Scripter > Press > Releases > July 22, 2004
Press Releases
For Immediate Release
July 22, 2004
Contact:
Toni Miller (213) 740-2328; scripter@usc.edu
Susan L. Wampler (213) 821-1639; wampler@usc.edu
Kazan and Swicord to Chair USC Scripter® Award; Date Set for Scripter 17
LOS ANGELES†Husband-and-wife screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord will chair the 17th annual USC Scripter® Award selection committee, the Friends of the USC Libraries announced today. The ceremony will be held Sunday, February 20, 2005, on the USC campus.
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. The 2004 Scripter awards resulted in an unprecedented tie between the writers of Mystic River † novelist Dennis Lehane and screenwriter Brian Helgeland † and Seabiscuit † author Laura Hillenbrand and screenwriter Gary Ross.
Kazan and Swicord 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.
Prior to becoming a screenwriter, Kazan was a free-lance journalist and playwright. He got his film break in 1981, when one of his original screenplays was bought and produced. His has four scripts currently in active development, including an adaptation of Robert Caro's book Means of Ascent, about Lyndon Johnson's 1948 Senate race. His other film credits include Frances, Matilda (which he co-wrote with Robin Swicord), At Close Range, Patty Hearst, Reversal of Fortune (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), Fallen, Bicentennial Man and Enough.
Swicord worked as a newspaper and television photographer and wrote and produced educational films before pursuing her dream to work in theatre and feature films. In 1979, she helped produce her play Last Days at the Dixie Girl CafØ, which moved to Off-Broadway, and, in 1984, her play Criminal Minds also was produced Off-Broadway. In 1980, she sold her first screenplay, Stock Cars for Christ. She has written and sold more than 20 screenplays since them.
Her film credits include Little Women, Matilda, Shag, The Perez Family and Practical Magic. Swicord currently is writing an adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha for Sony Pictures, directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago), with filming to begin in September 2004. DreamWorks recently bought her screenplay The Rivals, about the famed clash between actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonara Duse, to be directed by Steven Spielberg with Nicole Kidman starring as Bernhardt. Swicord is planning to direct an independently financed feature film, The Mermaids Singing, based on the novel by Lisa Carey.
The annual black-tie Scripter Award gala is held in the Los Angeles Times Reference Room of the Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library at USC.
For additional information, please call (213) 740-2328, email scripter@usc.edu or visit http://scripter.usc.edu.