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By Michael JordanAs a boy growing up in the country,Larry Bird Team USA Jersey, one of Harold Bascom’s favourite pastimes was going to the cinema. And, as boys often do, he would surely have fantasized about playing the roles of his movie heroes. But unlike his peers, he also dreamed of making movies of his own; movies with Guyanese heroes, who looked like him and spoke like people that he knew.Harold BascomNow a successful artist and writer, the three-time Guyana Prize winner is returning to his first passion. Earlier this year he wrote a movie script ‘Deportee,’ which was shortlisted for the Guyana Prize 2012 (Best Drama category). It’s an eerily accurate and disturbing portrayal of the violent and corrupt nation that Guyana has become. It’s a film script peopled by hit-men, a sleazy Government minister, policemen both crooked and incorruptible, and a deportee trying to turn his life around. With a few subtle changes, Bascom, who is US-based, is hoping to take ‘Deportee’ to the big screen.   Kaieteur News (KN): Why do you want to make Deportee into a movie?Harold Bascom (HB): It is more than ‘wanting to make’; for me it is more a ‘need to make’. I have this burning need to tell this dramatic story—warts and all—about what is going on in Guyana and how screwed up our country has become. KN: Do you consider this venture a step up from the plays you wrote, produced, and directed back in Guyana?HB: As a playwright/producer back in Georgetown, I wrote plays that I described as ‘mirrors’. The intention to film this screenplay is an extension of that. I have always believed that the artist is the antennae of his society. I also believe that popular plays and movies, even though operating on a level of plain entertainment, can be vehicles for serious catharsis on national and international levels.  Right now, decency and morality are in their death throes in Guyana. It is sad that for the average Guyanese, corrupted behaviour has become normal.There is a scene in ‘Deportee’ where a faceless policewoman returns to her impoverished home from her job in the office of the Commissioner of Police. On entering, her wretched mother, who lives in the house, enquires of milk for the toddler. Soon after, there is a rap on the front door. The faceless policewoman opens it and speaks to the faceless criminal in whose pocket she’s in. He asks if there is any new inside information she has to offer. She tells of something transpiring in the Commissioner’s office, but that she doesn’t think it’s of any significance. She then asks her criminal handler if she still can keep the bribe money he brought her. He responds: “Is you own; you’s we inside girl, man. Is just money; we good.”It is my hope that through scenes like the one above, some kind of national catharsis can take place. KN: I think I jumped the gun. What is the screenplay exactly about? Can you give me a synopsis of it?HB: While 43-year-old Ryan Sills (an ex-narcotic kingpin) waits to be deported to Guyana, the country of his birth that he has left since he was four years old, Brook, an ex-member of Sills’ Downtown Brooklyn, New York gang (and currently a hired killer in Georgetown City, Guyana), waits to kill Sills once he’s back on his native soil.Illustration for deporteeBrook feels that Ryan Sills is responsible for the slaughter of his girl, little son, and his teenage brother back in New York.As Ryan waits in a Pennsylvanian Correctional Center to be sent packing back to a Guyana that he scarcely remembers, Brook assassinates a Guyana Government Minister. This sparks a covert investigation to find the minister’s assailants—an investigation led by a female Detective, Loren Barry.The film script, Deportee,Evan Fournier Magic Jersey, cuts between the USA and Guyana.Will Detective Loren Barry apprehend Brook before Ryan Sills is back on his native soil? I guarantee you that the above questions will rivet you into this drama; and the climax will be left with you for a very, very long time. KN: In the judges’ report at the Guyana Prize ceremony, you were chided for losing an opportunity to be more creative and deep with your screenplay. According to them,Clyde Drexler Team USA Jersey, you merely tried to ‘translate’ Guyana, which, to them was probably very shallow. What do you say to that?HB: There are times when the writer sets out to be obscure about what he/she wants to say as in the case of stalwarts like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Wilson Harris. These great writers put out the kind of writings that lure literary snobs out of the woodwork to debate what the writer meant when he wrote what he wrote.But then there are also times when the writer simply wants to record a straight truth without levels upon levels of possible intellectual interpretations. That was my intent when I wrote Deportee: to tell a straight, non-convoluted story. This screenplay was conceived from personal family stories and the stories of people I’ve heard from,DeMarre Carroll Raptors Jersey, regarding deported sons and others relatives,Tracy McGrady Team USA Jersey, and how they, the deported, are making out or not making out back in Guyana once dropped there. In Deportee, I set out to tell a straight story about what is going on in Guyana and how screwed up my country has become. I have no apologies about that. And I just hope that I will be successful in getting it made into a movie. KN: There are some who speculate that you failed to win the Guyana Prize for a fourth time because your screenplay was perceived to be anti-government. What do you say to that?HB: To that I say ‘rubbish!’ The screenplay Deportee, to the contrary, portrays the Government of Guyana quite sympathetically in its need to root out the serious criminal elements.  For example, there is a scene in the screen play where the President, on hearing about the Minister’s death, says to the Minister of Home Affairs:  “This brief press release from my office has me saying that I’ve declared war on the criminal elements in this place. Very dramatic, eh? ‘WAR’ … And you know how people are reacting right now? They’re scoffing—saying, ‘Yeah-right’, and preparing for more of the same. Right now the street pundits are once more pontificating about Government cover-ups, judicial impropriety and ‘dat Jaggy know wha’ goin’ on. …”Nothing about Deportee is anti-government. It just portrays Georgetown as it is—the Guyana Police Force as it is, and this is unfortunate.  I’m also sure that in the process of shooting the movie in Georgetown locations, the tragic division between the haves and have-nots might be bared; but to deem my work pointedly anti-government in any way would be far from the truth. KN: What plans might you have for distribution? Who will be the audience for Deportee providing you get it made? HB: My first audience will be Guyanese—of course, though there are two main problems with that. The first is that there are still less than a million people in Guyana; for an international film distributor such a number doesn’t translate into money. Secondly, Guyana doesn’t respect Universal Copyright conventions for the protection of Intellectual Property, and as such I fear that any film having its premiere on Saturday, will see a million bootleg copies on the streets of Georgetown by Monday. Because of state-condoned illegal activity like the latter, a film maker, artist, or artiste, does not stand to make an iota of profit from his/her creations in Guyana today. And this is something that needs to be addressed.It means, therefore, that to repay producers, I will have to present a film that has a beyond-Guyana kind of appeal. In order to do that, the cast and the way the movie is shot will have to be presented uniquely.  I’m hoping that through film festivals and such, Deportee might help to put Guyana on the map, so to speak,Allen Iverson Team USA Jersey, and garner us some help that might help things to improve socially and economically.  Maybe I’m a pathetic visionary—but you never know.  Face it:  It is only because of films like the 2008 CNN documentary, Escape from Jonestown’ narrated by Soledad O’Brien that Guyana continues to be thought of as this obscure South American, back bush country where Jonestown took place. We all need to change that,Shaquille ONeal Magic Jersey, and I’m hoping that Deportee can help. KN: Have you done a lot of study in film-making, and do you think that your experience in drama will be an asset to you.HB: I have studied film production as a whole; film acting; and film directing in particular, and all of the latter in the self-taught mode. There was a time back in GT when I worked as freelance feature writer for the Daily and Sunday Chronicle, and did a lot of film critiques in my film column, CINE SCENE. I have made myself very knowledgeable in filmmaking, film directing, and film production on the whole. I am ready.Also,Jason Williams Magic Jersey, there was a time I hung around the Guyana Film Centre when it was on Homestretch Avenue. Before Apata, my first novel, I perused the shelves of the JFK Library in Main Street, and do you know what books I borrowed? Books on the techniques of film-making. I was obsessed with film-making a long time back; it was a first love if there ever was. When guys were making films like Aggro Seizeman, and If Wishes were Horses, and Sound of the Sugarcane, I was on fire to make me a film. You must understand that, having grown up in New Road, Vreed-en-Hoop, where the cinema was the village’s main pastime, I was somewhat a child of film. Yes, film-making was my first love. When I decided to write my first novel, it wasn’t because I wanted to be a novelist. No. I wrote, Apata: the Story of a Reluctant Criminal, because I wanted a property that stood to be made into a film. (One of the Heinemann editors thought it would make a great action movie with someone like Sidney Poitier as the star, but none took up the idea.) So time passed and Apata didn’t get made into a film. So I told myself, that maybe I should get into writing and directing plays for stage, and maybe, that way I might find a way to become a film-maker. So I became a playwright in the hope that it might lead to me getting an opportunity to make a film. At one point I played with turning my play The Visa Wedding (starring Collette Jones) into a film. That too, however, didn’t pan out. Now, thirty years after that play, I’ve now written the screenplay, Deportee, and because of the possibility of the phenomena of ‘Crowd Funding’ on sites like ‘Kickstarter’  and ‘Indiegogo’, I am once more hopeful that I can get Deportee financed and made. This is now do or die. It may well be my swansong.KN: So at this stage, where are you on the road to making Deportee into a film?HB: I’m just at the beginning of that road. Right now I’m formulating strategies on finding funding for this undertaking. So, if there are individuals, organizations, companies,custom nba jerseys, associations who might be interested in being part of this venture, maybe they can make contact with me through you, Mike. (Persons interested in contacting Harold Bascom about this venture can reach him via my email address: [email protected])