..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Art .. Commerce ... Life ...

The two great pieces of advice I received in life came from my parents. My father - someone who is innately a bottom-line kind of guy - conveyed these simple words: "remember that it's always about the work."

At the time he gave the advice I certainly didn't fully appreciate the full context of the message. However, I grasped a sufficient amount to proceed. It was clear to me that I should have a pride in what I chose to do and to strive to do it to the best of my abilities. One might compromise in other areas but could always fall back on the quality of one's labor. Anyway, that's the theory.

My mother's sage observation was simpler, though perhaps somewhat more difficult to sustain. She told me to always keep a sense of humor.

I can't recall when and how these pearls were conveyed. Neither was revealed in the sort of heightened dramatic context one associates with theater or film but arose out of a conversation that occurred during my formative years when I was in desperate need of guidance and not some quick fix solution.

Those two guideposts came home to roost the other day at an event honoring this year's winners of the Nicholl Fellowships. It's the 20th anniversary of the award that's doled out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to nascent screenwriters. Five prizes are given out annually to screenwriters that have yet to see their work produced. The 2005 edition attracted close to 6,000 submissions.

It's somewhat ironic that the endowment to establish the program came from someone whose primary legacy was in television comedy. Nonetheless it did come from a writer and not someone who manufactured widgets or sold used Mazdas.

The late Don Nicholl approached the Academy with an idea that would encourage young writers at a time when screenplay competitions with crash prizes were at best a novelty. In its first inception the contest attracted about 90 submissions and included short stories, plays and other forms of fictional writing. In subsequent years the rules evolved and narrowed as the interest expanded and is now focused on film scripts in the English language by people yet to receive screen credit.

This year's dinner was to a significant extent a pat on the back for good deeds done. Obviously during the course of the Fellowship's history thousands of scripts have been received and the other night marked the announcement of those chosen to be the 96th though 100th recipients.

In a break from the festivities I ran into an Academy member who's been a Nicholl's reader since its earliest manifestation. He let out a slight sigh as he regretfully observed that very few of the winning scripts had ever been produced. At the start of the evening AMPAS president Sid Ganis noted that his production company had recently completed filming a script that was a Fellowship winner back in 1994.

The wheels may indeed be slow to recognize quality but that is not the point. The gist of this particular competition is that it's about the work.

The Academy reps appeared nonetheless to be highly sensitive about the fact that the transfer from award-winning screenplay to award-winning movie was empirically quite low. The titles of the past mentioned were limited to the few that had cleared the hurdle and executive director Bruce Davis even joked about the fact that some of the earliest recipients found the process and form so mortifying they opted for literary careers in the theater or between hard covers.

More edifying were the observations of past awardees. What came across in their choice observations were things such as having a career they might not have otherwise been lucky enough to secure. The prize also appeared to pave the way for representation even if that initial work wasn't quite sufficiently received to make it in front of a camera.

A winner from last year was sitting at my table. His script set during the Irish Rebellion had netted him a manager and a lot of meetings where he was told it was too expensive and that Americans do not respond to period dramas. He's subsequently written a screenplay set in the present but hopes the Nicholl's winning work will someday be read by Jim Sheridan.

Screenwriting is the loneliest profession in the film industry. It's a solitary pursuit, practiced in a room in front of a computer screen without benefit of an audience. Finished work is rarely appreciated or respected. People incapable of stringing two words together insist they know how it can be improved and sometimes illiterates claim authorship via the "film by" credit.

When a script is finally produced, the screenwriter generally evaporates. There is no place or function for him on the set or a seat in the editing room unless he's managed to hyphenate himself into a producing or directing position. Admittedly, many do not crave such an additional onus even if they're repeatedly stung by endless omissions when it comes time to take bows for creative contributions.

There's an old industry saw that one cannot make a good film from a bad script, but the advocates of this philosophy are often hard pressed to cite more than a handful of practitioners currently writing screen stories. Even screenwriters are guilty of oversight. Nicholls chair Susan Grant - a former winner - was introduced and cited as the screenwriter of the current release In Her Shoes at least twice during the evening and on neither occasion was it mentioned that it was an adaptation of a novel by Jennifer Weiner. Grant kept to her script and made no addendums to the credits.

Along with performers, a movie scribe's life is fraught with a seemingly endless series of rejections. Even if it's simply a chilly reaction to a manuscript, there's the tacit slap that can subsequently occur if others are brought into to do a rewrite or the instances when another penman adds a scene and sues to receive screen credit. It's little wonder that most people attempting to carve out a living by plying away on a word processor tend to have a degree of insecurity in their personality.

Keynote speaker Charlie Kaufman was kind of the perfect embodiment of the yin and yang of the contemporary Hollywood scribbler with the possible exception that more than the cognoscenti know his name. While his speech was laced with self-deprecating humor, Kaufman conveyed supreme confidence and an unexpectedly high level of narcissism. His schtick was rife with the sort of neurotic motivation one associates with Woody Allen's screen portraits and his personal observations appeared to have limited benefit as insights for the young writers in attendance.

In this climate that whittles away at one's confidence, the prospects for screenwriters asserting themselves is rather remote. In an interview about five years ago Steven Spielberg emerged as an unlikely ally for the writer's plight when he complained that in most instances when he queried someone on an element of their script they tended to be guarded, defensive and ultimately exceedingly malleable. His point was that they gave in too easily and ought to be more steadfast in defending and explaining their work.

This environment and attitudes toward screenwriters almost demands they evolve into schizophrenics. It takes enormous skill and confidence to tell a story and tell it well. Yet, the relative absence of praise or acknowledgement breeds within many the feeling that the work isn't good enough and only some sort of kindness stands between them and a monkey getting an assignment.

There are compensations unquestionably. If one gets on a track and begins to get assignments and regular rewrite work the monetary rewards are considerable. The first time I visited an Oscar winning screenwriter at his Manhattan penthouse apartment I have to assume he could feel my awe as I took in his sumptuous surroundings. He puffed out his chest and said, "movie stars bought his place for me."

The irony wasn't lost on me and although I don't believe he ever met Syble Klady, there was no getting around the fact that he'd kept that sense of humor she so dearly prized.

November 19 , 2005

- by Leonard Klady