Here is an outline I used for the presentation I did in class. It is over the movie Capturing the Friedmans, and it was directed by Andrew Jarecki.
Outline
I. Summary
i. Explain family: Arnold is the father and an award winning teacher. Elaine is the mother. David is a New York City Clown, and the oldest son. Seth is the middle son, who really never appears in the film. Jesse is the youngest and the closest to Arnold.
ii. “We had three sons; David being the oldest had a lot of responsibility, when he was young. Seth was an outright rebel, and somehow Jesse is the one that like kept trying to catch and never quite makes it.”-Elaine
iii. Explain story
1. Explain Child porn incident- Order child Porn magazine from the Netherlands.
iv. Explain investigation-Found evidence that a computer class was taught there, then they found a list of students
v. Conducted interviews with students
vi. 2nd search day for thanks giving- Elaine comes home confused what is going on, goes into the house and sees Arnold sitting at the kitchen table hand cuffed. David comes home for thanksgiving, and sees all of these cops. Then he goes inside and is told he cannot come in. He puts underwear on his head to leave. Jesse gets home. The cops come and get Jesse.
vii. More investigations.
viii. Explain the mass hysteria
ix. Arnold takes a plea agreement
x. Arnold Kills himself
xi. Jesse gets a plea bargain
xii. Jesse spends 8 years in jail.
II. Thesis
i. Jarecki takes a sympathetic view towards the Friedman’s family because he believes they are innocent.
III. Interviews
i. Long shot-Close shot-For example they showed a shot of a cop, while they showed very little of her, making her look very weak saying: “As we conducted more interviews of the children, Jesse’s name started to pop up. And Jesse was there. What did Jesse do? And then eventually we were able to ascertain that Jesse’s role was not one of, you know, helping his dad conduct the computer class, but basically abusing the children himself. We didn't have children telling us that Arnold had slapped them around. But quite a number of the kids reported incident of being slapped and having their hair pulled or their arms twisted by Jesse. He was, by far, the more violent one.” Then they showed a best friend’s very powerfully, speaking with his arms saying “I challenge anyone to find anyone who Jesse had even teased as a child or called a name. Jesse was not an angry person. He was not an upset person. So we ended up spending a lot of time together. I was over his house three days a week, four days a week. And as far as I know him, none of this ever happened, not on my watch.”
ii. Victims
1. Father
2. Child
3. Fake victim
iii. Jesse in Jail
iv. Howard
1. Sister
2. Relationship with Arnold
v. David and Elaine-They made up the majority of the interviews.
1. Most sympathetic
2. David is denial
3. Elaine is just confused
IV. Home Videos
V. Epilogue
i. Elaine
ii. Howard
iii. Seth
iv. Jesse
v. David
VI. Conclusion
i. What really happen
ii. Irony
iii. Explain Elaine’s quote