PROPOSAL/TREATMENT FOR:
By D Stevens
American Gulag
Standing Alone
Ruchell Cinque Magee,
Sole Survivor Still
Slavery is being practiced by the system under color of law – Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today; it's the same thing, but with a new name. They're making millions and millions of dollars enslaving Blacks, poor whites, and others - people who don't even know they're being railroaded. -- Ruchell Cinque Magee
SYNOPSIS:
Ruchell Magee has been called the longest held political prisoner in the world. He has been incarcerated for over forty five years.
By 1971, Ruchell was an astute jailhouse lawyer. He was responsible for the release and protection of a myriad of prisoners benefiting from his extensive knowledge of law, which he used to prepare writs, appeals and lawsuits for himself and many others. He grew up in the rural poor of Louisiana and like many men of color fell into the criminal justice system as a teenager who found the nightmare of Angola State Penitentiary or “The Farm” by age 17.
The Project is meant to be stylistic both in approach and content. From the docudrama involving Ruchell it will then will embed a documentary analysis of current and past prison conditions with emphasis on the economics of prison labor in relationship to the general economy of the country.
The American Penal Prison system, both private and institutional, has been compared to clandestine slavery. Many states utilize prisoners to maintain public roads, fight forest fires, keep up massive farms and dairies and even produce custom design office furniture.
Prison inmates maintain phone banks, make travel reservations, and many times do work too dangerous that cannot meet minimum OSHA standards. California is well known as a state that relies on prison labor and goods to maintain much of its public infrastructure.
The film will then return to the incident with Ruchell Magee. It follows a “Dog Day Afternoon”feel.
BACKGROUND:
Shortly after August 7, 1970, photos of what’s become known as the “Courthouse Slave Rebellion,” hit the front pages of the nation’s dailies showing four Black men emerging from the Marin County Court with guns and hostages, including a judge, prosecutor and three jurors -- provoking panic in some and pride in others.
In the historical context of aggressive, official violence against Black prisoners, Magee appeared in court that fateful morning to testify for fellow prisoner, James McClain, defending himself against the charge of assaulting a guard in the wake of the beating and tear gassing of a prisoner, Fred Billingsley, whom was left to die in his cell.
Magee was on the witness stand when Jonathan Jackson (17), younger sibling of SoledadBrother George Lester Jackson, burst into the courtroom, as George would later describe, “Courage in one hand, assault rifle in the other,” and took charge. The plan was to release McClain and William Christmas, use hostages to make it to a radio station to expose alleged virulent prison conditions, and demand the immediate release of the three “Soledad Brothers” who were facing capital charges in the death of a prison guard -- following the murder of three
Black prisoners at Soledad State Prison. The “Soledad Brothers” were ultimately acquitted, Jackson posthumously. Ruchell Magee took advantage of the situation and took the shotgun offered to him by McCain. Magee secured positioned the barrel just under Presiding Judge Harold Haley’s chin with white duck tape. Judge Haley remained calm as Magee paused before entering the courtyard and the
awaiting van to ‘freedom’. Magee addressed the stunned jurors, as would a lawyer in
summation stating that he had been illegally held and had a right to try to escape invoking “The Amistad Principle”, the famous 19th century slave rebellion, which set precedent of slaves seeking freedom that had been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The film segues into Ruchell going into a trance like state that begins to show a monochrome sepia tone. The courtroom scene morphs into a docudrama and follows a collage of images paired with mini stories of real life slaves on plantations working the fields to post civil war chain gangs
doing the same kind of work. VO techniques utilize real life stories depicting involuntary servitude from slavery through current day prison incarceration in both state/federal and private institutions. In these prison scenarios, real slaves diaries are read by notable spokespeople and later by current prisoners outlining the amount of work and length of prison sentences and crimes
convicted of. This is interlaced with factual information describing the economic benefit of prison labor, both for government and private industry.
The one thousand per cent increase in prison population since 1970, up to eighty per cent for drug related crimes equate to a labor force that produces much if not most of government furniture (e.g. includes schools, courthouses, libraries etc.), clothing (e.g. all Kevlar helmets for military are made in Beaumont Texas while military clothing manufacturing show women sewing uniforms with big male and female guards supervise their activity). Firefighters, diary farms, farm labor and dangerous contracts frequently rely on prison labor. The infrastructure
of the American economy would collapse without the forced or coerced cheap labor source provided by incarceration.
The public perception of incarceration exasperated by “LOCK UP…” type TV shows persuading that little more than cages prevent untamed animals being released into the public. While the economic boom from prison labor is only herald in the annual reports from publicly traded companies on Wall Street. The industry as a whole has been a darling of the Big Board.
The film picks segues from the documentary style back into the current colorful docudrama. Magee finishes speaking to the jurors follows Jonathan out towards the exit door. He holds the shotgun securely around Judge Haley’s neck. The group of prisoners with their hostages in tow gets into the waiting van. Surrounding the Court Yard, a waiting army takes aim. In a barrage of gunfire that ensued in the lush Marin County Courtyard, Christmas, Jackson, McClain and Judge Haley were killed, the prosecutor was seriously wounded (remains paralyzed), a juror slightly injured, and Magee was critically wounded and lay unconscious. Professor Angela Y. Davis was captured and imprisoned for having purchased the guns (legally) and was later acquitted of all charges in a separate trial.
On a uncommonly warm summer day in June of 1972 in a courtroom in San Francisco, Magee stood, not much more than 135 pounds of him – soft featured and sullen eyes – the only clues of his bitterness and capacity for violence. Behind bullet proof glass partitions, protecting him from the public and the press or vice versa, he stands manacled, and surrounded by guards, Magee faced the system.
Magee tells his story: (typos included) “I was charged with kidnap to rob for $10 in the Los Angeles prosecution, which commenced March 1963. A life sentence from L.A. still goes on 45 years later. The Board turned 7 years to life, into life without possibility of parole. I was also charged with kidnap out of Marin County Courthouse, August 7,1970, in addition to murder and conspiracy charges. I was acquitted of the more serious kidnap charge (PC 209), although the jury verdict was not honored, but convicted of the simple kidnap charge (PC 207). You will find the murder and conspiracy charges were dismissed”.
In an affidavit signed by the elected Jury Foreman in Magee’s trial Bernard J. Suares stated on August 6, 2001, “That at the end of the jury’s deliberations (commenced on March 26, 197 and terminated April 3, 1973) all 12 jurors found Mr. Magee not guilty of violating P.C. 209 (kidnapping for the purpose of extortion).... I have appealed to the Court and have presented proof of acquittal…”
In a letter to Public Defender Richard Such, dated May 2, 1975, Juror David F Smith stated: “The State presented no evidence to indicate that Mr. Magee knew in advance that an escape attempt would be made.... Most of the jurors thought that Magee was a person who felt strongly that he had been wrongfully imprisoned, who felt morally entitled to be free under the Constitution and the laws of the land...who sensed a momentous possibility of immediate freedom and who grasped at it.”
Ruchell was beaten by guards in the Courtroom, in front of a jury, as Judge Herbert V. Walker sat, watched and did nothing. Judge Walker instructed the jury that they had to find Ruchell either guilty or insane. Ruchell called a 'moron' by Federal Judge Sam Conti. Judge Conti created false documents in furtherance of the conspiracy; denied Ruchell self-representation; prevented Ruchell from meeting with the media (international dope dealers are permitted media visits); denied due process and habeas corpus and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for crimes he did not commit and was found not guilty”.
The trial was an illumination of the Local, State and Federal agencies “war” on any and all ‘radical’ movements in the U.S. Then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as “the greatest threat to internal security in the country”.
The FBI’s COUNTERPOL program had full knowledge of the escape attempt and had passed on information to San Quentin authorities, San Francisco SWAT, San Marin County and other law enforcement were aware. Yet they laid in wait for an expected firefight.
Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Attorney Robert Carrow joined with Mr. Magee’s defense; Magee had argued and won the right to represent himself with co-counsels even with the State’s argument that Mr. Magee had been tested at an I.Q. level of 78. Weighed down with wrist cuffs, legs irons and chains around his waist, Mr. Magee managed to interrogate and cross-examine and present a formidable defense. At times combative and untrusting even to his co-counsels (who submitted powerful legal briefs), Mr. Magee was impressive and eventually victorious on the most serious charges.
Ramsey Clark pointed out “…It is common practice for poor people in America to be locked up, beaten, framed and denied due process and bail, it happens every day in America. What is unusual is that Ruchell has documented and kept a record of the conspiracy for the world to see and read. He kept a record of the dates, times, names and places, Documented Court records, transcripts, motions, complaints and briefs reveal a grand conspiracy…”
Ruchell's introduction of Joseph Cinque's "slave resistance" defense in the Amistad case in 1841 said it was illegal to enslave a free man, and that "A slave has the right to resist slavery, "which Joseph Cinque did, violently and was found "not guilty of murdering his captives." The jurors in Ruchell’s case, all 12, found him "not guilty" in the Marin Court incident. Juror Moses Shepard said in his declaration dated April 28, 1973, "That, under the law, rightfully applied, he Ruchell) should be a free man," and if he had been freed after the first acquittal, he would not have been in the Marin court room on August 7th 1970!
Ruchell was convicted on the lesser charges on that day and was quickly put in segregation units and high security isolation. At Pelican Bay he was in isolation for the next seventeen years. He has survived in the above ground bunkers of the monolithic futuristic prison. Ruchell won another battle and after seventeen year in isolation and was released to main line population. A worldwide movement supports Ruchell for release. At every parole hearing – worldwide groups and supporters bring up the issue of America’s longest held political prisoner.
TREATMENT:
(See attached treatment for feature film ‘Standing Alone’)
This documentary is at its core a really-real “reality show”; crammed with a rare opportunity to see first-hand the frontline trenches of what globalization of labor force in U.S. Prisons. The use of still images will give a time line (akin to Errol Morris in SOP) that allows a history to be set in motion through creative use of pictures set in a Matrix like CGI.
Driven with a heavy music soundtrack driving the forces of social issues will keep a beat alive with stylistic approach, innovative camera techniques and collage effect that lends itself to inter-cuts between reality and recreation. Documents, stills, voice over and interviews will make this a humanistic story of triumph of wills and fortitude. Music selection ranging from Gangster Rap to Celtic to Opera to Jazz – underscoring the mood of the moment, the geography of time.
It will recreate scenes that will seem at times almost surreal. From Angola Penitentiary to Pelican Bay it can be almost a kaleidoscope panorama with multiple angled screens and multiple screened time lines (same time different screens – e.g. interior/exterior of courtroom vs. court yard) screens. It will at first be a documentary but allowing music, visuals, and recreations to lend a distinctive stylistic approach It will document that prison is a business and what funnels many into the criminal justice system is endemic to America’s inner city.
It is also meant to show how people cope. The way of survival. The humor, the worship, the non-stereotypical approach of how prisoners find time to do time and accept their condition. And those prisoners who do not.
TREATMENT for feature:
WGAw
D Stevens
STANDING ALONE
An Illusion of Justice
A Treatment
By
D Stevens
He stood there – a slight, almost frail man, not much more than 135 pounds, soft featured – his fierce, sullen eyes the only clue to his smoldering bitterness, the capacity for violence that had made him seem such a monster in
public prints.
An azure silhouette, a de-saturated commentary of his life, it was Ruchell Magee. Ruchell Magee all those newspapers stories said, who had marched out of the Marin County Courthouse on August 7, 1970, holding a shotgun taped to Judge Harold Haley’s head. It was Ruchell Magee, the stories said, who had pulled the trigger inside the getaway van, blowing Haley’s brains out. And it was Ruchell Magee, they said, who had become so disruptive during subsequent legal proceedings – kicking and spitting at his own attorney, screaming obscenities and radical rhetoric at
the judge – that he had to be chained to his chair and gagged with towels.
But the Ruchell Magee who stood in a San Francisco courtroom on that uncommonly warm June morning in1972 seemed neither demented monster nor revolutionary firebrand. Oh, sure, he waved a clenched fist salute to his supporters in the courtroom, but the gesture really seemed almost perfunctory obligatory – not unlike a man pecking his wife on the cheek as he sprints to go to work in the
morning, Magee was far more concerned at the moment with the large envelopes full of legal briefs he was carrying. Like a scene from a surreal parallel universe, this lone figurine stands in a darken room. Like in a trial of a futuristic Orwellian Big Brother, the diminutive statue of Ruchell Magee is transfixed into a lifeless figurine doll before a monolithic podium; a judicial giant juxtaposed against a man-child.
An authoritative voice is heard from the podium, “there will be no outburst in this courtroom.” Looking up at the podium, Magee sees the jurist as a man watching a hooded executioner. “There will be a proper judicial atmosphere
at all times,” then turning down, directly at Magee, Judge Morton Colvin says, challenging, “I expect you to behave yourself.”
Flashback twenty years: rolling hills, sweet pine trees line a picturesque Highway 10 on this humid afternoon, Parish Country Louisiana. From the inside of a Franklinton police vehicle, an exaggerated chinless officer with a beer gut steers his police cruiser. The officer slows as he passes twelve chain gang inmates wearing white jump suits with black stripes with the letters ‘A.S.P.’ emblazed on their backs, branding them Angola State Penitentiary inmates. They wear worn leg shackles in pairs, sweating quietly, while working the landscape. The patrolman nods knowingly towards the two mounted guards holding scoped M-1 rifles at the ready.
In a county with a history of Ku Klux Klan as vivid as its bayou country, the heart of canebrake country, this image of an all black chain gang supervised by two
white prison guards on horse back seem almost cliché. A 13-year-old black boy sits on the side of the road looking at cars passing. Next to the boy sits a menacing
black German Shepard dog. The boy sees the police cruiser, the dog snarls. This young Ruchell Magee sits like in a trance, alone, and thinking. His older cousin Linda approaches and mentions that his aunt wants him back at the house to finish some schoolwork. The dog snarls. Linda retreats as Ruchell tells her that he has better things to do. “Yeah,” Linda retorts “… you better stay away from that lady…she going to get you in trouble.”
Young Magee, 16, lies in bed with his lover, a 22 years old white girl whose obvious mutual attraction belies any age difference. Waking up, she rushes a tired Magee out of her house before dawn. Five years later Ruchell, 21, walks out of Angola State Penitentiary. Passing through a labyrinth of beaten men who toil in various jobs throughout the grounds. The men, he knows, whose futures lie in the common graveyard reserved for the forgotten. Numbers on the rows of white crosses are the only clues that these may have been once been proud human beings who hopes and dreams are at rest now, enjoying the peaceful respite from Angola, euphuistically
called “The Farm.” Magee was paroled from Angola on October 9, 1962. He then came to Los Angeles to live with his Aunt Bea and her husband Uncle Freddie. His behavior, for several months, was bizarre, bordering on the psychotic. He almost
seemed, at times, to think he was still in Angola: sleeping on the living-room floor, instead of in bed; wearing the same clothes day after day; waking up in a cold sweat; talking irrationally; arguing about the most trivial subject; demanding
that his viewpoint be acknowledged as the only correct one. Ruchell was beginning to run with a “bad crowd” during those first few months in Los Angeles, his Aunt
Bea remembers, and she pleaded with his probation officer to “get him some help.” Then, on March 23, 1963, Magee was arrested again this time for robbery and kidnapping. A confrontation outside the Tropicana Club in South Central, Ruchell and his cousin Stewart are trying to sell some grass. They see Ben Brown, a man that Ruchell does not like but still wants to see if they can make some quick
cash by selling him some grass.
Brown and Magee get into the front seats of Browns 1961 Impala. A girl is sitting in
the back already; Stewart gets into the back with her. Magee had thoughts to actually beat up Brown, but things didn’t work out that way, and all four – Magee, Stewart, Brown and the girl – go for a ride. No money exchanges hands,
Magee offers to sell Brown some marijuana, Brown responds by saying he’d let Magee sleep with the girl in exchange for the grass. Magee knows the girl from several weeks before and Brown’s reply angers him. Magee and Stewart then
take turns waving a gun that Magee finds under the front seat of Brown’s car. Brown jumps from the car and flees and eventually calls the police.
In the darkened chamber Magee screams to this Orwellian courtroom:
“I am an innocent man. I am not guilty of the 1963 robbery-kidnap charge and, thus, have spent seven years in prison I should have been free on the streets. If an accurate transcript of the first trail had been made available to the appellate court in that case, the verdict would have been reversed for insufficient evidence, rather than for the “prejudicial misjoinder.” Had that been the finding, I would have been turned loose, rather than retried. There would have been no second trial and no conviction. I would have been free.”
The landscape of San Francisco bay is hidden by morning fog. The early morning toil of laborers is heard working in a metal shop making custom light fixture for state offices. A wood worker puts the finishing the touches on a judge’s high back chair. The workers are all wearing prison uniforms. Except for the numbers affixed to their pants, they appear as every day laborers and craftsmen. Magee sits in a 4x8 cell in the infamous Adjustment Center of San Quentin prison, which houses the
incorrigibles, the troublemakers. Magee pours over volumes of legal books; transfixed he copies, in long hand, legal briefs and precedent court decisions. He falls asleep on the floor using his steel metal bed for a desk over flowing with
papers, articles, and research.
In the Marin County Courthouse, Judge Harold Haley presides over a case involving the beating of a guard by an inmate two days after a guard had shot several inmates on a basketball court from the Adjustment Center. Magee sits on the witness stand called by James McClain, the convict he has decided to risk the wrath of the
San Quentin guards by the very fact he was testifying. Inside the darkened Orwellian chamber Magee stands alone with a spotlight on this non-repentant defendant.
“You’re in a direct conspiracy with the attorney general to label me an insane person,” Magee said. “I’m being treated viciously and in a salve manner. You are holding me up to public ridicule…you feed the public a bunch of garbage that makes me appear a moron.”
The spotlight widens to reveal two defense councils, Robert Carrow and Ramsey Clark offering closing argument to the semi lighted jury box. Robert Carrow speaks first. “Mr. Magee had not planned the escape attempt. He did not even know it was coming. He was in court to testify on behalf of James McClain who had been accused of beating up a guard. He was due for parole, your honor; he
was due to be out within four months. He felt an obligation to say what he knew, what he saw: about the abuse, about the killings, about the sadistic nature of some the prison guards at San Quentin. He did not need to be there.” Ramsey Clark steps up to continue speaking to the jurors. “Mr. Magee had been determined to find a way out during the years after what he considers his illegal conviction of the robbery-kidnap charge. He has been studying law in his cell. He has become a competent legal attorney. He has filed motions and briefs and lawsuits on every point he
could find, technical or substantive – all to no avail. He found himself frustrated, embittered, with all legal remedies all but exhausted. He found himself presented on August 7, 1970 with an opportunity to escape.”
In the Marin Country Courthouse, a young activist comes in through the courthouse door. Jonathan Jackson – pulls out a gun. He orders McClain to take charge. McClain points other guns at the jurors – to the judge. They quickly overtake the courthouse guards. McClain looks at Magee. Magee at first hesitates. McClain yells at him, “this is your chance, bro.” Magee accepts the shotgun offered to him. The roles of the imprisoned have now reversed, barking orders like they are so use to hearing barked at them. Ruchell points the shotgun at Judge Haley and turns to offer a ‘speech’ to the jurors. He goes on for fifteen minutes about his ‘cause’ is to get to a radio station in Berkeley to show, to tell the world about the injustice of the US in general an to black prisoners, specifically.
Judge Haley shakes, but he is calm as Ruchell very quickly, expertly, wraps masking tape it around the barrel of his shotgun. He wraps the tape around the judges’ neck and wraps more tape of the shotgun to his own wrist and hand. Jonathan shouts that his cause is to take hostages and to free his brother, the firebrand revolutionary-writer, George Jackson and his fellow “Soledad Brothers,” John Cluchette and Fleeta Drumgo. He wants them released within hours from San Quentin.
In the darkened chamber of the Orwellian Courtroom, Ruchell continues speaking to the monolithic podium with just a narrow spotlight beaming down on him as if a comedian at a nightclub doing a stand up. “My purpose was to free myself, to inform America of the conditions of the penal institution. To let America know that slavery exists and that prisoners are being used as slaves. They build your courthouse furniture, they repair your roads, and they supply your milk and fight your fires. If they refuse, they are called incorrigibles and are punished severally, if not out right killed.”
A segue into a distinct hue (sepia tone) that transform the courtroom back through the past. A history lesson begins with the VO of Ruchell Magee starting the time-line of past slavery, from the Africa through the Middle Passages and through the Americas in 17th 18th and 19th centuries. The VO now heard are from diaries of slaves describing their capture, their passage and their servitude. Cinematic recreating actual conditions of slavery and the economic impact therein. The heavy and creative use of still images emphasizing a time-line from the Old South and
the period following the reconstructions; leading into the institutions of slavery as it occurs even today. With explicit overt working conditions of rural and urban poor coupled with the inescapable shackles of hidden poverty (NOTE: see
Michael Harrington “The Hidden Poor), which many times, is the precursor to entrance into criminal justice system. Current day prisoners read from their own diaries of their life in and out of being institutionalized. They
comment on the current crop of “LOCKUP IN…” documentaries that seemingly depict ALL prisoners as next to animals who need to be isolated and kept away from society. Their lives sound like abbreviated shorthand for dreams deferred or never realized.
The transition from the reality based documentary and their respective diaries and recreations morphs back into the courtroom of Ruchell Magee talking to the empanelled jurors: “I had exhausted ALL remedies of seeking my illegal detention in the penal colony of America. I am an innocent man. In law, if a man is being enslaved illegally, he has a right to try and free himself. I have renamed myself Cinque, in honor of the brother who mounted a successful slave revolt on the slave ship ‘Amistad.’ Cinque successful argued in court that he had a right to seek freedom because he was illegally captured. That is the principal of my defense. I did not kill Judge Haley, I sought to get free and redress my grievances on a public forum, to go to Berkeley and air my argument to America. The San Quentin guards, the Marin Country Sheriffs, the San Francisco Police Department – all conspired to
kill Judge Haley. They conspired to kill all of the prisoners that day. Their bullets penetrated Judge Haley prior to my finger involuntary pulling the trigger. He was already dead at the hands of the pigs.”
In Marin County Courtroom, Magee continues speaking to the jurors. They rush to the door. McClain leads the hostages into the van. The gunfire, four dead bodies. Magee seriously wounded. And charges of murder, kidnap and
conspiracy The new figure is spotlighted in the darken courtroom. For the people and the State of California, a well dressed, well-rehearsed state prosecutor is standing. “The state contends the purpose of the courthouse raid was to take
hostages for ransom – the ransom being Jonathan’s brother, George, and the other two “Soledad Brothers.” Mr. Magee was part of a conspiracy to not only free the Soledad Brothers, but to create an atmosphere of discontent throughout the
nations prison system. As for Magee, defending himself, Your Honor Mr. Magee has been tested to have an IQ of 75.
Outside the San Francisco courtroom, the state prosecutor is talking to the assembled media. “Ruchell went along – at the last minute when James McClain, the convict he was testifying for, called him to join – making a speech to the jurors telling them he was escaping so he could hold a “radio conference” to tell the
world what was being done to blacks in prison.” The prosecutor renews his efforts to convince an almost hostile audience, “Ruchell is a troublemaker. He has
provided fuel to disrupt. On August 21, 1971 George Jackson was killed in San Quentin, smuggling a gun. September 9, 1971, Attica took place. Eleven corrections officers lost their lives. Prisoners were chanting ‘Free Ruchell’ repeatedly as part of their demands.” News footage of the Attica rebellion with handkerchiefed prisoners calling for freeing of Ruchell Magee plays over the voice-over of the prosecutor.
Supporters of Ruchell in the audience try and drown out the prosecutor with chants demanding the freeing of Ruchell Magee. One-man shouts, “…call it the execution of George Jackson.” Another man says, “George died a revolutionary death, Ché lives” another proclaims “revolutionary suicide.”
In the Orwellian Courtroom, Magee stands alone with only the one light focused on him. Another light fades up to show twelve jurors listening to him. The lead juror speaks out. “We find the defendant not guilty of California Code Penal Code number 187, for the charge of murder in the first degree.” Another light shines on the monolithic podium and show a black caped judge who polls the jurors, “so
say you one, so says you all.” Crescent City characterizes the natural beauty and wonder that west coast has to offer. Highway 101 easily meanders through ocean vistas and unrivaled scenery. A brand new Department of Corrections custom black and white bus motors the paved highway. It arrives at a futuristic building with no windows, no openings. This is December 1989, the opening day of the new Max Security prison at Pelican Bay California. It is akin to a 2001 A Space Odyssey film
set, a center high tech command centers that extends octopus like tentacles in all directions. It is an intimidating structures that exemplifies impenetrability. Two men are escorted from that bus, both shackled hands, feet, ankles, wrists, and waists. The two men are Hugo Pinell and Ruchell Magee. They are stripped, searched, and led naked and shackled to the depths of their new sterile hell. They will both never see the day of light again.
Today, an elderly Magee sits alone in the sterile cell, located in the pod of the neo-prison maze for the most dangerous of criminals. He reads and studies. His sanity, his life is questionable. The windswept beauty of Pelican Bay in the distance foreshadows a flight of Pelicans flying free. Nina Simone sings, “I wish I knew how it feels to be free.” A rolling scroll from a quote from Amnesty International, “Ruchell Magee – the longest held political prisoner in the world. Twenty two years in solitary confinement and forty four years incarcerated in state prisonsystems both in Louisiana and California.”
© D Stevens
WGAw
AUDIENCE:
The expected audience is men and women with social consensus between 18-60 with an interest in politics.
DISTRIBUTION:
Potential distribution outlets include US and European public television stations, national cable outlets like The Learning Channel, MSNBC, or CNN, the CBC, and the BBC. Other probable distribution to TV Networks.
BUDGET - TBD:
Research and travel and develop script draft and a documentary outline. $12,000. 6 weeks
total (4 weeks travel – 4 weeks write/research) Option: Camera/Sound Person/Assistant
Total $35,000.
Start Dec 1 deadline January 2015.
Feature film budget EST: 22m (65 days shoot)
Documentary budget EST: $550,000 (30 day shoot/45 day post)
FUNDING:
After initial research, draft and outline is completed. One possible avenue is through Attorney
Wayne Lewis (UK) who has sources.
RIGHTS:
Negotiable.
KEY PERSONNEL:
D Stevens – Director/writer/editor
Wayne Lewis – Ex Producer
Additional Editor
Assistant to Director
Host or Voice Over
Additional writer(s)
Camera Person/Camera Asst
Sound Engineer
Production Assistant (3)
ADDITIONAL INFO:
The documentary will be shot largely HDTV Panasonic P2 multi camera. Documentary footage,
live action, achieved footage and an original soundtrack.
The feature film will be shot Red Dragon. (See www.red.com) if possible. A short ‘wish’ would include from a list of actors I have worked with.
Locations would include:
San Francisco, Marin
Pelican Bay
San Quentin
Soledad State Prison
Angola State Prison (LA)
Los Angeles CA
Louisiana (various)
CONTACT INFO:
D Stevens
213 364 6000
AmericanGulag-themovie.com (building)
