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“RO”
(PRECIS)
- jeffery mcnary

“RO” is a screenplay based on the relationship between Rosemary Woodruff, a former model and airline stewardess, and Dr. Timothy Leary, one time Harvard psychology professor and pioneer in consciousness and psychedelic research, from May,1965, when they met at an estate in Millbrook, N.Y., to her death in February 2002. Ms. Woodruff was the third of Leary’s four wives. The story is carried through her eyes.

The script provides a broad look at one of the more challenging and defining periods in U.S. history, including the Civil Rights movement, the war in Vietnam and the movement which brought it to a close, the transformation of women’s rights and much more. Both principals, Leary and Woodruff, engaged with a broad array of cultural and political figures whose signature remains on that period in history including, but not limited to Aldous Huxley, the Beatles, R.D. Laing, Charles Mingus, Alan Ginsberg, U.S. Senators Edward Kennedy and Thomas Dodd, The Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Andy Warhol, Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy and many, many others.

In 1970 Ms. Woodruff aided in the escape of Leary from a California state prison where he was serving a 10 year sentence for a marijuana conviction, and is said to have engaged the Weather Underground, a violent revolutionary group, in that effort. Dr. Leary and “Ro”, as Ms. Woodruff was known by her friends, made their way to Algeria, where they were given housing, yet held “under arrest” by exiled/fugitive Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, a relationship which began ugly and grew worse.

While there, the couple’s relationship grew troubled, with the Leary’s fleeing to Switzerland and ultimately going separate ways. With Leary apprehended, or as rumored, kidnapped by U.S. officials in Afghanistan, Rosemary traveled through Europe and Latin America, living “underground” on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod where for a time she ran an inn.

Leary, meanwhile, had informed the FBI of Woodruff’s role in his prison escape, was released and remarried, matters Woodruff would learn of through media reports. Yet Ro refused offers of amnesty linked to informing on others who had committed illegal acts in the name of conscience.

In 1996 the couple reconciled, with Ms. Woodruff tending to Leary until his death that same year. In April of 1997, Woodruff had Leary’s ashes launched into space from Grand Canary Island off the Moroccan coast.

Through a combination of this crisp script and rich soundtrack, “RO” captures the upheaval, fear, fluidity, tragedies, and rapid social change and genre of the era. The work presents a flow and fashion which is both thought provoking and entertaining.