Finding Stephon Marbury

In recent decades, as the popularity of basketball has grown and spread throughout the world, many stand-out players from the United States have traveled overseas and enjoyed long and productive careers as professional athletes. Of this ever-growing pool of talents, a select few have been former players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Fewer have been NBA players of note.  And fewer still have been as prominent as Stephon Marbury.

Long among the NBA’s most elite players and scintillating talents, Marbury found his stock decline after of series of very public controversies led many in both the league and the media to question his judgment, his professionalism, and his commitment to team play. And at the end of the 2009 season, Marbury, 32, a thirteen-year veteran and two-time All-Star, found himself unsigned and uncertain of his future as a professional athlete and public figure.

That changed a short time later when Marbury joined the Shanxi Zhongyu Brave Dragons of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), and quickly established himself as one of the league’s premier players — earning MVP honors in the CBA’s All-Star Game, inking a three-year extension, and securing a commitment from the Brave Dragons to help grow and promote his Starbury sneaker brand in mainland China.

As he embarks on what may prove to be the final leg of his athletic career, Marbury — a “streetwise” player and persona forged in the crucible of New York City’s public courts; a world-renowned athlete who has triumphed at the highest levels of amateur and professional competition — finds himself a stranger in a strange land, cast adrift from the fame and fortune of the NBA, and dreaming, some speculate, of someday returning.

What are Marbury’s plans for the near future? What are the key challenges he faces — how has he created a sense of normalcy — in a society so radically different from our own? What wisdom has he earned from his experiences? And what, if anything, does he want to share with the world?

“Finding Stephon Marbury” will explore those questions and serve as Marbury’s reintroduction to America, giving him the opportunity — perhaps for the first time in his adult life — to control the narrative that defines him.

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This concept summary is excerpted from an original-series treatment conceived, written and designed by me in 2010. (Both the “Finding…” series and the “Finding Stephon Marbury” installment are registered with the WGA West, Inc.)

 

Jean Quixoté: Wyclef’s Quest for the Haitian Presidency

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“Jean Quixoté…” is a documentary film/series that provides a sustained, behind-the-scenes glimpse into Haitian-born, Grammy Award®-winning musician Wyclef Jean’s improbable candidacy to become the President of Haiti — the 12th in the last 20 years.

Against the backdrop of the Haitian landscape, the program will follow Wyclef along the campaign trail – observing his most public and his most private moments, and tracing his evolution from world-renowned pop star and political novice to aspiring statesman and world leader.

Using archival film and photographic footage, narrative voice-over, excerpted news coverage and “talking-head” interviews with academics, journalists, relief workers and prominent Haitian leaders, the program will provide a summary of Haiti’s richly complex history — balancing that against a clear, unsentimental depiction of the nation’s contemporary struggles both before and after the January earthquake.

Through interviews and impromptu Q&As with Wyclef, as well as with elected leaders and commentators from other nations in the region (including the US), the program will seek to capture greater insights into Wyclef’s motivations for running, his fears and anxieties regarding the undertaking (particularly in light of the violence and instability that have historically plagued the office), his vision for the nation, and his preparedness for the enormous — and unpredictable — challenges he would face as President.

In witnessing his reception among Haitian citizens and members of Haiti’s Establishment, exploring the opinions of supporters and detractors (including his challengers), capturing the struggles, triumphs, frustrations and defeats that await him and his campaign, the program will document Wyclef’s “performance” as a political candidate — charting where and when the music stops.

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This concept summary is excerpted from an original treatment conceived, written and designed by me in 2010. (“Jean Quixoté” is registered with the WGA East, Inc.)