The 234 Apartment

On a humid July night , the Nuyorican Poets Caf é reeked of must and marijuana. An age-old music venue tucked away on a tree-lined street in New York’s Alphabet City, the small space was packed tightly with twentysomethings dressed in baggy pants and skate T-shirts, fanny packs slung across their torsos. They were gathered to see the night’s main act, Wiki, the rapper best known as one-third of the hip- hop crew Ratking . When Wiki emerged, all five feet seven of him, the crowd exploded. “Let’s get it,” he said, his grin exposing a wide gap on the top row of his teeth — the result of an unfortunate punch to the face that has become something of a trademark for the 23-year-old. And then he started rhyming: “ I like Sunday dinner lounging/Kids in the crib clowning/City park kids running through the fountains, man/I like the mountain.” Everything about Wiki is straight New York. Born Patrick Morales , he’s a half-Irish, half–Puerto Rican self-described mutt from the city’s Upper West Si...

Three of the four men charged with kidnapping and sexually assaulting the girl are also behind bars. The men are from Honduras, immigrants who found a home at the Heatherwood Apartments. The complex, near Peoria and Colfax in Aurora, is a racial melting pot , one that came to a boil on August 7, when a girl trying to leap to womanhood in a single summer got a very adult lesson. The violence bred more violence -- and more victims. News accounts the next day reported that a seventy-person mob had delivered street justice to one of the accused rapists. Although the reports weren't quite right -- nothing in this saga is -- street justice may be the only justice here. Anna grew up in the neighborhood and has a huge family of siblings and half-siblings. Anna has another daughter who was also taken away by Social Services when Anna went to prison. The girls have a baby brother, too, a child Anna gave birth to after she got out of prison two years ago. That baby has a different father w...

Until Saturday, August 12th, Debra Godfrey liked to sit on her front porch in the afternoons. She’d smoke a Newport and watch what little traffic there was pass by. Godfrey, who is fifty-one, lives in Belmont, a quiet neighborhood on the southeast side of Charlottesville, Virginia. Kids would play together after they got off the school bus a couple of houses down. Neighbors would walk past with their dogs, waving hello, as they headed to a nearby park. These days, Godfrey mostly stays inside in the afternoons. The neighborhood is still quiet, she said. “But it’s more quiet. People are more alert.” August 12th was the day of an alt-right rally called “Unite the Right,” which devolved into violence as thousands of white supremacists and counter-protesters swarmed through the city’s downtown streets. The unrest made international headlines and left a thirty-two-year-old counter- protester named Heather Heyer dead , with dozens more injured. For Godfrey, who is black, the day’s chaos has...

Stephen King said it best: “i f you don’t have the time to read , you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” It’s essential that screenwriters are not only regularly watching films and TV but reading scripts too. What’s on the page and what’s in the film can vary, and it’s vital for developing a writing style and honing your craft. Fortunately, we’ ve collected twenty of the very best.   A contentious list, maybe, but  scroll down to check out not necessarily the 20 best screenplays of all time, but 20 we feel you can learn most from. CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE 20 SCRIPTS! The 20 Screenplays [embedded content] Wilder and Diamond are one of Hollywood’s legendary writing partnerships . Following SOME LIKE IT HOT they would go on to Oscar success with THE APARTMENT and write the screenplays for a string of ’60s comedies from ONE, TWO, THREE to THE FORTUNE COOKIE. SOME LIKE IT HOT is witty, tightly constructed , slyly subversive and full of colourful, larger than life character...