With every movie, there is first a story. The action sequences and quirky love triangles are sometimes dreamed up by the writers who, like UCLA student Austin Formato, imagined them in their sleep.
Formato’s screenplay “Self Help” was the winner of this year’s prestigious Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award.
The competition is open to all University of California students, includes a monetary prize, and provides the opportunity for stage, film and television writers to have their scripts recognized and read by leaders in the entertainment industry.
Formato’s screenplay, about a man interested in a service that provides cryogenic freezing and robot replacement as an alternative to suicide, and the love interest he pursues afterward, was written after he awoke from a dream.
“I basically dreamt it. I woke up at 3 in the morning and wrote 14 pages of the script,” Formato said.
Formato is currently a third-year graduate student studying for his master’s degree in UCLA’s screenwriting and directing program. He spent five weeks writing and developing his script through the help of his professors and peers.
In his acceptance speech, he credited his peers for workshopping their scripts together.
“For me, it’s all about finding people with the sensibility you trust. Everybody knows each other’s ideas,” Formato said.
Eight University of California schools submitted more than 120 screenplays. However, for the first time in the 53-year history of the competition, all five finalists were current students or recent graduates of the School of Theater, Film and Television.
The finalists gathered in a ceremony on Monday night at Royce Hall with a panel of celebrity judges and three generations of the Goldwyn family in attendance.
“We are carrying on a legacy that started with my grandfather,” Tony Goldwyn said. “It all starts with the writer and ends with the writer. An award like this brings attention to their work ““ they get a little money and a pat on the back to keep doing what they’re doing.”
This year’s judges included Geoff Gilmore, director of the Sundance Film Festival; Debbie Liebling, president of production at Fox Atomic; and producer and actress Marlee Matlin.
Matlin, an Academy Award-winning actress, said she had high standards for the competition’s top awards, which included prizes of $15,000 for first place, $7,500 for second place, $4,000 for third place and $1,000 for honorable mention.
“What I was looking for was a future voice, something different. A new generation of screenwriters, of what was on the horizon,” Matlin said.
In the Royce Hall founder’s room, the judges gave their speeches to an intimate gathering of the finalists and their families. They expressed how this year’s award winners brought a new level of originality and sophistication to the craft and gave insight to a writer’s role in the changing face of the film industry.
“These kinds of scripts bring together a purely visionary and narrative change. The quality of choices brings a kind of complexity in the spectrum of the aesthetic,” Gilmore said.
Second-place winners included Robyn Paris, with a tie for third place between JJ Nelson and Richard Rapoza. All three are screenwriting graduate students.
The honorable mention went to undergraduate screenwriting and directing student Suzie Bohannon.
Gilmore, for one, was not surprised about the connection between independent film and screenwriters, as compared to student producers and directors, and commented that independent films are all writer-driven at their cores.
“There is massive change, in both the artistic and business side. They are all fueled by artists. As an art form, it will establish what a smart film is,” Gilmore said, adding that this year’s winners displayed storytelling from a lot of different directions.
Liebling, who has helped to develop “South Park” and produce films such as “Borat,” expressed a sense of dedication to screenwriting.
“We are losing writers as a culture. Kids do want more stories, and it is our responsibility to give them those stories. On the commercial side, you need good writing. It has to sell and make people come. Scripts are often compromised to get movies made,” she said.
For this reason, Formato is writing to direct and wants to see his scripts developed through the end. “I’m going to continue working on the script and have not yet decided on representation,” he said.
Now among the ranks of past winners such as Allison Anders, Francis Ford Coppola, Pamela Gray, Colin Higgins, Jonathan Kellerman and Eric Roth, Formato still plans on writing two more scripts before he graduates from the master’s program this year.
“As a writer, you work and you write, or you just write,” Formato said. “Hopefully there will be a payoff in the end.”
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