Author Archives: Wilson Santos
Literary Readings and Open Mic gets press
Take a look at what the Hudson Reporter has written about the events at the North Bergen Free Public Library.
Read article here > Literature Lives in the news.
Love & Ecstasy (original copyright 1997)
• The screenplay was a Second Round Finalist in the Open Door Contest by Scr(i)pt Magazine and a Semi-finalist in The Chesterfield Writer’s Film Project.
*A version of this script was co-written by Tomi Streiff and Jane Hallisey
To receive the full script or find out the current status of this story, please contact Wilson directly.
SYNOPSIS
Life’s always been good to Damian Benedetto. He’s in love with a wonderful girl and his police career looks pretty promising, considering his father is the former Deputy Police Commissioner of New York City.
But Damian goes against his father’s wishes and refuses to take a desk job. He wants to clean the street scum out with his own hands and defend all that’s good and right and law abiding.
Damian gets the chance to go undercover, to take down Lady X, the slipperiest – and most fabulously dressed – ecstasy-dealing Drag Queen in town. He leaves his American “dream” life behind and enters the subterranean club scene of drugs, transvestites, freaks and the driving beats of house music.
But to infiltrate Lady X’s world, Damian has to take a little trip with her and her friends – and we’re not talking about a Sunday jaunt through Central Park. He has to make a choice, to blow his cover or blow his mind. Determined to make the bust by any means necessary, Damian swallows a hit of ecstasy – only he swallows more than just a pill. Gone forever is his black and white view of the world. In its place opens a technicolor land of love, chaos, and every imaginable ambiguity.
Damian feels alive and happy in this world. Happier than he ever felt as a cop. But wait. He is still a cop.
Damian’s past is catching up with him and the faster he runs from it, the more eXplosive the finale will be. And there’s nothing he can do to stop it. Or is there?
No matter what, Damian will have to betray someone. Which world would you choose? Who would you betray? And what would you wear to the betrayal?
I Will Not be Pacified – live reading
Recorded during the Literature Lives open mic event at the North Bergen Free Public Library in NJ on June 27th 2012. These literary readings are held once a month on the last Wednesday of every month.
This poem was written in 2009. Inspired by a baby t-shirt slogan I designed years earlier, this poem is a response to the many levels of authority and control that surround our daily lives. It professes a rebellion against the manipulation from various systems that directly affect us. From the blatant attempts at control espoused by politics, religion. education and media, to the more subtle influences on our behavior by pop culture and consumer culture, this poem expresses a break from the mainstream and a refusal to capitulate.
Wilson Santos 