King Deng: The Book of Osmosis

When King and I met, he did not want to discuss his story or any of the details of his life. He said it would be too emotional for our meeting. He wanted me to read his book and ease myself into the subject matter. When the book arrived 3 weeks later, I devoured it. I was horrified at what he had been through: his family killed, his village destroyed, nearly getting eaten by hyenas, running for his life. And that was just the beginning.

I tried to stay focused. I marked up the book with underlines, dog ears and notes all over the place. I created a diagram of my superstructure--the emotional arc--that I teach to my students at the university in my writing and screenplay classes. Before I met with King again, I wanted to present him with my approach to ensure for myself I was indeed the right person to help him tell his story.

I was familiar with The Lost Boys of Sudan as many of us are but his story was different. From a young age growing up in his village he knew he would be King. He always looked at life in the context of how something would effect his people. He was not the typical child--self-focused and whimsical--but rather contemplative, looking at life through a lens of profundity. He knew deep inside from early on he was here for an important purpose.

King Deng comes from one of the most primitive cultures on our planet. They hunted for food, built shelter from branches, collected water from streams. But there was unrest all around him. Not from the neighboring tribes but from strangers that penetrated his country in search of natural resources, most notably the mother of all resources--oil. When he was kidnapped to be recruited by the militia, he knew he had to escape to save his people. And that was still just the beginning.

He wasn't the King in his mind. He was a King in his soul. His tribe members regarded him as their would-be King as a young boy and the minute their village was ransacked and they ran for their lives to ceaselessly trek through a blazing desert, in that instant, he became their leader, although he was just a boy leading other boys--and girls.

In my mind, I put myself in that desert, I put myself in the refugee camps in which he was interred, I felt the pain of him getting shot in the stomach, I felt his dehydration, I felt his will to survive to lead his people. I felt I was here to tell his story.

We scheduled our second meeting and this time I did the drive to meet him in his area. King brought with him a lovely lady from a non-profit organization that helped refugees settle in Georgia. I shared with King my vision for the film and he welled up. He said what I described was what he saw at night as he slept.

But I needed to know more. We decided to meet regularly at the mid-point between us--the Perimeter Mall food court. We would go deep. Little did I know how deep...