Thanksgiving Guest

A successful, white business owner, Chad takes pride in making corporate contributions that help people of color around the world. But Chad’s true feelings surface when he’s forced to interact as an equal with people of color. Meanwhile, Chad's tensions heighten through input from his faith and family. A former white college buddy moves into town and helps Chad finance a new enterprise. Later, Chad’s life is saved by an African American subordinate. Which of the two will Chad and his family choose as their Thanksgiving guest?

  • ARTHUR S MCFARLANE
    Writer
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay
  • Number of Pages:
    90
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Writer Biography - ARTHUR S MCFARLANE

Art McFarlane is an advertising and marketing professional who has enjoyed a stellar career as an advertising copywriter and marketer in advertising agencies and client-side organizations.

In addition to creating advertising and social media content for local, regional and national brands, Art has written a wide variety of materials. They include documentaries, a novel, commercials, promotional videos, blogs, websites and more.

Art's screenplay, Thanksgiving Guest, is 40 years in the making. When Art immigrated to the USA from Jamaica in the late 1970s, he assumed that only ‘bad’ people were racist, and that racism meant white people doing overt racist acts like using racial epithets or burning crosses on the lawns of people of color.

But he soon realized that ‘decent,’ ‘respectable’ people are also racist. Only, their displays of racism are subtle but equally devastating as the overt acts. In short, racism in the US today mostly is about exclusion -- from items as momentous as jobs or housing to situations as mundane as exclusion from friendships.

Art learned that racism is the failure on the part of white people to make room in the heart for people of color. And this is what his film, Thanksgiving Guest, is all about.

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