Anatomy of a Broken Heart: A Screenplay
Posted on April 3, 2013 by JMcQueen
”Ma’am, give him the children and there won’t be any trouble. Alright? Do you understand? Just give Mr. Duckworth the children.”–Kentucky State Trooper Elliot
Brash talk show host Wendy Williams profoundly angered a multitude of mothers–custodial and non-custodial alike–with a flippant remark on her TV show yesterday. She devoted a portion of her show toward lambasting beleaguered Texas mom Pilar Sanders, who lost custody of her three children to football hero Deion Sanders last month, for her emotional distress.
Williams contemptuously declared: ”When a man gets custody, the mother is full of crazy.” She concluded by saying, ”I would say good luck, but I’ll just say oh well.”
That Williams is a mother herself isn’t the only reason for outrage; in her big booming voice she embodies the lack of empathy, of understanding, of the plight of so many mothers who are losing their children to a lopsided legal system. This system continually, and increasingly, favors the fathers–to the point of literally taking the children away from their mothers forever. And then society steps in to join the condemnation by ridiculing the bereft mother’s pain and laughing and scoffing at her concern for her children and her pleas for justice.
Playwright/scriptwriter Christopher Karr wrote a poignant, spot-on (because he was there) screenplay chronicling the day his younger siblings from his mother Robin Karr‘s second marriage, Matthew and Laura, were taken away from their home on court orders.
Already too old for his years from his experience watching an abusive system punish his mother for protecting all three of her children, Christopher was just a boy of 13 when he wrote this heart-searing screenplay. Technically powerless to do anything about what he witnessed–as would be anyone–he not only watched in horror but tried his valiant boyish best to intervene.
”Matthew and Laura”
By Christopher Karr
OVER BLACK;
INSERT–TITLE CARD
This movie is based SOLELY upon a true story.
INSERT–IMAGE
Photo of MATTHEW (2) and LAURA (1) with their mother ROBIN in a restaurant at a supervised visit in Rockwall Texas. Matthew and Laura have OBVIOUSLY been brutally beaten. Matthew has a black eye and Laura has a large scrape across her forehead. Robin is holding them, forcing a smile.
