Thanks to the miracle of the internet, rejection no longer comes in slim envelopes, but in tender emails. I just heard yesterday that my script “Wildflowers of the West” did not make the quarterfinals of the Nicholl Fellowship. The Nicholl Fellowship’s form rejection letters grow sweeter every year.

“ … we have to inform too many writers of scripts featuring compelling stories, intriguing characters and excellent craft that they have not advanced into the next round.”

That must indeed be difficult.

But what, my readers ask, is the Nicholl Fellowship?

Their website replies: The Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting is the world’s most esteemed screenwriting competition. Each year up to five $30,000 fellowships are awarded to authors who have previously earned less than $5,000 writing for film or television.

Then, my readers usually ask, does it have anything to do with Mike Nichols?

No. It does not.

Does it really matter?

Well, no. I mean, except in the sense that it is better to advance into the quarterfinals than to not advance. And it is better to ultimately win a $30,000 fellowship than to not. No one regards winning the Nicholl Fellowship as a sure-fire way to advance a screenwriting career. But among contests, it is the queen bee.

“P.S.” concludes the email “your script finished among the top 15% of all entries – one of the top 1000 scripts.”

P.S. Thanks.

Labels: screenwriting contests, Wildflowers of the West

posted by Elizabeth at 10:44 AM   1 Comments

My very good friend Linda East Brady has added another talent to her growing repetoire -- writer, music critic, dj, cartoonist and now podcaster. Take a listen to her debut on a program called "The Beat Beat."

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/krcl/.jukebox?action=featured

Ira Glass, are you listening?

Labels: Linda East Brady, music critic, podcasts

posted by Elizabeth at 10:50 AM   0 Comments

I had breakfast last week with the film director Jane Campion and a group of female bloggers to discuss her new film Bright Star, above the poet John Keats and the love of his life. I have been asked to postpone delivering my (crazily favorable) review but you can watch the trailer here:

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810011941/trailer

Jane Campion is thoughtful, gracious, generous and soft-spoken, with the diffident posture often adopted by women of greater-than-average height. Which was why I was surprised at her answer to how she got into film, "Well, I was in art school, but I decided I wanted exposure."

Exposure? Could she elaborate? Exposure is not a word you often hear from women -- actresses, maybe, but not artists, and certainly not women artists in their twenties, who may hunger for validation, acknowledgement, connection, but rarely have the cojones to proclaim that they want their work out there. Exposed.

"Well," she shrugged into our dumbstruck faces, "women pay half the taxes, why shouldn't they get half the grants?"

Without pausing to explain that this is not Australia and artists here do not get grants to make films, the more social-minded blogger among us pursued her women-in-Hollywood take on things while I sat back and mused on my sudden understanding of Campion's characters.

"You create women with a vision, who are implacable," I stated.

"Implacable is a good word," Jane agreed.

The implacable insist that a piano can and must be hauled up a tropical mountainside, that she must and will love who she loves, that she will create what she must and not what she should. That she will blog, even though her blog is not "about" anything.

Labels: filmmakers, poetry

posted by Elizabeth at 10:53 AM   1 Comments

Most of the people I know either have no job or no time because their jobs are taking up all of their time. I am in the latter category and have been repeatedly exhorted to "be grateful," or, ungrammatically, to "be lucky." (I have always wanted to be lucky; it's just not something you can summon at will.)

"Be lucky you have a job."

I am lucky in that regard, but boy, did I mess up my June. June is really the last month in summer you can be a good friend; after that, no one's schedule matches yours until after Labor Day. So in June I let half a dozen people down, due to work schedules, or the flu I caught. I missed a party, a screening party, a reading, three "networking" events and by the fourth of July weekend, I had missed Kris's birthday. That is to say, I did acknowledge it; I called her voice mail and favored her with my rendition of "Happy Birthday," I had already secured part of the gift, but it was lame and it remains unwrapped and unsent.

A rosy fingered glow of hope on the horizon but until then, a general apology.

posted by Elizabeth at 6:03 PM   0 Comments