Drama | Survival In Paradise: The Screenplay

My film script Survival In Paradise,  discussed in an earlier post, has now been entered in several screenwriting competitions and is in the reading queue of three or four producers who are mutual friends of either myself or Manfred Wolf, the author of the memoir from which this work is derived. See http://www.survivalinparadise.com

Initial feedback from knowledgeable friends is that the script is not exciting enough to be a commercial success.  Perhaps so.  In my attempt to remain true to Dr. Wolf’s original text, the script is fully free of “invented” plot twists.  To be sure, there are nail-biting moments, as the family  flees Holland and follows a path across Europe—right under the noses of occupying German forces.  But the script is also deliberately cerebral, and at times even “talky,” more like a stageplay.  What I attempted to do was present a braided narrative, mixing the early trauma of Wolf’s life with his later psychological struggle to shake off the negative effects—and then to end with an ephiphany where he casts off the chains of the past.  All of this is true to the original, without exception.  If the resulting screenplay is exciting and terror-laden at times and then “artsy” and cerebral at others,  then so is life.

Please read my screenplay and judge for yourself.  Comments hugely appreciated.

SURVIVALINPARADISE by Vernon Miles Kerr