For some people, winning comes naturally.
Just ask UCLA graduate student Paul J. da Silva. He received
first place and a prize of $10,000 in the 49th annual Samuel
Goldwyn Writing Awards Competition, improving on the third-place
award he secured in the same competition last year. Held Monday
night in the James West Alumni Center, the ceremony also honored
four other UCLA graduate students with monetary rewards.
Selected from over 250 applicants, the semi-finalists submitted
feature-length screenplays and stage plays in May, which then
competed with submissions from seven other University of California
campuses. According to director Samuel Goldwyn Jr., the contest was
a way to give prestige to the art of screenwriting.
“Screenwriting is a lonely business, and sometimes
it’s tough to say to yourself “˜I’m going to stick
to this,'” said Goldwyn Jr. “This award is my way
of telling writers that other people recognize their quality work
as well.”
And with such prior winners as Francis Ford Coppola and Jonathan
Kellerman, the Goldwyn award is not something to take lightly.
This year’s judging panel consisted of Time magazine
critic and filmmaker Richard Schickel, as well as past winners
Pamela Gray and Alison Anders. The Goldwyn competition is unique in
that it is an opportunity for young writers to say what they want,
and not just what sells, says Schickel.
“The unique thing about this competition is the type of
scripts that it attracts,” said Schickel. “(The
semi-finalists scripts) all had serious messages, even the
comedies, which is refreshing. These students haven’t yet
sold out to the crazy high budget action scripts that are pretty
common in Hollywood.”
Da Silva normally writes in the action-thriller genre of film
that is popular today, but his entries this year and last year were
Civil War era stories.
“This contest is one of the only places where people will
even bother to read these types of scripts anymore,” he
said.
Second place went to Tony Moton, third place went to Thor
Challgren, and two honorable mentions went to Marshall Thorton and
Christian Guzek. Guzek, who recently graduated from the College of
Letters & Sciences with a history degree, was the only
non-screen writing or playwriting student awarded as a
semi-finalist.
Da Silva says he will continue to write, and is even looking
into turning his winning screenplay into a movie. As for the money,
da Silva says he has an idea.
“I’m using (the money) to pay for my rent for the
next year,” he said. “This way, I can have another
whole year to devote just to writing.”