Bios of Scripter 2014 Participants
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SCRIPTER AWARD HONORARY DINNER CO-CHAIRS HELEN MIRREN and TAYLOR HACKFORD Photo credit: Steve Cohn Photo credit: USC alumnus TAYLOR HACKFORD (’67, International Relations) launched his entertainment career in 1969 at the Los Angeles public television affiliate KCET. Hackford won the Best Live-Action Short Film Academy Award for Teenage Father in 1979. He has directed such films asAn Officer and a Gentleman, Dolores Claiborne, and Ray, which earned him two Oscar nominations and a Grammy Award. His producing credits include La Bamba, The Long Walk Home, and the Oscar- winning documentary When We Were Kings. He served two terms as president of the Directors Guild of America beginning in 2009. His most recent feature project, Parker, starring Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez, was released in 2013. Hackford met his future wife HELEN MIRREN on the set of the 1985 film White Nights. An Oscar recipient for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, Mirren is a four-time Academy Award nominee whose credits include The Madness of King George; Gosford Park; The Last Station; Excalibur; Red; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; and the recent remake of the 1981 film Arthur. In 2003, Helen Mirren was invested as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 2010, USC presented Taylor Hackford with the Asa V. Call Alumni Achievement Award. The couple split their time between Southern California and England. 3 SCRIPTER AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEE NAOMI FONER and HOWARD A. RODMAN CO-CHAIRS NAOMI FONER has spent her career as a screenwriter exploring the exquisite complications of family. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and received the PEN West and Golden Globe Awards for Running on Empty, starring River Phoenix and directed by Sidney Lumet. She also wrote and produced A Dangerous Woman, Losing Isaiah, and Bee Season. Very Good Girls, which she wrote and directed, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and will be released this summer by Tribeca Films. Foner began her career as a producer for the Children’s Television Workshop, where she was involved with the development of both Sesame Street and The Electric Company as well as the drama series The Best of Families. She is a member of the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and has taught at Columbia, UCLA, and USC film schools. HOWARD A. RODMAN is vice president of the Writers Guild of America, West; professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; and an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs. His filmsSavage Grace and August had their US premieres at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Savage Grace was nominated for a Spirit Award in the Best Screenplay category. Rodman also wrote Joe Gould’s Secret, which opened the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. In 2013, in recognition of his cultural achievements, Rodman was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French Government. 4 SCRIPTER AWARD FINALIST CAPTAIN PHILLIPS CAPTAIN RICHARD PHILLIPS (AUTHOR) grew up in Winchester, Massachusetts, with seven brothers and sisters. He is a 1979 graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Phillips was captain of the Maersk Alabama when it was commandeered by Somali pirates in April 2009. He lives in Vermont with his wife and two children. STEPHAN TALTY (AUTHOR) is the New York Times bestselling author of six acclaimed nonfiction books, as well as two crime novels, Black Irish and Hangman, set in his hometown of Buffalo. He’s written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Playboy, The Chicago Review, and many others. Talty’s ebook, The Secret Agent, was a No. 1 Amazon Kindle bestseller in nonfiction. Talty lives outside New York City with his wife and two children. BILLY RAY (SCREENWRITER) made his directorial debut with Shattered Glass for Lionsgate. Ray then wrote and directed Breach and co-wrote State of Play. Most recently, Ray was the co-screenwriter of the 2012 blockbuster The Hunger Games, directed by Gary Ross and starring Jennifer Lawrence. Ray’s work will next be seen in the feature film Departure, which he will direct for Good Universe. Ray’s other upcoming project includes a remake of The Thin Man for Johnny Depp at Warner Bros., which Rob Marshall will direct. 8 SCRIPTER AWARD FINALIST PHILOMENA MARTIN SIXSMITH (AUTHOR) was born in England and studied at Oxford, Harvard, Leningrad, and the Sorbonne. From 1980 to 1997 he was the BBC Television correspondent in Washington, Moscow (twice), Brussels, Geneva, and Warsaw. In addition to Philomena he has written Spin, I Heard Lenin Laugh, and Russia: A Thousand Year Chronicle of the Wild East. He worked as an adviser on BBC Television’s political comedy series The Thick of It and on the 2009 Oscar-nominated film In the Loop. STEVE COOGAN (SCREENWRITER) was born and raised in Manchester, where he trained as an actor at the Manchester Polytechnic School of Theatre. Coogan was recently seen in Philomena, directed by Stephen Frears. In addition to co-starring in the film with Judi Dench, he served as co-writer and producer. Coogan was awarded the Best Screenplay Award at the 2013 Venice Film Festival. The film won the Audience Award Narrative at the 2013 Hamptons International Film Festival. JEFF POPE’s (SCREENWRITER) writing credits include the 2013 BAFTA-winning ITV drama Mrs. Briggs, the multi-award winning Dirty, Filthy Love, and the critically acclaimed features Essex Boys, and Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman. Pope has produced a number of award-winning dramas including Mo, a biopic based on the life of politician Mo Mowlam, and most recently Appropriate Adult, starring Dominic West and Emily Watson, which earned five BAFTA awards as well as a Golden Globe nomination. 9 SCRIPTER AWARD FINALIST THE SPECTACULAR NOW TIM THARP (AUTHOR) lives in Oklahoma where he writes novels and teaches in the Humanities Department at Rose State College. In addition to earning a BA from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA from Brown University, Tim Tharp has been a factory hand, construction laborer, psychiatric aid, long-distance hitchhiker, and record store clerk. His first novel, Falling Dark, was awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. His novel The Spectacular Now was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award. SCOTT NEUSTADTER and MICHAEL H. WEBER (SCREENWRITERS) have proven themselves one of Hollywood’s most versatile and sought-after writing teams with their witty, fresh, and intelligent storytelling. The pair wrote 500 Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon- Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, which won them an Independent Spirit Award and a Golden Satellite Award for Best Screenplay of the Year. Their work on the film also earned them a Writers Guild Award nomination and won them the 2009 Hollywood Breakthrough Screenwriter Award. The Spectacular Now has been nominated for multiple screenplay awards. 10 SCRIPTER AWARD FINALIST 12 YEARS A SLAVE SOLOMON NORTHUP (AUTHOR) was the son of a freed slave, living in upstate New York when he was kidnapped by slave-traders in 1841 and shipped to New Orleans, where he was sold to a plantation owner in rural Louisiana and forced into manual labor for the next twelve years. With help from an itinerant Canadian carpenter, Northrup finally regained his freedom in January 1853, and returned to his family in New York. Later that year he published an account of his ordeal. JOHN RIDLEY (SCREENWRITER) is known across a variety of media, having achieved success in the worlds of television, film, literature, and stage. His film All Is My Side, which he wrote and directed, is about Jimi Hendrix’s early years in London. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and will be in theaters this May. His script for the Steve McQueen-directed 12 Years a Slave has received numerous accolades, including Oscar, Golden Globe, and Spirit Award nominations. 11 SCRIPTER AWARD FINALIST WHAT MAISIE KNEW HENRY JAMES (AUTHOR) was one of the most productive and influential nineteenth-century American authors. He began his career writing short stories before graduating to novels, many of which dealt with the clash of New World innocence versus the corruption of the Old World (Europe). Some of his most famous works include The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The Turn of the Screw (1898). CARROLL CARTWRIGHT (SCREENWRITER) drifted into screenwriting after working in regional and New York theater. He worked as an uncredited script doctor on a number of Hollywood films, includingJumanji and Pearl Harbor. His adaptation of Nabokov’s Pnin is being made by the Cologne-based Heimatfilm. His next film, Jane, Jane, Tall as a Crane, is currently in production. NANCY DOYNE (SCREENWRITER) teaches creative writing at Bryn Mawr College. She lives in New York City with her husband, Bill Teitler, a producer of What Maisie Knew, and is currently working on an original screenplay entitled Skin. She previously adapted The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope. Photo credit: Natalie Keyssar Photo credit: 12 SCRIPTER LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD ROBERT TOWNE ROBERT TOWNE is a four-time Academy Award nominee best known for Chinatown, for which he won the Best Screenplay Oscar. Towne was born in Los Angeles and raised in San Pedro, where he worked as a tuna fisherman and went on to study philosophy at Pomona College in Claremont. Towne is currently working on the Battle of Britain for Graham King’s GK Films, the final season of AMC’s critically acclaimed series Mad Men, and an untitled work with director David Fincher.