Helped bring “Bonanza,” “The Twilight Zone” to life.

According to the Associated Press, John Furia, Jr., the scribe who helped bring Bonanza and The Twilight Zone into America’s living room during the 1950s and 1960s, died Monday. His passing was confirmed by the Writer’s Guild of America West. Cause of death is not known.

Born in 1929, Furia first got his feet wet as a singer performing in dance bands in New York City. But a chance move to Hollywood stoked his interest in the written word, launching his screenwriting career as the brain behind some of the most popular movies and TV shows of the post-war era.

“John had an old-world dignity about him that seems in such short supply in our world today,” Jack Epps, Jr., chair of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts Writing for Screen and Television Division, said in a statement.

Though Furia’s main portfolio was as a writer, he was a fearless advocate of his fellow scribes, serving as president of the WGAW from 1973 to 1975. In his free time, he helped found USC’s Writing for Screen and Television Division, becoming the division’s first full professor.

In a statement, the current president of the WGAW, Patric M. Verrone, expressed his sorrow following Furia’s death.

“John’s character and dignity touched and influenced generations of writers from the founders of the Guild itself to the newest of student-associates,” he said. “For those of us who relied on his knowledge and his counsel, John was more than an eminence grise; he was pure eminence.”

Furia leaves behind a spouse, Mary, and 7 children.

CHARLIE KAUFMAN IS A WORRIED man. Ever since making his screenwriting debut with Being John Malkovich, the New York-born writer has enjoyed the “weird, atypical and lucky” experience of having his idiosyncratic scripts filmed.
However, now that parts of the film industry are feeling the pinch along with the rest of us (some ex-bankers and politicians excepted, of course), the creative force behind Adaptation and the Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is confronting an uncertain future.

“I’ve been able to do the things I want to do, pretty much, and I don’t know now,” he says gloomily. “Just based on what’s happening in the independent world, and what’s happening in the economy, I think it’s going to be trickier.”

Kaufman knows that his experience to date has been extraordinary. Instead of churning out easy-to-market sequels, prequels or riffs on the last big thing, he has built his reputation on works that are so singular, they have actually given rise to an adjective: Kaufmanesque. To the writer’s amusement, a commentator even used it recently to describe his ambitious directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York.

“That’s kind of amazing. I mean it’s actually Kaufmanesque to describe it as Kaufmanesque.” Then again, he once saw a news report where a shipwreck was referred to as a “real-life Titanic”. “I swear to God!” he says, laughing.

Suggesting that Kaufman has become his own genre causes the writer’s mood to darken. “I don’t write genre stuff in any form,” he says irritably. “I’m not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.”

His screenplays eschew the classic three-act structure slavishly adhered to by many of his peers – he once declared: “I don’t know what the hell a third act is”. “I have something I’m interested in and then I decide I’m going to explore it,” he says. “I don’t know where the characters are going to go or what the screenplay’s going to do. For me, that’s the way to keep it alive and make it interesting and worthwhile.”

It is easy to see why he slyly sent up Hollywood screenwriting guru Robert McKee in Adaptation. Kaufman’s approach is organic, not rule-bound; his narratives often take sudden and unexpected turns. “Realistic and naturalistic are not the same thing,” he says. “And I think it’s interesting to play with surrealism or dream logic and try to create a poem, a metaphor, something that conveys a feeling or makes something happen in your gut that you don’t necessarily intellectually understand.”

No wonder he was disappointed by George Clooney’s conventional direction of his script for Confessions of A Dangerous Mind. Kaufman had enjoyed close collaborative relationships with the directors Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) and Michel Gondry (Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine) but Clooney, stepping behind the camera for the first time, did not want him around. “I wasn’t really involved. So I feel disconnected from that … product,” he says, sneeringly.

…Read More

Paul Haggis’ appearance Monday evening at the Mondavi Center no doubt will draw plenty of aspiring filmmakers from UC Davis.

After all, Haggis directed and co-wrote “Crash,” named best picture at the Academy Awards in 2006, and scripted “Million Dollar Baby,” honored as best picture the previous year. Winner of a screenplay Oscar for “Crash,” Haggis also was nominated for “Baby” and “Letters From Iwo Jima.”

All of this would seem to render him uniquely qualified to offer advice to young people.

“I think I am qualified to tell people what not to do,” Haggis, 56, said with a laugh. “They can look at my career and say, ‘We should be smarter than that.’ ”

He’s being modest, of course, but he did take a circuitous route to becoming one of the most sought-after screenwriters and directors in Hollywood. For much of his career, Haggis worked in television – on cartoons, sitcoms, dramas and however you choose to classify “Walker, Texas Ranger,” the long-running Chuck Norris series co-created by Haggis.

…Read More

2006 PAGE Award winner Davah Avena is now on the writing staff of the hit TV series “Medium.” Davah’s episode “How to Make a Killing in Big Business: Part 3” aired on NBC on Monday night.

Over the past five years, the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards contest has developed a reputation for discovering and promoting some of the most talented new screenwriters from across the country and around the world. Since receiving their prizes, many PAGE Award winners have gone on to land writing assignments, secure representation, and sign option agreements on their winning scripts, and several now have movies and television shows in various stages of production and release.

More news from past PAGE Award Winners:

The 2008 PAGE Silver Prize-winning short film A LOST AND FOUND BOX OF HUMAN SENSATION, by Martin Wallner, is being produced by Dancing Squirrel GbR and Lailaps Pictures at the Trixter production facilities in Munich, Germany. Joseph Fiennes is voicing the animated short.

The 2008 Gold Prize-winning sitcom pilot “Control Alt Delete,” by U.K. scribe Simeon Goulden, has been optioned by Company Pictures. Simeon is now represented by the Curtis Brown Agency in London.

2008 Silver Prize winners Michael and Jessica Brody have been signed by manager Margery Walshaw. Jessica’s debut novel “The Fidelity Files” was released last year by St. Martin’s Press and the book was recently optioned to Marina Grasic (executive producer of CRASH, ALPHA DOG, SMART PEOPLE).

2007 Silver Prize winner David Bishop recently completed his 40th issue of The Phantom comic book and celebrated the publication of his 19th novel. David’s “Doctor Who” audio drama “Enemy of the Daleks” is scheduled to be released later this month. He also recently wrote a successful trial script for the BBC medical drama series “Doctors,” and as a result was invited on to a BBC shadow scheme for emerging writers.

2006 Bronze Prize winner Zack Van Eyck has optioned his new screenplay ALLEY CATS to producer/director Patrick T. Brown of Bad Turtle Productions. Zack already has one completed movie under his belt, five features in development and pre-production, and six short scripts sold.

2008 Gold Prize winner Steve Warren has been hired by producer/director Mariusz Kotowski of Bright Shining City Productions to pen a new multi-episode TV series.

2007 Bronze Prize winner Ehud Lavski has been signed by Mike Goldberg and Josh Adler at Abstract Entertainment in L.A.

2005 Bronze Prize winner Dylan Costello has been signed by Gary Wild of Jill Foster, Ltd. in London.

read more…

The Final Entry Deadline for the 2009 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards competition is Friday, May 15th. This year the PAGE judges will once again be presenting a total of 31 awards in ten different genre categories. The winning screenwriters will receive a total of over $50,000 in Cash and Prizes – including a huge new $25,000 Grand Prize – as well as extensive publicity and industry exposure for their winning scripts.

Most importantly, the PAGE Awards competition is judged entirely by working professionals in the film and television industry, so all contestants have the opportunity to get their work into the hands of Hollywood insiders currently in search of new talent.

For more information about this year’s PAGE Awards contest, please visit: www.pageawards.com

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is accepting entries, which are due by May 1, for the 2009 Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition. As many as five $30,000 fellowships will be awarded through the program later this year.

The competition is open to any individual who has not earned more than $5,000 from the sale or option of a screenplay or teleplay or received a fellowship or prize of more than $5,000 that includes a “first look” clause, an option or any other quid pro quo involving the writer’s work. To enter, writers must submit a completed application form, one copy of their original screenplay in English and a $30 entry fee.

Last year’s competition drew more than 5,000 entries.

Enter Your Screenplay!

UK, April 3, 2009 - Sam Raimi told SCI FI Wire that the script for Spider-Man 4 should be completed by summer.

He said: “Right now, [screenwriter] David Lindsay-Abaire is working on a draft of the new picture, and he’s hard at work, and hopefully we’ll see something in about three months.” This places the film on track for its May 6, 2011 release.