy A McGhee?

Who is Timothy A. McGhee, you ask? In two words, he is Complexly Simple. Case in point: I attend Roman Catholic Mass regularly. I might go five times weekly. I am not, however, devoutly Catholic. In my humble opinion, I do not agree with a) the subjugation of women by Church leadership, and b) the redundancy of telling a priest my sins when I’ve already confessed to God; those are two examples of my Complexity. I wholeheartedly believe the sole basis for the Church is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on ancient Rome’s instrument of torture, the rugged cross. That’s my Simple message. I am Catholic because it’s the only Christian church that serves communion every Mass; I accept our disagreements so I can celebrate the main idea. Complexly Simple. Three men formed Timothy A. McGhee. My father, my older brother, and my older sister’s husband are all deceased. Yet all three are still alive in me.
My father was a United States Marine Corps drill instructor during the Korean War. He fought bravely as a 22 year old platoon sergeant in 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal. Sarge effectively had a bachelor’s degree in leadership. He predicted the future like Nostradamus when I was 16 years old, “Son, you’re one of my favorite kinds of leaders. You lead without concern over who’s following you. You’re not discouraged if no one follows you, and you’re certainly not impressed if a hundred people follow you. You just do it.” More accurate words have never been spoken.

My older brother is the most brilliant man I have ever known. Patrick at age 14 taught me the 4 year old to read. I would spread the newspaper out on my mom’s living room floor and read the articles as I crawled across them. I read everything. So did Pat. He learned to speak French, Spanish, and Portuguese fluently, the latter of which led Pat to volunteer with the US State Department as a liaison for Brazilian academics relocating to Canada. Patrick was a published novelist; he was a gay man (which our father lovingly accepted immediately and unconditionally when Pat came out in 1973) who, in response to a painful end of a romance, wrote a novel. Patrick’s lover met his demise in Love Is A Handout and it sold 2,000 copies on Kindle in the United Kingdom alone.

My brother-in-law Larry came along right at the perfect time. I met him in 1969 as a 13 year old trying my damnedest to make it on the gridiron (it worked as I eventually turned down an offer by a lieutenant recruiting me to play football at the United States Naval Academy) Larry told me stories of 6-man high school football in rural Indiana. He told me the story of tiny Milan High School winning the Indiana state title long before Gene Hackman’s Hoosiers was filmed. Larry owned a tavern, got me a summer job in the steel mill at which he would retire as a foreman, and had two holes-in-one at the local country club by age 35. Larry helped many a man pay his bills with his bartender tips out of his pocket. He was loved by everyone, and he loved my sister and his two sons.

Therefore, because of Sarge, Patrick, and Larry…I am a Warrior, I am a Writer, and I am a Guy’s Guy. Complexly Simple.

-Tell us about your project “American Money”.

American Money is my first film script. I began writing screenplays in early 2018 after publishing two novels: Wise Fools 2001 Writer’s Club Press and Risk, Return, and the Indigo Autumn 2006 Apple iBooks. American Money is the screen adaptation of the second novel. After graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1981, I was laid off from my sweet position with a multinational chemical corporation in January 1983. Unemployment in my state of West Virginia was an astounding TWENTY percent due to a terrible U.S. economy; there were few if any basic industry jobs available. I was married with a mortgage. To find work I went with the hot hand: Wall Street, which was hiring stockbrokers by the tens of thousands nationwide. It was difficult; I didn’t know anyone with money. I didn’t have any money. So, I just worked my ass off and eventually developed a profitable clientele. I was personally satisfied when at age 30 I made two to three times more money than the engineers who survived the basic industries’ layoffs.

That financial success came to a crashing halt on October 19, 1987, when in one day stock prices fell by a quarter to a third. It’s known as Black Monday, and one guy with whom I worked predicted it in print. In the October 4^th edition of Barron’s Financial Weekly, a widely read publication, financial analyst Jeffrey Saut with Richmond, Virginia, based Wheat First Securities was quoted something like, the party is over. That always intrigued me: what if I would have bet everything on Jeff Saut?

Risk, Return, and the Indigo Autumn was in print 19 years later. Interestingly, when I saw how well the Paramount Pictures’ 2015 film The Big Short was received, I immediately thought, “If they can tell the story of THAT cluster, I can tell my story.”

Fast forward to January 2022. I had just completed the second rewrite of American Money, and I was staying at The Greenbrier resort hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, awaiting the closing of my ski resort condo deal in Snowshoe. While in the aptly named Victorian Writing Room, I decided to go to the bar. A lady was sitting near me. Like the Guy’s Guy I am, I ask her if I can bring her a drink. She requested a mimosa. She clinked her flute with my pinot noir goblet, and thus began a wonderful friendship with Dianne Berry, an actor and businesswoman vacationing with her husband. After Dianne shared with me a film trailer and a scene, both in which I could see she was outstandingly talented, I told her the story of American Money.  I almost thought while talking with Dianne I was looking at the script’s female lead Edie France!

Dianne was interested on two separate levels, as an actor and as a wealth advisor; as it turns out we both were “in the stock market” on Black Monday. I offered Dianne a pdf of my film script. We exchanged contact information, and we parted to our respective homes.

Two months later on a cold Saturday evening at Snowshoe ski resort, my cell phone dings. It’s a text from Dianne. She had shared American Money with her acting coach. The text read, “We think there’s some real potential there to tell a story that will pull people in – something different – something that will really captivate the audience in a way that has never been done before.” I was understandably thrilled. A few weeks later, Dianne called me to recommend to me a film script advisor. That’s Tammy Gross of ReelAuthor – TammyGross.com. Tammy and I had our first of many Zoom meetings in late spring 2022. We’ve been working together for over three years now; I’ve learned so much from Tammy I call her Movie Harvard.

Dianne is currently joining a film production company. Tammy and I have a brainstorming Zoom scheduled with her in late October. And, I see Dianne as the female lead even more clearly now.

The thing I wish to impress upon these two ladies is exactly this: without Dianne Berry and Tammy Gross I am a little more than permanent potential. Dianne and Tammy have shown me the way to realize my dream of being a storyteller. I thank them both for everything they have done for me, and the future is looking bright.

One more thing: two years into our work on American Money, Tammy essentially said during a March 2024 Zoom meeting that I have done as well writing a film script as one can expect from a Guy’s Guy. I could faintly hear a 1970 Todd Rundgren singing, “We gotta get you a woman.” Enter my dear friend Charlotte Pritt, fascinating and multi-talented, excelling in both education and politics. Charlotte is the benevolent force in West Virginia of my lifetime, and I was lucky to serve as her caregiver for a year. During that time, the coal miner’s daughter Charlotte thought of a way to implement Tammy’s suggestion that the renegade investors in the film script had to benefit mankind with their billions. We three worked it out, answering the question: What if you had bet against the stock market on Black Monday 1987 not for greed, but for justice?

The renegades give almost all the hundred billion to those most hurt financially by Reaganomics: steelworkers & coal miners.

Steel and coal…like chemical manufacturing from which I lost my job.

When God closes a door, He opens a window. I was much, much better at telling my story because of the wisdom Dianne, Tammy, and Charlotte shared with me.

-Which Director inspires you the most?

I give my Best Director award to Mike Nichols. Most everything I know about Mike Nichols I read as I was developing my interest in screenwriting. Despite being too young to truly appreciate his versatile genius real time, in my private 11 year old world I was a big fan of his 1967 film The Graduate. The soundtrack was exquisite. Nichols envisioned the music of Simon & Garfunkel would set the film apart. He was right. His cinema masterpiece was my eye candy when I finally saw The Graduate in the theater at age 14; Anne Bancroft was my sexiest woman in the 1960s and remains on my Olympic medal stand as one of my three sexiest women in cinematic history. In 1970 I would have stepped over Katharine Ross’ glistening bikini clad body for the opportunity to buy Anne Bancroft a cup of coffee.

The aural and visual appeal of The Graduate was not just happenstance, I discovered as I studied Mike Nichols’ director work. He rolled the dice with the relatively unknown Dustin Hoffman as the leading man, with Buck Henry as the screenwriter, and by using camera techniques that were cutting edge in the mid-1960s. Silkwood in 1983 is another of my Nichols favorites; as a mechanical engineer I believe Mike Nichols exposed Kerr-Magee in cinema appropriately.

-What do you dislike about the world and what would you change?

It’s true. This world is broken. But, it’s the only world I have for now, so here’s how I would fix it: a) spread forgiveness, and b) encourage accountability. Forgiveness begins in our hearts. We must each forgive ourselves so we can forgive others. As we forgive, we are more prone to have the courage to readily admit our mistakes, to be accountable.

Even as a mechanical engineer with an active imagination, I have no idea or even a silly wild-ass guess of what technological advances will be available to filmmakers in the year 2125. I do believe cinema will be as necessary as it is now. People work to make a living and experience art to make a life. Storytelling always will be an essential part of any culture. Native intelligence will in my humble opinion always override anything artificial intelligence can come up with. To borrow Al Franken’s idea he expressed in a piece he wrote a couple years ago for The New Yorker, Artificial Intelligence has never lost at love while puking in the toilet with food poisoning. Native Intelligence rocks.

-How do you imagine cinema in 100 years?

Even as a mechanical engineer with an active imagination, I have no idea or even a silly wild-ass guess of what technological advances will be available to filmmakers in the year 2125. I do believe cinema will be as necessary as it is now. People work to make a living and experience art to make a life. Storytelling always will be an essential part of any culture. Native intelligence will in my humble opinion always override anything artificial intelligence can come up with. To borrow Al Franken’s idea he expressed in a piece he wrote a couple years ago for The New Yorker, Artificial Intelligence has never lost at love while puking in the toilet with food poisoning. Native Intelligence rocks.

-What is your impression of WILD FILMMAKER?

I just recently became aware of Wild Filmmaker. Upon entering film festivals in February 2025 with my film script American Money, screenplay judges suggested my script would fare well if produced by indies for arthouses. I started looking into that thought, and I discovered Wild Filmmakers. Your reporting and commentary about the post-cinematic world is as courageous as independent filmmakers are. I’m honored & humbled you asked me to interview because I respect what you represent. May the Peace your higher power gives you be as sweet as Peace The Holy Trinity lends me.