BOOK PARTY! “The B-Side of Paradise” with Alfred D’Alessandro

Alfred D’Alessandro studied screenwriting with the legendary Frank Daniel at Columbia University. He credits Frank for The B-Side of Paradise. “Frank taught me everything I know about narrative structure, character development, and how to transfer those lessons to the written word.” Frank was an academic, writer, producer, and director who left his mark all over the film industry. He developed the sequence paradigm of screenwriting, that broke classically constructed three-act movies into eight three-act sequences; produced The Shop On Main Street (1965 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film); and mentored Milos Forman, the Academy Award-winning director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, at the University of Prague. In America, he was the first dean of the American Film Institute, where he developed the careers of David Lynch (The Elephant Man) and Terrence Mallick (Days of Heaven). And the first Artistic Director at the Sundance Institute, D’Alessandro’s next project is Impure Thoughts: God and Sex to the Age of 14, an homage to Spaulding Gray.

The reviews are in. The B-Side of Paradise will have you rolling on the floor (of the Horace Greeley house)!

“They’ll be clutching pearls in Nassau Hall over The B-Side of Paradise—a coming-of-age romp through Princeton University in the 1970s. Our hero: a spirited first-gen crashing and burning the Ivy League like Holden Caulfield reborn. Then sticking the landing on three “Major University Awards,” and a bid to the aristocratic Ivy Club.”

“The B-Side of Paradise is more than a nostalgia trip for Baby Boomers; it’s a College Handbook for Cool Kids that dishes dirt on the Ivies you won’t hear anywhere else. With savvy tips on surviving college life like: DON’T KIDNAP ANYBODY; If you get a chance to kiss the princess—KISS THE PRINCESS; And there’s a valuable lesson in The Night We Outed Fascists Until Dawn––if you can find it.”