2009 Screenwriting Expo Awards Over $30,000 Cash To Expo Screenplay Contest Winners
Entertainment Desk
October 22, 2009
THE $20,000 GRAND PRIZE GOES TO DANIEL RAGUSSIS FOR "FREUD".
Los Angeles — The 2009 Screenwriting Expo concluded Sunday October 17th at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, capping off four days of master classes and Guests of Honor sessions with some of the biggest names in the business including John Cleese and William Goldman, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orsi, Deborah Spera, Shane Black, Mike Medavoy and Anthony Zuiker, amongst others. In addition, the Golden Pitch Fest featured three days of back-to back screenplay pitching in a room full of Hollywood agents, producers and executives. Highlighting the art of the screenplay, Creative Screenwriting contests distributed over $30,000 in cash plus prizes and services to the brightest new writers and their award winning scripts.
Awards were announced on Thursday night at an opening reception amidst a buzzing room of emerging screenwriters. Creative Screenwriting magazine publisher Bill Donovan and Creative Screenwriting Contest Organizer Pasha McKenley awarded the coveted Expo Screenplay Competition Grand Prize of $20,000 cash and prizes to writer Daniel Ragussis for his screenplay Freud. The winning script tells the story of a young Sigmund Freud at the start of his career as he begins his ground breaking work hypnotizing patients and unlocking the secret of dreams, all the while addicted to cocaine. Freud is the second feature screenplay for Ragussis whose short film Haber has won numerous awards including The Los Angeles Shorts Film Festival's "Best of the Fest." The short has also garnered press coverage in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Variety. Responding to his win, Ragussis said "I am incredibly honored. Just since the announcement on Thursday I've already taken several meetings with top agencies and management companies. It's very exciting and will hopefully help me reach my ultimate goal--bringing the amazing story of Freud's early years to the big screen."
The AAA contest Grand Prize and $7500 went to Roberta Rovner Pieczenik for Without Consent, a drama based upon a true event that took place within the Mandan/Hidatsas native American tribe. It is the story of Martin Old Dog Cross' battle the U.S. government when it tries to take his tribe's lands by eminent domain to build a dam that will flood eight towns and hundreds of thousands of prime agricultural, grazing and timberland, effectively terminating his tribe´s existence. Pieczenik is a first time screenwriter who explains that she became "a woman possessed" after reading the book Coyote Warrior, leading her to live on a reservation with the tribal descendents to research and write her screenplay.
Genre prizes were awarded to David Bousquet for his thriller Premonition, Margaret M. MacDonald´s The Phoenix Effect won in the Sci-Fi/Action category, The Blue Planet by Svet Rouskov (Sci-Fi), Stephen Hoover´s Horror Comic (thriller) and Riley LaShea took home Suzanne´s Prize and $2,000 for Love Letters, the story of a professional love letter writer who is herself jaundiced about love becomes friends with a divorcee in need of affection and is pursued by the object of one of her love letter´s affection. Suzanne´s Prize is a special award named in honor of Creative Screenwriting publisher Bill Donovan´s late wife
The CS Open timed scene writing tournament went online this year for the first time and more than doubled the amount of writers who participated. Writers were asked to write scenes based upon set premises in a limited amount of time and were then judged and eliminated in three rounds. During the last session of the weekend the final three scripts were read by actors in front of an expo audience who ultimately chose writer David Zorn as the CS Open $3,000 First Prize winner.
In other exciting news, a top ten finalist from this year´s expo When Harry Tries To Marry has announced that they will begin filming this week. A romantic comedy about a young Indian-American college student who shocks his assimilated Indian family when he insists that he wants an arranged marriage, the film will be shot on location in New York and India under the direction of Nayan Padrai from the original script by Ralph Stein and Nayan Padrai.
As a direct result of their contest win, the majority of top 20 expo prize winners have been asked to send their scripts out to production companies, and have been requested for meetings with agents, managers and producers. A full list of winners and runners up is available upon request and will be listed at http://www.screenwritingexpo.com/.
Los Angeles — The 2009 Screenwriting Expo concluded Sunday October 17th at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, capping off four days of master classes and Guests of Honor sessions with some of the biggest names in the business including John Cleese and William Goldman, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orsi, Deborah Spera, Shane Black, Mike Medavoy and Anthony Zuiker, amongst others. In addition, the Golden Pitch Fest featured three days of back-to back screenplay pitching in a room full of Hollywood agents, producers and executives. Highlighting the art of the screenplay, Creative Screenwriting contests distributed over $30,000 in cash plus prizes and services to the brightest new writers and their award winning scripts.
Awards were announced on Thursday night at an opening reception amidst a buzzing room of emerging screenwriters. Creative Screenwriting magazine publisher Bill Donovan and Creative Screenwriting Contest Organizer Pasha McKenley awarded the coveted Expo Screenplay Competition Grand Prize of $20,000 cash and prizes to writer Daniel Ragussis for his screenplay Freud. The winning script tells the story of a young Sigmund Freud at the start of his career as he begins his ground breaking work hypnotizing patients and unlocking the secret of dreams, all the while addicted to cocaine. Freud is the second feature screenplay for Ragussis whose short film Haber has won numerous awards including The Los Angeles Shorts Film Festival's "Best of the Fest." The short has also garnered press coverage in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Variety. Responding to his win, Ragussis said "I am incredibly honored. Just since the announcement on Thursday I've already taken several meetings with top agencies and management companies. It's very exciting and will hopefully help me reach my ultimate goal--bringing the amazing story of Freud's early years to the big screen."
The AAA contest Grand Prize and $7500 went to Roberta Rovner Pieczenik for Without Consent, a drama based upon a true event that took place within the Mandan/Hidatsas native American tribe. It is the story of Martin Old Dog Cross' battle the U.S. government when it tries to take his tribe's lands by eminent domain to build a dam that will flood eight towns and hundreds of thousands of prime agricultural, grazing and timberland, effectively terminating his tribe´s existence. Pieczenik is a first time screenwriter who explains that she became "a woman possessed" after reading the book Coyote Warrior, leading her to live on a reservation with the tribal descendents to research and write her screenplay.
Genre prizes were awarded to David Bousquet for his thriller Premonition, Margaret M. MacDonald´s The Phoenix Effect won in the Sci-Fi/Action category, The Blue Planet by Svet Rouskov (Sci-Fi), Stephen Hoover´s Horror Comic (thriller) and Riley LaShea took home Suzanne´s Prize and $2,000 for Love Letters, the story of a professional love letter writer who is herself jaundiced about love becomes friends with a divorcee in need of affection and is pursued by the object of one of her love letter´s affection. Suzanne´s Prize is a special award named in honor of Creative Screenwriting publisher Bill Donovan´s late wife
The CS Open timed scene writing tournament went online this year for the first time and more than doubled the amount of writers who participated. Writers were asked to write scenes based upon set premises in a limited amount of time and were then judged and eliminated in three rounds. During the last session of the weekend the final three scripts were read by actors in front of an expo audience who ultimately chose writer David Zorn as the CS Open $3,000 First Prize winner.
In other exciting news, a top ten finalist from this year´s expo When Harry Tries To Marry has announced that they will begin filming this week. A romantic comedy about a young Indian-American college student who shocks his assimilated Indian family when he insists that he wants an arranged marriage, the film will be shot on location in New York and India under the direction of Nayan Padrai from the original script by Ralph Stein and Nayan Padrai.
As a direct result of their contest win, the majority of top 20 expo prize winners have been asked to send their scripts out to production companies, and have been requested for meetings with agents, managers and producers. A full list of winners and runners up is available upon request and will be listed at http://www.screenwritingexpo.com/.
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