In The Pocket

On a cold Georgia morning just before sunrise, a couple awakens to love each other to warmth. Asa is a craftsman in woodwork, Sky a midwife, and they are pregnant with their first child. They own several acres of debt-free land with a generous wood supply for his highly sought-after carpentry work. A group of white males on horses have been lately “surveying” their homestead…

​On March 26, 1944, Reverend Isaac Simmons, the debt-free owner of 270 acres of land in Amite County, Mississippi, was dragged out of his home and kidnapped by six white males. They shot Rev. Simmons three times and cut out his tongue, telling his family they had ten days to evacuate their property. After burying their murdered father/ husband, the Simmons family fled the land, and the murderers divided the 270 acres among them. They were found “not guilty” by an all-white jury.

The film I am crafting is inspired by true events, quilted together over many decades, from various families in our country’s wicked history—countless stories of lives choked out and small empires stolen.

In the Pocket stands as a monument of the culmination of these tragic crimes,  showing the agency and future hope that remaining family members created for themselves. They are not destroyed. This is what African Americans do again and again: make a way out of no way to not only survive but thrive.

  • Lisa Arrindell
    Director
  • Lisa Arrindell
    Writer
  • George Anthony Richardson
    Producer
  • Terri Montrel
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay, Short Script, Treatment
  • Number of Pages:
    10
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Writer Biography - Lisa Arrindell

Lisa Arrindell was born in the Bronx, New York, and brought straight home to Brooklyn. A graduate of The High School of Performing Arts—now The Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts—she went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theatre from The Juilliard School.

Lisa’s extensive acting career spans film, television, and stage. Her notable screen credits include A Lesson Before Dying, Disappearing Acts, Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First Hundred Years, The Sin Seer, Livin' Large, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Random Acts of Flyness, Elementary, Madam Secretary, Saints & Sinners, The Quad, Notorious, Bull, and more. On stage, she has appeared in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Broadway), Jubilee (Seattle Opera), Reparations (The Billie Holiday Theatre), Richard III (NY Shakespeare Festival), Heliotrope Bouquet (Playwrights Horizons), and Earth and Sky (Second Stage), among others.

Her most recent projects include Albany Road, starring Lynn Whitfield, now available on Amazon Prime, as well as Watson on CBS and Favorite Son Christmas on BET. She is best known for her role as Vanessa in Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion and for her gripping performance in the Law & Order episode titled "Disabled." Lisa also serves as the resident acting coach for the hit Starz series P-Valley.

Beyond her acting career, Lisa is passionate about health and wholeness, inspiring and educating aspiring performing artists. She teaches theater students who are deeply curious about pursuing a career in the performing arts and is on staff at The Freeman Studio and The Billie Holiday Theatre's Youth Arts Academy in New York City. Most importantly, she is the joyful mother of two stunning, loving, highly creative, and intelligent human beings.

Add Writer Biography
Writer Statement

The stories we see on screen dictate what society believes to be TRUE. As adults who are arguably addicted to visual media and consequently less literary, we unwittingly raise and educate children to read history and biography less. As our nation's Kindergarten through 12th-grade history textbooks continue to dole out partial truths or completely omit entire periods of United States history for our country's developing minds, it is fitting that what was formerly thought of as mere entertainment has become the primary tool to reshape the collective consciousness of our nation and the globe.

What is seen is believed, even when it is not the truth. As a storyteller, I desire to show what is true in a manner that will capture hearts and, thereby, minds. A captured mind is how the practice of buying and selling humans, and all the enduring fruit of that vice, flourished in our country. Conversely, our minds, captured by true history, will transform how we see ourselves. We have already lived the stories, and I am determined to tell as many of them as possible as a writer/director.

The Isaac Simmons Legacy, which is a seed of inspiration for my feature-length script, In The Pocket, is just one exemplar of Black fortitude, perseverance, and excellence that thrived unequivocally before America's characteristic wickedness and greed violently annihilated it.'