By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

ACADEMY REVEALS WINNING NICHOLL SCREENWRITERS

Posted Tuesday, September 29th, 2015 - Comments Off on ACADEMY REVEALS WINNING NICHOLL SCREENWRITERS
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Scripts to be performed at live read in November

LOS ANGELES, CA – Five individuals have been selected as winners of the 2015 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition.  The Academy is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the global competition which aims to identify and encourage talented new screenwriters.  Each winner will receive a $35,000 prize, the first installment of which will be distributed at an awards presentation on Wednesday, November 4, at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.  For the third consecutive year, the event also will include a live read of selected scenes from the fellows’ winning scripts.

This year’s winners are (listed alphabetically by author):

Elizabeth Chomko, “What They Had”
Andrew Friedhof, “Great Falls”
Anthony Grieco, “Best Sellers”
Sam Regnier, “Free Agent”
Amy Tofte, “Addis Abeka”

A total of 7,442 scripts were submitted for this year’s competition. Ten individual screenwriters and two writing teams were chosen as finalists.  Their scripts were then read and judged by the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee, who ultimately chose the winners.

The other finalists are (listed alphabetically by author):

Ghazi Albuliwi, “Arafat”
Jennifer Bailey and Max Lance, ”Best Funeral Ever”
Ryan Covington, “The Secrets We Keep”
Lynn Esta Goldman, “Angel on the Wall”
Murat Izmirli, “Grimwood”
Suzanne Kelman and Susannah Rose Woods, “Held”
Augustus Rose, “Far from Cool”

Fellowships are awarded with the understanding that the recipients will each complete a feature-length screenplay during their fellowship year.  The Academy acquires no rights to the works of Nicholl fellows and does not involve itself commercially in any way with their completed scripts.

The Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee is chaired by writer Robin Swicord, and marketing executive Buffy Shutt serves as vice chair.  The other members of the committee are writers Tina Gordon Chism, Naomi Foner, Eric Roth, Kirsten Smith, Dana Stevens and Tyger Williams; actor Eva Marie Saint; cinematographer John Bailey; executive Marcus Hu; producers Stephanie Allain, Albert Berger, Julia Chasman, Julie Lynn and Peter Samuelson; and agent Ron Mardigian.

Since 1986, 142 fellowships have been awarded, and in 2015 several past fellows added to their feature film and television credits:

  • Nikole Beckwith directed “Stockholm, Pennsylvania,” from her Nicholl-winning script, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
  • Robert Edwards wrote and directed “When I Live My Life Over Again,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
  • Patrick Gilfillan wrote “Lila & Eve,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
  • Kurt Kuenne edited and co-wrote the documentary “Batkid Begins: The Wish Heard around the World,” which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival.
  • Alfredo Botello was a co-writer of “Hollywood Adventures,” which opened as the number-one film in China in June.
  • Rebecca Sonnenshine is a writer and supervising producer on “The Vampire Diaries.”
  • Annmarie Morais is a writer and story editor on the series “Killjoys.”
  • Andrew Marlowe is the creator and was executive producer, and Terri Miller was a writer and executive producer on “Castle.”

Tickets for the 2015 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Awards Presentation & Live Read are now available at Oscars.org/Events.  Casting for the live read will be announced at a later date.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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~ David Simon