Scott Z. Burns has been writing screenplays for a while now, some of which have become Matt Damon films. And hes, he has a favorite story; “When we were shooting ‘Contagion,’ Matt kept telling Steven [Soderbergh] and me that the movie would make a lot more money if we put zombies in it. One day we hired this giant guy and dressed him as a zombie. Matt came around the corner and made a three-foot leap. He yelled “”Zombies!” and ran with it.”
There are no zombies in Burns’ new play “The Library,” now in previews at the Public Theater, but there are plenty of ghosts: It’s about the aftermath of a school shooting and was inspired by the story of a student wounded at Columbine. Soderbergh directs.
Here are four books in Burns’ own library.
The Sixth Extinction
by Elizabeth Kolbert
This is a new book from Kolbert, who wrote “Field Notes From a Catastrophe,” about climate change. This one’s about how we’re losing species at a level that rivals any other time in history. It’s alarming that geologists are renaming this period the Anthropocene while politicians are doing nothing about it.
The Burglary
by Betty Medger
This is an amazing story about a bunch of antiwar protesters — students and professors — who broke into an FBI office in Pennsylvania the night of the Ali-Frazier fight in 1971 and walked off with documents they sent to newspapers, including Medger, at The Washington Post. Way before WikiLeaks, they revealed how the FBI was spying on Americans.
Dark Lies the Island
by Kevin Barry
This one was recommended by Craig Finn, the lead singer for a Brooklyn band called Hold Steady. Barry is an Irish short-story writer and he has an amazing voice. Imagine “The Dubliners” moved up a century and made darker, twisted and funnier.
The Diaries of Adam and Eve
by Mark Twain
This may be something Steven Soderbergh gave me — it’s amazingly funny and current and insightful into the problems men and women face. It’s a great subversion of the Adam and Eve story — achingly poignant and funny and folkloric in its wisdom. It makes you feel better about your own relationship struggles when you realize these struggles have been going on for a long time.