Scripter > Press > Releases > November 25, 2002
Press Releases
For Immediate Release
November 25, 2002
Contact:
Toni Miller (213) 740-2328; scripter@usc.edu
Susan L. Wampler (213) 821-1639; wampler@usc.edu
ROBERT TOWNE NAMED SELECTION COMMITTEE CHAIR FOR SCRIPTER® XV
LOS ANGELES † Academy Award® winner Robert Towne, the screenwriter who wrote the classics Chinatown and Shampoo, and whose legendary services as a script doctor rescued or improved dozens of other films, will serve as the chair of the selection committee for the 15th USC Scripter® Award, the USC Friends of the Libraries announced today.
Bestowed annually since 1989 by the Friends, the Scripter Award honors the year's best film adaptation of a book or novella, and is given to both the author and screenwriter. Last year's winners were author Sylvia Nasar and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman for their work on A Beautiful Mind. "We are excited that Robert Towne, whose distinguished career has defined an era in American film, will chair this year's selection committee," said Friends President Regina Leimbach.
"Adaptations offer unique challenges to the screenwriter, a delicate and sometimes indelicate balance of interpretive and creative skills," said Towne. "I am honored to be working with the Friends of the USC Libraries on this year's Scripter Awards."
Towne will lead a selection committee comprised of Writers Guild of America members † including Academy Award-winning and -nominated screenwriters † fiction and nonfiction authors, film industry executives, USC faculty and selected members of the Friends of the USC Libraries. Each January, the selection committee chooses five finalists, and then a winner, from among all English-language films based on books or novellas released the prior year. Past chairs of the selection committee include screenwriters Steven Zaillian, Scott Frank and Lawrence Kasdan.
Towne is a four-time Academy Award nominee, best known for his Oscar-winning Chinatown script, which is required reading in most screenwriting classes across the country. He gained acclaim early in his career when it became widely known that he contributed key, uncredited, scenes to such films as The Godfather, Bonnie & Clyde and The Parallax View. Then his Oscar-nominated scripts for The Last Detail, Chinatown and Shampoo were produced in three consecutive years, quickly solidifying his reputation as one of the best in the business.
He remains one of the most sought-after screenwriters today. His other screenwriting credits include Mission Impossible and its sequel, The Firm, Love Affair, The Two Jakes and Days of Thunder. He currently is writing Mission Impossible III and is preparing to direct his adaptation of John Fante's Ask the Dust. He already has directed three of his own scripts, Personal Best, Tequila Sunrise and Without Limits, the critically acclaimed account of distance runner Steve Prefontaine's life and untimely death. He also has worked as a script doctor on such blockbusters as Armageddon and Crimson Tide. In October 2002, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Screenwriting from PEN USA and the outstanding achievement award at this year's Hollywood Film Festival.
"It is an honor to welcome Mr. Towne as chair of the Scripter selection committee," said USC Dean of Libraries and Chief Information Officer Jerry D. Campbell. "His writing epitomizes the excellence that Scripter was established to recognize." The black-tie dinner and awards ceremony will be held March 15, 2003 at the University of Southern California's Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library in the Times-Mirror Reference Room. Proceeds benefit the Doheny Library Preservation Fund.
For additional information, please call (213) 740-2328, email scripter@usc.edu or visit http://scripter.usc.edu.