By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Nantucket Film Fest To Honor Tom McCarthy

Posted Saturday, April 8th, 2017 - Comments Off on Nantucket Film Fest To Honor Tom McCarthy
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The Nantucket Film Festival announced today the honorees who will be celebrated at this year’s Screenwriters Tribute—including Oscar®-winning writer/director Tom McCarthy, legendary documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield, and ground-breaking television creators and Emmy-nominated writing team David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik. The 22nd Nantucket Film Festival (NFF) will take place June 21-26, 2017, and celebrates the art of screenwriting and storytelling in cinema and television.

For the first time the Nantucket Film Festival assembled a jury of four esteemed writers to bestow its top award, the Screenwriters Tribute Award.  The Screenwriters Tribute Award Jury is comprised of some of the most gifted storytellers, each bringing their own approach to writing and each having made an impact on American Cinema and culture. The jury includes Barry Levinson (2012 NFF Screenwriters Tribute Award Recipient), Ben Stiller (NFF Board Member and Presenter of the All-Star Comedy Roundtable at NFF), Nancy Meyers (2010 NFF Screenwriters Tribute Award Recipient) and Nathaniel Philbrick (recipient of the National Book Award for Nonfiction for In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex).

The 2017 Screenwriters Tribute Award will be presented to screenwriter/director Tom McCarthy. McCarthy’s most recent film Spotlight was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture and won him (and his co-writer Josh Singer) an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. McCarthy began his career as a working actor until he burst onto the filmmaking scene with his critically acclaimed first feature The Station Agent, starring Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale, and Michelle Williams. McCarthy followed this with the equally acclaimed film The Visitor, for which he won the Spirit Award for Best Director. He also shared story credit with Pete Docter and Bob Peterson on the award-winning animated feature Up. Previous recipients of the Screenwriters Tribute Award include Oliver Stone, David O. Russell, Judd Apatow, Paul Haggis, Aaron Sorkin, Nancy Meyers and Steve Martin, among others.

“With the festival’s passionate commitment to highlighting the art of screenwriting, it is an honor to recognize four luminaries at the peak of the careers,” said Mystelle Brabbée, Executive Director of the Nantucket Film Festival. “From the searing pertinence of Tom McCarthy’s films, to the remarkable humanity in Nick Broomfield’s body of work, to the relatable and satirical power of Jeffrey Klarik and David Crane’s humor—these are four honorees who exemplify the power of storytelling in today’s media landscape, and its use as a tool for audience empowerment and enlightenment around the world.”

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield will be presented with the Special Achievement in Documentary Storytelling Award. The BAFTA-winning filmmaker is best known for his celebrated work spanning over forty years, including Kurt & Courtney, Biggie and Tupac, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, and Tales of the Grim Sleeper. His latest documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me, co-directed with Rudi Dolezal, tells the story of Whitney Houston’s extraordinary life and tragic death.

The Creative Impact in Television Writing Award will be presented to writing partners Jeffrey Klarik and David Crane. Crane and Klarik are co-creators of the four-time Emmy-nominated Showtime series Episodes, starring Matt LeBlanc. David Crane is best known as the co-creator of the long-running comedy series Friends, for which he won numerous awards including an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. He also co-created Veronica’s Closet, The Powers That Be, and the much-beloved HBO series Dream On. Jeffrey Klarik’s work on the hit comedy Mad About You earned him a Golden Globe as well as an Emmy nomination. Klarik and Crane also co-created the award-winning CBS comedy The Class.

The Screenwriters Tribute will take place on Friday, June 23. Award presenters will be announced in the coming weeks. Past presenters have included Diane Keaton, Glenn Close, Zachary Quinto, Bradley Whitford, and Lorne Michaels.

The 22nd Annual Nantucket Film Festival runs from June 21-26, 2017. Festival passes are on sale now and ticket packages will go on sale April 25th on the festival’s website (www.nantucketfilmfestival.org).

ABOUT THE NANTUCKET FILM FESTIVAL
The Nantucket Film Festival was founded by brother and sister team Jonathan and Jill Burkhart in 1996 to promote the cultural awareness and appreciation of the fine art of screenwriting in the world of cinema. Since then, NFF has become one of the premier destination film festivals in the world. Visitors come from all over to experience the preview screenings, unique signature programs, and stand out hospitality on a magical island rich with history, a friendly atmosphere, and beautiful sandy beaches. In addition to screening over 75 films across six days, NFF presents the Screenwriters Tribute, In Their Shoes… hosted by Chris Matthews, Late Night Storytelling, and our daily Morning Coffee With… series.

The Nantucket Film Festival is supported by Showtime, The White Elephant Nantucket Island Resorts as Major Sponsors; A&E IndieFilms, EPIX, BrandContent, and Delta Air Lines as Signature Sponsors; Diageo, Cape Air/Nantucket Airlines, Stella Artois, Entravision, Harborview Nantucket, Pure Leaf Iced Tea and Travel+Leisure as Producing Sponsors; and The Beachside on Nantucket, Citi, Maui Jim, Inquirer & Mirror, Nantucket Today, Nantucket Bank, SAGIndie, Festily, and the WGA East as Contributing Sponsors.

The 22nd Annual Nantucket Film Festival will take place June 21-26. For further information on the 2017 Nantucket Film Festival, please visit www.nantucketfilmfestival.org.

 

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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

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon