PARANOID PARK 15
Paranoid Park was written by adult and children’s author Blake Nelson. He felt that it was a darker and simpler plot compared to anything that he had written before. The book and film follow the story of a skateboarding teenager who accidentally kills someone and has to come to terms with his actions and live with the consequences.
This was fertile ground for adapting writer and director Van Sant whose previous films My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting and Elephant examined young people living on the fringes of society. Van Sant wrote the draft script in two days and used social networking sites to cast the actors and skateboarders.
A haunting, voluptuously beautiful portrait of a teenage boy… a modestly scaled triumph without a false or wasted moment.
The New York Times
Generously sponsored by Revolutions Bikes
Featuring post-film discussion with Clive Stafford Smith and young people from Bridport’s skate park The Trick Factory
Clive is founder and director of Reprieve, a UK
based human rights charity that focuses on the direct
representation of prisoners facing the death penalty and
being held in secret prisons. He has been involved in
more than 300 death penalty cases and worked on
introducing the rule of law into Guantánamo Bay and
other secret prisons.
We’ve got much more serious issues here in Bridport than a little torture
in London. I suspect that we’ll put the fear of God into the people who
want to take this gem of Bridport away from these young people.
Clive Stafford Smith on The Trick Factory
