Plot Synopsis: Two
years after self-published author turned playwright Adrian decides to move to
Atlanta to pursue his dreams, he finds himself going from a prospect back to
suspect as soon as he gets there. On September 11, 2015, his life changed overnight. Adrian is now stuck with two options: go back home in Jersey or
end up homeless. After a 4-year struggle to get back on his feet, a stage play
and book review inspires the author to write a second autobiography.
Get inside the lives of people who came to Atlanta to pursue
their dreams. See them juggling the drama taking place every day in Atlanta.
Watch their assertive demeanors as Adrian goes around promoting his products
through his story. Go on his journey of how he came to Atlanta and what life is
really like in Atlanta. Participate in the chess game scheming and juggling of
drama via relationships, family, and the downtown scene he is frequenting each
night. Relive the best part of it all, recapping the previous night’s
adventures with stories over a chess game. And
when you disagree wildly with the author or his friends’ decisions… let them
know! The audience will be instructed to vote on a key moment of their lives in
that episode. Should they leave? Take their skills or talents and move out of
Atlanta or relocate to another area? After the audience votes with a phone
call, text message, or website poll, the author and the characters from his
book will be pulled aside and given the feedback from the audience real-time.
Watch how they deal with the audience scrutiny. Then have the audience take to
the website forums to discuss how it all played out.
SETTING
As the premise suggests, Coming
To Atlanta mostly takes place downtown in Woodruff Park.
· Walgreens
· Arby's
· a
tobacco and smoke shop
· Ebrik
Coffee Room
· Ambassador
Force
· GSU
Police Station
“Coming
To Atlanta” follows a close group of chess players, travelers and park goers,
providing a fascinating social matrix that draws the viewer to bond with the
characters from the book. A unique social website will help drive audience
participation with the following-
· Live interviews with the park
goers of the show and the website audience.
· Video blogging of content that
does not make each week’s episode
· Website voting to determine
episode spinoffs
Each
docu-style episode will feature a different character from the autobiography of
Adrian Collins, part two, From Prospect Back To Suspect.
“Friendship” – The bonding rituals of
the chess players will be highlighted as the over-riding context. Our cast will
be a close-knit group of people from the book. Almost each episode will include
the chess players meeting in Woodruff Park for a game of chess or Adrian going
around Atlanta promoting his story.
“Career” – Our casting will select people from
the book in high-visibility jobs such as law and acting, as well as artist,
entrepreneurs and hustlers from the streets. Their career efforts will be
highlighted to show the stresses, successes, and failures that they encounter…
and most importantly how they deal with those experiences.
“Love life” – Love lives will get one portion of
the show devoted to it. We will follow characters from the book home, on their
dates, and various bar singles scenarios. These 3 distinct love life segments
will be edited together to create a tapestry of some of their quest for love.
Sample episode arc-
Intro – A small montage is shown of the author to refresh
the viewer about his background, job, life, and current situation with each
character in the show. This is quickly recapped as we watch Adrian in scenes on
the train, at the airport, and each docu-style webisode mostly begins with
Adrian playing chess in Woodruff Park.
Initial Highlights of Woodruff Park Events – Fascinating fighting
recaps from previous night’s, interesting gripes about the part and/or family,
emotional moments among friends, all of these highlights are shown in 2-3
minute clips per issue/moment.
Friendship Focus #1 – Recap a current life and splice it
with commentary from the book. Show people playing chess or moving around when
the park closes. Get their reaction but keep the situation as a cliff-hanger
for the moment. Give the viewer a website link to vote on what they think the
characters should have done.
Career Focus – Next the show will move to the characters' career
situations. The preparation, anxiety, delivery, resolution, and reaction to their
sales pitch are filmed. Use shots of the sales pitch, the stress prior to it,
and the characters from the book discussing it with their family and friends.
Audience participation – The audience is polled on a life or
career decision based on the episode so far.
Audience Results Revealed – The characters is told of the
audience’s opinion and advice.
Friendship Focus # 2 – Resolve the cliff-hangar presented
during the earlier park focus of the episode. Do they get in drama? Or how much
did they lose in chess? Did a fight occur? What was the result of their day?
Give the viewer a website link to discuss in the forum.
Woodruff Park recap – At this point the show will reinforce
park goers bonding between chess players and their audience with a game of
chess again. Clips from filming that fill in the gaps of the drama and career
focuses are shown. The advice, reassurance, and support between chess players are
highlighted. Any additional outlandish or hilarious stories are played out.
Discuss! - Give the viewer a website link to view the voting results and
comment on the episode. Switch the show to the airport or on the Marta where they
see the audience’s reaction to how they handled the poll result. Close by
flashing the website again and an opportunity for Adrian to post a video of characters
from his book and be the next set of coming to Atlanta unscripted.
The Autobiography of Adrian Collins, Part Two - Introduction
Monday, August 26, 2019. 1:05 pm.
ONE WEEK BEFORE
LABOR DAY. I had just got off the Marta train. In Atlanta, which is this city of
242 micro-neighborhoods, they have these four Marta rail lines with six to
eight rail cars and each rail car has a capacity of 65 seats with about 100
more people standing up. The train covers 48 miles and stops at 38 stations. The
Marta bus system provides over 91 routes covering over 1,000 route-miles, all
of which operate primarily within the boundaries of Fulton, Clayton and DeKalb
counties. Unlike the New Jersey transit which cost up to $17 for a one-way trip
to New York City and you have train conductors checking your ticket each stop,
the Marta not only cost $2.50 for a one-way trip which includes a train and bus
ride, but you can also ride the Marta train until it shuts down at 2am and
starts back up at 4:30pm.
During hours of operation, homeless people live on
these trains and they go from rail car to rail car panhandling, hustling and
doing whatever they got to do to survive. The four lines is identified by four colors.
The red and gold lines goes from the south in the Airport station in College
Park (Clayton County) through downtown Atlanta (Five Points station, where you transfer
at) to Lindberg station and then it splits into the gold line which goes northeast
into Doraville (DeKalb County) and the red line which goes straight up north
into Sandy Springs, stopping at North Springs stations. The blue line goes from
east in Indian Creek (which is DeKalb County) through downtown Atlanta (Five
Points) to Hamilton E. Holmes station and the green line goes from west in Bankhead
through downtown Atlanta to Edgewood/Candler Park.
Once I got off at the Five Points station, I
started walking a block down the hill, heading towards Woodruff Park. Woodruff
Park was this beautiful 6-acre park located downtown in the heart of Atlanta. It
is exactly 324.8 feet away from 10 Park Place,
which is the Fulton County Public Health Clinic that deals with people affected
by behavioral health issues. Woodruff Park attracted more than just 10 Park Place’s
45,000 outpatient visits and 1,200 in-patient admissions to it.
In 2015, when I first moved to Atlanta
and went by Woodruff Park, what caught my eye was the thousands of
daily park-goers, mostly beautiful women from Georgia State University. What
also caught my eye was the 2-foot tall chess pieces and the five 6-foot long picnic
tables connected to the benches, which all had two black and white chessboards
painted on each table that was located in the chess court area. I loved playing
chess and since I found out about the chess players that be out there all the
time gambling, I was out there every day and night either playing chess or
trying to sell some loose cigarettes and cheap one dollar Tonka Vodka shots of
liquor.
As I hit the corner across from Woodruff Park,
which is on Edgewood Ave and Peachtree Street NE, I notice that several people was
already out there playing chess on the tables. That meant that Jack, the
20-year old white Georgia State University student who worked part-time out
there in Woodruff Park, had to be out there. We was always happy to see the
tables and chairs out there so we wouldn’t have to play chess on the ground. Jack
had ran the chess court section, where he worked out of a 7-foot tall by 5-foot
wide green and blue game cart. The game cart is where they kept over 30
different board games at, including the 2-ft. tall chess pieces locked up at.
Jack's job description consisted of setting up the chairs and tables for park
goers to come and get board games to play as he monitored the games and had to report
any criminal activities to the Atlanta police or the Georgia State University
police, who had their own police department located directly across the street
from the park, next to Walgreen’s. Jack was a really cool dude who had just
started working out there this springs. He sounded like he had Italian in his
blood because every time he wanted to address somebody or get their attention, he
always used the word "Yo" in front of their name. I know a lot of
other Italians that did it. One day I asked Jack if he had Italian in his blood
and he said, “Yeah, on my mother’s side.”
Since coming to Atlanta, another thing I noticed
was, just like the Players Club movie
by rapper Ice Cube, if you were from out of town, no matter how many times you
tell people from Atlanta your name, they would still call you by your city or
state name. Like for example, they would either call me “Jerz” or “Jersey” or
“P-Funk” or “Plainfield,” which is because I was from Plainfield, New Jersey, a
city known for the music genre P-Funk. And from my findings, it was a very dark
reason why they called out-of-towners out of town names. It was because they
were putting people on the spot by letting everybody know that they weren’t
from the A. That meant that we were fair game, we were open to be finessed,
especially if we didn’t know any better and trusted them enough to be got.
People don't believe it when they say “Atlanta is the home of finessing
people.” After I been out there for so long, they had just started calling me
by “Adrian” or “A-G.” They had just started respecting me as a real street
dude, and not just the dollar shot and Newport man, or just a really good chess
player. Most of the out-of-towners slept on them, thinking it was the south and
something was slow about them, not knowing that they was very slick and had home
field advantage.
It also was too many gay men out there, so it
was hard for black men to stick together. Not that I had a problem with gay men,
it was just that I knew that if you keep them around they was eventually going
to try you. And plus, it seemed like all the gay men stuck around the other
side of Woodruff Park, which was on Auburn Ave NE & Peachtree St NE, or in Midtown.
One of the first things you hear in Atlanta is, if a man gets caught in Midtown,
he is most definitely gay. Besides on the other side of Woodruff Park, I never
saw too many gay men hanging out downtown, only unless it was a parade, protesting
or something like that.
I was an outsider, so I played the chess players
and people from up north close, especially since people from up north all stuck
together. For these past four years, I been through just about as much as drama
as I did in my whole life. It was crazy out here, especially with my story and
how I ended up in Atlanta. With some of the stories I had, just from being
downtown and hanging out around Woodruff Park, people wouldn’t believe it
unless they saw it. It was mostly homeless people hanging out around Woodruff
Park, and just a small amount of hustlers and workers who had a job and a real place
to stay. I saw all types of hustlers, some who I couldn’t believe had the
hustles they did. Woodruff Park had the young wild cats, mostly gangbangers
that would jump and rob any and everybody that looked like they had money. They
had some crazy teens and young adults that stayed in trouble and was known for
killing people out there, and when I first started coming around there, these gangsters
had messed the money up around the park for the hustlers.
After a year, when most of them got locked up, I
started selling one dollar shots that I got for fifty cents and loose cigarettes,
two for a dollar. By this time, almost three years later, I had just got the
block back pumping and was making from $150 to almost $200 a day. This was after
they had locked old heads Chuck and Lamar up, who was the only two that I
remember that selling it before me. It was a couple real hustlers who I saw
really making money out there and they were two.
Just last month, after I got into another fist
fight, I started reflecting on my life and how much drama I had gotten into since
moving to the A. I had books, I even had great book reviews but due to being
homeless again, I just couldn't print and sell them. I was homeless, sleeping
in homeless shelters, on the Marta train or wherever I could. I had an aunt on my
mother’s side, who stayed in Dunwoody, which was the only reason why I came to Georgia
in 2015 like this. And ever since that day, my life had changed overnight. For
some very strange reason, no matter how many jobs I had, no matter how shots
and cigarettes I sold, no matter what I did, I just couldn’t get back on my
feet and do what I came to do, which was to blow-up with my books and one-man
stage play.
However, after last month’s incident where this 300
pound drunk lady with mental health issues hit me with an iron pole and I had
to snatch the metal pole out of her hands and then smacked her, knocking her
out, several days prior to that, she kept disrespecting me and even told the
police right in front of me, “Officer, check his book bag. He got cigarettes
and shots of liquor in it. He is going to serve that lady when you leave. That’s
why she is standing there.” After four years of drama, and now with her doing
this, I know for a fact that God was using her to force me to stop selling
shots and cigarettes and to start back print out my books. I still had a hundred
dollars in shots and cigarettes left, and definitely wanted a cover up for it,
so why not print and advertise my autobiography while getting rid of it? First I
got a standard size spiral binder copy of my book printed out from FedEx.
I still was texting Mike McMahon from People’s TV,
who was the operations manager and television workshop instructor. I had met
Mike in 2017 on the Marta train one day while I was going train-to-train
promoting my one-man stage play. Mike had gave me his business card and for two
whole years and I never stopped by the station like he kept telling me to,
which was like every week. Mike was a really good dude. One year prior to
meeting him is when I had met this beautiful sister name Felicia Simon. Felicia
had already brought me by the People’s TV station to promote my stage play.
Back then, before Mike had started working there, Felicia had introduced me to
everybody in there and even showed me how it worked over there at channel 24 Atlanta.
Felicia was a very dear friend of mine. Unfortunately, I knew Felicia was very sick
and had a stroke, but I didn’t know she had moved on to be with the Lord until
I came back from New Jersey in April of 2018. Felicia was one of the best
people that anybody could have met. She was always trying to help somebody else
out as best she could.
So here it is, as I walk towards Woodruff Park's
chess court, I saw Jack and several chess players who was known for gambling.
Jack was sitting in the game cart writing in his notebook, doing some homework
as usual. He was taking Spanish classes at GSU. I was pretty cool with Jack and
always tried to help him with setting up and breaking down the chairs and
tables when he was closing up shop and trying to go home. Another reason why I
was so nice to Jack is because I was a businessman, a hustler who was always
trying to make some money. I didn’t need Jack or none of them people from the
Ambassador Force of Downtown Atlanta to be telling the cops anything, only
unless it was something good about me. I wanted all of them to think I was a
bum and was doing bad. I already had to worry about undercover cops in the park,
especially the Georgia State University police, but in other parts of Atlanta,
especially in the downtown Woodruff Park, you had to watch out for them ambassadors,
too. Not that they had guns and handcuffs, but they were trained to provide
tourists and meeting attendees with a variety of information and assistance,
not only in English, but in French, Spanish and Hebrew, to name a few. But they
were also like cops, just without the guns and handcuffs.
Unlike most of those sneaky ambassadors, Jack
was really cool because he didn't dry snitch and gave us the heads-up, as in to
put the weed or the cigarettes out in the park. Since Jack started working out
there several months ago, I’m sure that he had never seen nothing like this. As
crazy as it got out there in Woodruff Park at times, I don't think homeless people
that was actually born and raised out there in Woodruff Park had seen some of
this stuff that took place around there. But with Jack, I became so cool with him;
I even gave him the nickname, Jack Nicholson, who happened to be one of my
favorite actors from New Jersey.
As I walked up to the game cart, just like every
other time, I greeted Jack, "What's up Jack Nicholson?" He looked up.
"Oh, yo, what's up Adrian?" I walked over to give him a fist bump.
"Nothing much,” I responded. “I just printed out a copy of my book. Would
you like to read it while you out here working?" Jack said, "Yeah,
sure. I would love to read it." I gave him the book out my book bag and
Jack spent the rest of the day reading it. I kept tapping old head Chuck and a
grandmaster in chess, Frank Johnson, who also had a book on how to play chess,
for them to look and see. I was happy to say that Jack didn’t put my book down.
To me and everybody out there, that said a lot. It must have been a pretty good
book to Jack.
During this week, which was right before Labor
Day weekend, Jack only read it out there while at work. But when that Friday
came, Jack took it home with him for Labor Day weekend. On Tuesday, September
3, 2019, one day after Labor Day, Jack came back to work. I kind of forgot that
he had my book. But once I got to the park and Jack saw me, he said something
to me immediately. Jack said, "Yo Adrian, I finished reading your book.
You are officially an author now." I laughed out loud and said, “I been an
author!” Then I asked him, "So what did you think about it?" Jack
said, "I liked it. It was good," he said as he shook his head up and
down. "It was real good. You are officially an author."
I pulled my phone out and asked him, "Could
I record you giving a book review on it?" With no hesitation, Jack said,
"Sure. Anytime you ready." As I started recording him, there was
something that Jack said that changed my life. As I recorded him, Jack said,
"From Suspect To Prospect is one of the most entertaining books that I've
ever read. From start to finish, entertaining! Instead of a boring, factual,
autobiography, Adrian does a great job of mixing his real-life events with a
bit of storytelling, and the combination was perfect." After one whole
week of watching this video back-to-back, what Jack had said eventually became
the primary source of Coming To Atlanta: From Prospect Back To Suspect…
