Alan Duff

Behind the Faces

cadministrator11 October 8, 2016November 27, 2016 Scripted Series

Behind the Faces – Series by Alan Duff

A 13 x 1 hour, 3 Seasons television drama series.

Three stories gradually converge: From America to New Zealand, the World War II battlegrounds of Crete and the Pacific, to a German P.O.W camp, a Japanese P.O.W camp.

Unlikely friendships and unions in war and peace.

New York, June 1938, heavyweight German boxer Max Schmeling challenges Joe Louis for his title. American media dub it: “Freedom versus Fascism,” call Max “Hitler’s stooge.” Some black Americans dare to hope a Louis victory might bring an end to segregation. Sparring partner, Karl Engel, has strong Aryan super-race views, not shared by Schmeling, whose loss upsets the Nazis.

In Mississippi, teenage Negro siblings Jess & Betty Hines witness a white mob tar and feather, thence lynch and burn a fellow Negro. Louis’ victory didn’t change a thing. Across the world in New Zealand, a couple walk through their thermally active village of Whaka in Rotorua, with their toddler daughter. Henry Takahe tells his wife he’s signed up for the war in Europe against Hitler.

At army training camp a white guy, Sam Hooper, becomes Henry’s best friend. In Egypt, their special stealth unit create minor havoc amongst Rommel’s troops. Crete the next battle ground. The Nazis conscript Max to humble paratrooper duty; a bad parachute landing on Crete breaks a leg. A large number of Kiwi soldiers are captured. Henry and Sam escape, on the run for months on a German killing spree. But they cannot kill teenage soldiers.

Jess, conscripted into the U.S. Marines, finds himself in New Zealand, a training camp for the Pacific btf Campaign against the Japanese. Marines visit Whaka to see the thermal sights, showering locals with gifts and charm; show the women different dance steps. Jess meets Lena, wife of war-absent Henry Takahe. He’s sent off to fight in the steaming jungles of Burma. A child grows in Lena’s belly.

Eventually r bcdpow1 ecaptured, the Kiwi duo arrive to a POW camp lorded over by a bunch of London Cockneys led by a former boxer and criminal, Terry Hatton. Karl’s punishment for association with Schmeling is guard duty at the POW camp in Austria. Henry tries to bust up Terry’s rule and gets soundly whipped. Sam is next. Karl sets aside his racial views and teaches Henry how to box.

A new commandant shows a humane side. Most his staff do not like it, including Karl. The Inspector of Prisons is out to get Commandant Hauer fired. The regional Gestapo commander, Dieter Koch, wants him executed, the camp on minimal rations and under severe discipline. It will be revealed why Walter Hauer is so liberal.

In the jungles of Asia, Jess and his fellow black marines have two enemies: The Japs and their white compatriots. A bunch are taken captive.

It’s He btf3 ll on earth. Whites still despise blacks. Jess’s extraordinary dance and song routine so often saves his fellow POWs from certain death he wins the whites’ respect. His child back in Whaka, New Zealand, has his 1st birthday. His sister Betty is lynched by a white mob.

Life in the two camps are stark contrasts, along with Lena’s guilt- burdened life back in Whaka village. Three stories keep converging. Sam and Adele are in love. Koch packs Henry off to a notorious punishment prison. Three of his German captors, along with Sam, go and rescue him. First Japan then Germany surrender. Everyone goes their separate ways.

Several stories tell of two nations’ moral failings. Japanese torture of POWs contrast with Hauer’s humane regime. Between Henry & Walter, Karl rejects his super-race views. Sam opens Adele to find a hurt child still angry at her abused childhood.

Season 1 ends and Season 2 has a new young hero dubbed “Yank,” the offspring of Lena and Jess. He’s musically gifted, with the ability to travel back in time to his Maori ancestral pasto another world revealed.

Platinum Bestselling books, Duff also wrote the original screenplay for Once Were Warriors and won NZFT Best Screenplay Award for Brokenhearted.

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Attila – The Making of a Gangster

jbadministrator10 March 31, 2015November 23, 2016 Scripted Series

Attila – The Making of a Gangster is based on the novel, Szabad, written by Alan Duff, the author and screenwriter of Once Were Warriors.

The story begins in Budapest in 1956 where young Attila Szabo is a 20 year old university student. He wants to believe in the ideals of communism despite the constant propaganda, food rations, suffocating bureaucracy, and secret police known as AVO. When he witnesses the brutal death of his father, something in him breaks and he turns to a different way of being. He learns to be violent and cunning. Driven by necessity, he moves to London in 1963 and carves out a place for himself in a world populated by hardened criminals.

It’s 1956 in Budapest, Hungary. Attila Szabo, a 20 year old university student, faces constant communist propaganda, food rations, suffocating bureaucracy, and the secret police known as AVO. He wants to believe in communism, yet his instincts don’t. His beloved father, unjustly imprisoned, comes home a broken man. Witnessing his father shot dead in the street defiant to the end, something breaks in Attila. Not his will, but innocence. He sees the officials at exclusive restaurants and shops, wining and dining, citizens violently arrested by AVO, the bread queues, and he realizes it’s all a lie.

With his three close friends, Janos, Milan and Klaudia, they break into the homes of officials, mainly to steal decent food. A security guard, Tibor, sees Attila in the street, remembers stopping him in the upper-class neighbourhood. They come to an arrangement.

A beautiful woman, Aranka, her husband and child, move into the flat above the Szabos. Attila instantly smitten by the wife, and a mutual like of her five year old son, Stefan.

If only she wasn’t married. There are signs it’s not a happy marriage. Enter AVO colonel, Zoltan Friss, who’s soon had the husband arrested and regularly forces himself on her. Attila yearns to love her, but in a proper way. Doesn’t notice Klaudia’s jealousy of Aranka.

Friss shoots Attila’s father dead before his eyes. More reason to hate the man.

He acquires a gun, but who to use it on without putting his family and friends at risk? Aranka tells of her anger at Friss’ visits, of her unhappy marriage to an emotionless man. Friss nonchalant attila-hungarian-ff ly informs Aranka that her husband was shot dead in prison when involved in a riot. She and Attila become lovers. She starts turning Friss away and he does not like it.

Tibor puts the burgling quartet onto a money trader’s house where they find a large sum of cash in U.S. dollars. A students protest march turns into the Revolution, a full-scale street war starting October 23rd, 1956. All of Attila’s anger – and Aranka’s – comes pouring out in an orgy of – justified – violence. He plays her pimp to lure Russian soldiers to their deaths. They sniper AVO from the rooftops, attack tanks with Molotov cocktails.

timecvr In London 1963, the stolen money buys Attila first one pub then another. Business booms. Stefan gets into trouble at school, fighting. That brings in a cop, Des Stanford, who is corrupt and greedy. Attila’s Cockney girlfriend introduces him to criminal veteran, Freddie Holman, who sees off some shakedown thugs in violent fashion. A cop on the take gets hungrier. Attila and Freddie set up a card school in the basement of the city pub. It takes off.