BOOK - Screenplay: Writing the Picture

Screenplay: Writing the Picture by Robin U. Russin and William Missouri Downs is the nifty little book I’ve used for the past several years as the core overview of screenwriting basics for the Intro to Screenwriting course I teach at Hofstra University. Get it HERE.

BOOK - What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting

Marc Norman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Shakespeare in Love, tells the history of movie-making from the perspective of the screenwriter. A must read!! Get What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting HERE.

BOOK - Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays

While this book was written in the early 1980s essentially to help theater directors analyze and stage plays, it is a seminal text to begin the process of breaking down the screenplay you are writing. Get Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays HERE.

Harvard: Restoring Justice

Another good story about Restorative Justice including the ever-useful overviews about what RJ is as I explore and dramatize in-depth in my seven-episode limited series script Pray for the Devil:

They’d come to talk about an approach to criminal justice that has gained ground during the past couple of decades as an alternative to the prevailing legal process. Restorative justice focuses not on prosecution and punishment, but on harm done and how to repair it.

When the face-to-face conversation takes place—and sometimes there is more than one—each party speaks, one at a time and without interruption, about the crime and its effects, and about the circumstances and life histories leading up to it. The person who has committed the crime takes responsibility, expresses remorse, and offers a detailed public apology; victims give voice to their pain, their feelings, and their needs. Then the group comes to consensus on a set of actions that the offender can take to meet those needs, repair the harm, and prevent further offenses.

To date, 45 states have passed laws permitting the use of restorative justice in at least some criminal cases. Programs typically function in one of three ways: as a form of diversion from the criminal process, allowing offenders—especially young or first-time offenders—to avoid charges and a conviction; as a form of alternative sentencing; or, in more serious cases, as a way to reduce a criminal sentence. The program Coleman and Williams took part in was a fourth kind: initiated years after their convictions, it did not influence the men’s sentences or release dates, but its deeper purpose was the same—to help participants take responsibility for their wrongdoing and understand themselves better, and, to the extent possible, “make things right,” as Coleman put it.

And of course the heart of the matter:

Another question is also crucial: “What happened?” That may be, in fact, the most important question that gets asked and answered in restorative-justice circles, believes sujatha baliga ’93, a practitioner in Oakland, California, who in 2019 won a MacArthur Fellowship for her work. When things go terribly wrong, says baliga (who prefers to lowercase her name), the need to know what happened and why—and to hear it directly from the person who committed the crime—is one of the deepest and most urgent that survivors feel.

Restorative Justice in New York Magazine: Surrogate survivors and offenders.

Fantastic, emotionally moving article about Restorative Justice concentrating on surrogate conferencing with a mention of Mark Yantzi taking on 1974 Russ Kelly’s case upon which my limited series script Pray for the Devil is based.