Five years ago, Meg Gifford was working long hours in a lab at the University of Nebraska, analyzing organometallic cyclizations for her doctorate in organic chemistry.
These days, however, Gifford, a fourth-year screenwriting student, is busy pitching her screenplays to Hollywood executives in between working on her latest script about a marijuana-selling high school kid who gets sentenced to doing community service at a resting home.
In the fall, Gifford’s writing skills earned her the coveted Alfred P. Sloan Screenwriting Fellowship. A month later, she also took home the first prize in the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards, whose previous student winners include the creator of “The Godfather” trilogy, Francis Ford Coppola, and “Forrest Gump” screenwriter, Eric Roth.
Richard Walter, chairman of the screenwriting program at UCLA, said that no one among the UCLA faculty was surprised to see Gifford land the Goldwyn award, a prize which carries $15,000 along with a lot of attention within the movie business.
“Her scripts are engaging in every way, but it is more than that ““ they also manage to posit profound insights unto the nature of the human condition. She truly reflects great credit upon our program,” Walter said.
When Gifford, who will graduate from the masters of fine arts in screenwriting program this June, first learned about Lew Hunter’s coveted biannual screenwriting colonies, she was just about to finish her doctorate in organic chemistry. She immediately contacted her department and explained that she had to take an emergency leave.
At the colony, Hunter, a UCLA professor emeritus in screenwriting and fellow Nebraska native, said he immediately saw Gifford’s extraordinary talent.
“Meg is a strange mix of being festeringly pure and disgustingly smart. Her writing is immensely engrossing, and it forces you to keep reading,” Hunter said. “You want to make sure that the intern who is up at 4 a.m. reading his sixth script of the weekend is going to keep reading and hopefully pass it on to his boss. Her scripts do that.”
Gifford said her initial focus on the sciences was, in fact, instrumental in propelling her into screenwriting.
“Chemistry is very left-brained. It’s very tedious and not creative at all, so when I got home from a long day at the lab, I would be ready to explode. Stories would just come,” Gifford said.
At first, Gifford said her parents were not happy about her decision to ditch her scientific studies for the unstable life of a Hollywood writer.
“My dad used to complain all the time that I left only a year before receiving my doctorate, but now that I finally have some success with it, he will call me up and be like: “˜So, I have this idea for a screenplay!'” she said, laughing.
Gifford said one of the first creative influences she remembers is J.D. Salinger, author of classics such as “The Catcher in The Rye” and “Franny and Zooey.” She recalled desperately wanting to meet her idol as a little girl but was informed by her brother about Salinger’s extreme reclusiveness. This prompted the 8-year-old Gifford to start walking around in the streets of Nebraska with her eyes peeled, on a constant lookout for Salinger.
“I thought, “˜Well, if no one knows where he is, he could just as well be living right here in Nebraska!'” Gifford said.
The search for the iconic novelist became the inspiration for Gifford’s very first short story, “Searching for Salinger,” which she wrote in the second grade. The account won the young Gifford her first writing award in The Young Author Contest and officially launched her career as a writer.
These days, Gifford, who primarily writes dark comedies, explained that she finds inspiration for most of her stories while flipping through the paper.
“What inspires me is usually some social issue I’ve read about in the news that just annoys … me,” Gifford said.
Even if she had never met Lew Hunter and was still working in a lab conducting research, Gifford is certain that she would still be writing.
“I would never quit writing. I can’t ““ it’s like a nature to me,” Gifford said.