The Price of 'Freedomland'

A Child Goes Missing. A Mother Blames a Black Man. One Writer Goes On a Long, Dark Journey.

In the new film "Freedomland," novelist/screenwriter Richard Price explores "why [Susan Smith] had blamed this phantom black guy. People bought into it across the country." (By Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)

NEW YORK

The boy wonder burst onto the scene in the 1970s when he was all of 24 years old, with a tough, highly praised novel and soulful screenplays soon to follow. Richard Price was a hip white cat, who dug Gil Scott-Heron and Curtis Mayfield, and who used to sit in Times Square movie houses and watch "Mean Streets" over and over. That was Martin Scorsese's movie, all about crime, and the wicked, poetic, jumpy streets of New York.

Cinema back then had a kind of nasty film-noir magnetism. Some new directors were out and about, pointing their cameras in dark places. "The biggest compliment I could give a movie back then," says Price, "was, 'Now that I've seen it, I have to go write.' "

His first novel, "The Wanderers," about a teenage gang in the Bronx, was published in 1974. Two years later came "Bloodbrothers," about an 18-year-old who feels trapped by his working-class life. Both were on screen by decade's end. (Others got those screenwriting jobs). In succeeding years there would come more novels, and screenplays, too: "The Color of Money" and "Sea of Love" in the '80s and "Night and the City" in 1992.

A new movie, "Freedomland" -- from his own novel and screenplay -- opens nationwide this coming weekend. It stars Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Moore and Edie Falco. It's about a missing child and a mother. The mother is white and she claims that her child has been snatched by a black man. So it's about taboos and history and folks who stand behind screen doors and believe what they want to believe, no matter what. "It's about the American flu -- racism," says Price.

The screenwriter first sniffed the story in the deep South, then came North and reimagined it on the streets of New Jersey.

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He's rather thin and wide-eyed. Nearly Warholian. The black hair goes in various directions. Price has earned himself a fine home on the east side of Manhattan, decorated by Judith Hudson, his artist wife. Books are everywhere in his study, first editions in bookcases that rise to the ceiling. He collects them and reads them. "You go to used-book stores and they have these little sections with books under glass," says Price.

Lately he's been into Carson McCullers.

Price was still a young man when he reached a point that he could live solely by his writing. It's a rarity in American letters and he knows it. "All serious writers have to do something else," he says. "I don't know of any novelists who have kids who can take care of everything just from novels."

His 1992 novel, "Clockers," about teenage New Jersey crack dealers, was a critical success that captured the anxious cultural conversation about drugs, youth and the inner city. Price wrote the screenplay and Spike Lee directed the movie, which came out in 1995. But Lee fooled with it a lot. Price is diplomatic: "Spike does some amazing visual things with his movies." Then -- enough said -- he hunches his shoulders.

After he finished working on "Clockers," Price found himself without a writing project lined up.