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News
 
2016 Academy Nicholl Fellowships Live Reading
Tuesday, Nov 8, 2016
Author: Will Plyler
 
On Thursday night, November 3rd, 2016, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, five scripts/six writers – one a brother & sister team -- were awarded the 2016 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. The five scripts were selected from 6,915 entries submitted for this year's competition.

Cheryl Bonne Isaacs opened the night and welcomed all to the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. She jokingly noted one of Goldwyn’s famous quotes about writers, “Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words.” (Laughs from the audience.) Isaacs then brought up Robin Swicord the Chair of the Nicholl Fellowship.

Swicord first gave a big thanks to Greg Beal and Joan Wai for their continuing hard work running the fellowship and for guiding the new fellows each year. Swicord next addressed how the winners are chosen. She noted a "small army readers" do the first round of readings and they follow specific evaluation guidelines in reviewing the scripts. As a base requirement, the committee requires a reader has “to love writers, love screenwriting & value it and have some understanding of what goes into making a good script.” Swicord also personally gives a lot of thought to balancing the Nicholl committee by gender, race, background, professional background along with including different backgrounds of the Academy.

Swicord continued by saying, the first round of scripts are read twice. The highest scoring of those scripts, which came to over 1,200 screenplays, were then read for a third time. This allowed the committed to narrow the field down to the quarter finalist – roughly the top 5% percent. Next, the quarter finalist scripts are read three more times. They then take the best of the five of the six scores and narrow it down to the semifinalists, which totaled 148 scripts this year. The semifinalists are read four (more) times each, this time by 200 Academy members who are drawn from the different branches of the Academy. (53 of the 200 memebers were Academy Award winners or nominees.)

From this 148, the committee looked at the best 8 of 10 scores to narrow the field to the finalists – 10 to 15 scripts. The Nicholl committee then reads these scripts twice. They next meet and discuss the final scripts for hours. But after the long and passionate meeting, the new fellows emerge. What invariably rises to the top of all the scripts submitted, Swicord added, were “writers who are capable of doing what a young Franz Kafka described in a letter to a friend when he was still a rather young writer.” Though Kafka was talking about books, she feels it applies to movies today. Swicord slightly paraphrased him,“ I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If it doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

Writer-director Rodrigo Garcia, the live read director, followed Swicord. He talked about how much movies influence our lives and how we can talk about a character in a film with as much affection as we do about a real person. Garcia noted that “the sheer pain in the ass of writing a story is only overcome by the sheer delight of telling it. There is really nothing more fun that you can do with your clothes on that hearing a story well told. When a good story touches you it becomes indestructible. So storytellers themselves are indestructible.” He went on to add, “nothing well told can ever vanish. If it was seen and heard and felt it will be alive as long as humans walk the earth.”

For this year’s live reading the cast was comprised of actors John Cho, Alia Shawkat, Cary Elwes, and Aja Naomi King. A short scene was read from each script before the presenter and winner were brought to the stage.

The first Nicholl fellow honored this evening was Geeta Malik for her comedy/drama script “Dinner with Friends.” It is the story of a teenager whose mother used to be a fiery, feminist activist and gave it all up to live a life of quiet desperation. Through her daughter’s journey of self-discovery the woman reclaims her own identity and remembers her own strength.

Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson (“Kung Fu Panda 2” & “Kung Fu Panda 3”) introduced Malik, who is from Los Angeles. After reading the script Nelson felt “someone should make the script right now.” The script resonated with her because of Geeta’s unique and keenly observed voice in showing us these characters’ lives and struggles.

Geeta feels the nomination and ultimately win were just the motivations to keep her plugging away and the best kind of validation. Her script is a very personal story. Geeta gave a heartfelt “thank you” to her friends & family who never let her give up, her mother who is her hero, her brother & sister, her two daughters and her “wonderful” husband.

The second live reading of the night was for Michele Atkins’s script “Talking About the Sky,” which centers on a once popular country singer who had a drinking problem and now lives in a camper moving from trailer park to trailer park. The now older man is sick & dying and he must deal with that reality.

Actress Eva Marie Saint introduced Michele. She first complimented the actors on their performances. Sainted stated, “When reading a script you hope to find truth, reality, well defined characters and a good story.” She found all of the above in Michele’s script. Saint pointed out that Atkins drove for Uber and in doing so met an assortment of characters and gained a close & personal glimpse into people’s lives. Their voices, appearances and struggles came about for thoughts for Michele’s writing.

On stage, Michele thanked Greg, Joan and the committee members. She also thanked her friends & family members, writers groups and her husband. She was excited and thrilled to know she was being paid for a year to write, much like Harper Lee was when she wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The third winner honored was Justin Piasecki for his script “Death of an Ortolan.” The screenplay revolves a young White House chef who refuses to cook a meal for the President of the French Republic which requires torturing the birds to be prepared. The fired chef later turns up at a penitentiary in North Carolina cooking for the inmates. In particular, he prepares a last meal for each of the men on death row. The chef comes to believe one of the condemned man is innocent and fights on his behalf at the State Capital.

Producer Peter Samuelson described the last act of Justin’s script as some of the most remarkable writing he has ever read in what was already an extraordinary script. “It is extraordinary achievement in showing to the world through a motion picture what we can do at our best. Individual citizenship is at the core of what makes our democracy work,” Samuelson stated.

Justin described himself as being a little old fashioned. He told his future father in-law before asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage that he was “gainfully employed, had a 401K,dental insurance, all his shots were up-to-date and he has his own Netflix password – not one shared with his parents.” Immediately after the marriage he quit his job, forced his wife to quit hers and then moved to California to become a screenwriter. Justin feels “evolving expectations is a big part of being a writer. You have to somehow convince an industry of father in-laws you somehow know what you are doing.” You also have to convince yourself you know what you are doing. In a particularly touching moment, Justin thanked his wife for not putting up things on the walls of their new place to allow room for his story Post-it and dry eraser marker notes. He even came home one day to find she even bought him all the dry erase markers he would need.

Spencer Harvey and Lloyd Harvey, an Australian sister & brother writing team, were honored next for their script “Photo Booth.” Their script is about complex women of all stages of motherhood and the greed, “grabbiness,” the messiness, the mistakes of motherhood – painful; truthful.

Screenwriter Misan Sagay introduced the duo. "Bringing diverse voices into filmmaking is often portrayed as hard work. But diversity is nature’s norm,” Sagay stated first. She went on to note that when asked why the two wrote this particular story they told her, “Because the themes of family (and) of parenting were important to them. They felt compelled to write this story."

Spencer and Lloyd first thanked the actorsfor bringing their “humble words “to life. They next thanked their significant others, their writers’ group and the friends who supported them all along the way. For them, “this Fellowship truly is a gift. A gift for which this thank you note seems far to small.” They will cherish the moment and the evening.

And last but not least, Elizabeth Oyebode was honored for her script “Tween the Ropes.” Her story is set in the Double Dutch jump roping program of a urban elementary school -- an inner sanctum for girls who are searching for a place where they can shine and feel safe in a tough environment.

Producer Julia Chasman introduced Elizabeth, who was born in Washington, DC but then returned to Nigeria for a number of years. Her family returned to D.C. later and she found she had an accent and had become an immigrant in her own country. Elizabeth struggled to fit in at school and was bullied by bigger kids who made fun of her, she fought back by imitating their accents and she was a hit. This is when she started to find her voice.

Elizabeth took the stage. She started by saying, “I think we watch films because our curious minds crave connections, higher truths, and adventure. Films are one of the few things left that connect us all. They literally bring us together.” Elizabeth went on to note, “Before that film can exist though, one of us in here or out there has to sit down in front of a blank page or screen and imagine. Dream. Pray. Occasionally procrastinate. A little bit. A lot.” She finds there is a freedom when writing; and finds that really refreshing. You can go anywhere you want and be whoever you want. She thanked Greg, Joan and the Nicholl committee for “helping to remind us never to never limit our stories or ourselves.”

The winners each receive a $35,000 prize to allow them to write their next script over the course of a year.

You can view the various speeches and the live readings in full here.


Pictured (left to right): Nicholl Fellows Justin Piasecki, Michele Atkins, Elizabeth Oyebode, Lloyd Harvey, Spencer Harvey and Geeta Malik.


Photo credit: Phil McCarten / ©A.M.P.A.S.

 


 

 

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