A Winner Can Almost Bank on It

Last dollar in hand, writer Andrew Marlowe faced a tough choice: Enter or eat? The deadline for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting was upon him, and he hadn’t yet mailed his script, “The Lehigh Pirates.” “The $25 [now $30] entrance fee, plus the cost of copying and mailing the script, meant a lot to me,” he said. “That money represented a week’s dinners to me at the time.” But Marlowe had confidence in the story he wrote, so he sent it in.

Since going on to write the Harrison Ford blockbuster “Air Force One,” among other scripts for film and television, Marlowe doesn’t sweat the cost of stamps the way he did in 1992. He credits at least part of his success to his decision to mail that script. He knew what more and more industry professionals now know: The Nicholl Fellowship is rightly regarded as one of the most prestigious competitions in the business.

The Nicholl Fellowships are named after Don Nicholl, an English television writer. After being recruited by Norman Lear to join the staff of “All in the Family,” Nicholl went on to co-create and co-executive produce “The Jeffersons” and “Three’s Company” and its spinoffs.

Although he became very successful, Nicholl never forgot his roots. He and Gee, his wife, often looked back on their leaner years and discussed how they might encourage new writers.

After Don Nicholl died in 1980, Gee Nicholl asked producer Julian Blaustein, who at the time ran the graduate screenwriting program at Stanford University, to approach Jim Roberts, then the academy’s executive director, about establishing a writers’ program. Roberts tapped Bruce Davis, current executive director who was then a program coordinator, to develop the fellowship.

Begun in 1986, the Nicholl was originally open only to graduating university seniors or graduate students of film in California. Each year, however, the Nicholl committee cast the net a bit wider; it now is available to any writer working in English who has not sold or optioned a screenplay for more than $1,000.

This year’s contest attracted 4,006 entries, from which five winners--each awarded $25,000--were selected: Glen C. Craney of Malibu, for “Whisper the Wind”; Scott Ferraiolo of Toluca Lake, “The Palace of Versailles”; Anthony J. Jaswinski of New York, “Interstate”; Karen O’Toole of Arizona, “Wild Horses”; and Michele Sutter of Venice Beach, “This Place in the Ways.”

Its “pure intention” is what sets the Nicholl Fellowship apart from most other screenwriting contests, says program coordinator Greg Beal. “The Nicholl takes no financial interest in [the winners’] success,” he said. “We want to get the writer some attention and move them to the next level.”

That strategy is apparently working, according to Andrew Johnson, owner of Writer’s Aide, a Denver company that publishes a quarterly newsletter that tracks the ever-changing pool of screenwriting contests. Johnson says the Nicholl is a standout.

“It’s the top of the heap, the most prestigious,” he said. “And with all the entrants and the exhaustive evaluation, if you win, you’ve written a damn good script.”

Winners often form writing groups, and even years after their recognition many still attend the fellowship’s monthly meetings to offer advice and share war stories, so they can help out the new crop of winners.

Access is perhaps the most precious commodity in Hollywood. Who will read your work and who can get it made--these are the questions upon which careers rise or fall.

“The hardest thing in this business is getting people to read your work, anticipating liking it,” said Susannah Grant, a winner in 1992 with “Island Girl.”

She should know. Though after winning the Nicholl she went on to become a writer of Disney’s “Pocahontas” and 20th Century Fox’s forthcoming live-action “Cinderella” starring Drew Barrymore, as well as a writer and producer of Fox-TV’s “Party of Five,” Grant says that before her break she received her share of brushoffs from film executives’ assistants.

“But the Nicholl seal of approval makes a big difference; it legitimizes you,” she said. “Suddenly, you’re meeting with the head of development, not an assistant.”

Grant’s experience is echoed by Mark Lowenthal, a winner in 1989 with “Where the Elephant Sits,” which he describes as a “contemporary fable.” After winning, Lowenthal sent out “about 80 scripts, to everyone who called,” eventually optioning the story. Unlike other winners, however, writer-actor Lowenthal parlayed his fortune into yet a third job title: director.

He has just wrapped “Elephant,” which he directed, and is now hunting for a distributor.

“The Nicholl helped me raise the money for my film,” he said. “I could say, ‘These people thought the film had merit.’ So, for the investors, having the award attached to it gave them some assurance.”

This year’s winners, announced Oct. 13, are now discovering the kind of cachet winning the Nicholl brings. Ferraiolo has already sold his “Palace of Versailles.”

“I signed with an agent on the 24th, sent out the script on the 29th and sold it on the 31st,” Ferraiolo said. His story, about a dysfunctional family in the 1960s and the children’s struggle to choose which parent to live with, was bought by Image Movers, Robert Zemeckis’ production company for a reported low six figures.

The sudden acceleration of his career has a sweet irony for Ferraiolo, who says he has entered dozens of contests over the past nine years. “I moved out here from Illinois in ’88 and started trying to break in from the day I got here,” he said. “I actually gave up in ’94 and went back to Chicago, only to learn the old truth, ‘You can’t go home again.’ ” After cashing in his retirement savings and selling his furniture, he returned to give it another shot.

“It’s so hard to break in, and you need the extra edge. The Nicholl is the biggest, the most prestigious and the fairest of all the contests,” he said. “I read an old interview where Jack Nicholson said that if you’re sincere, you’ll eventually get your chance.”