Craig Lew

The Dream Can Come True

I had the most wonderful breakfast yesterday but it wasn’t the food, in fact I hardly tasted the meal. It wasn’t the atmosphere which was dominated by the sound of cars roaring past. And it wasn’t the location (for anyone who has visited the edge of North Hollywood just a couple of miles past Universal Studios you know what I mean).

It was the story of the person sitting across from me that brightened my day and has inspired me to blog for the first time ever.

She had been working for many years as a web programmer. For her writing was a hobby. Her father had told her that writing would never lead to anything even after her short story won a competition.

A writer always finds a way to write and after failing to complete her great American novel, she took a few classes in screenwriting.

She wrote a period piece about the dawn of World War II in a foreign country. Her first ever screenplay, she entered it into a local screenplay competition and thought little about it.

A few months later she won the competition. She was overjoyed with the validation but still told people she wrote as a hobby. One of the judges of the competition happened to be an agent. Not just any agent but a literary agent for CAA.

She was signed to CAA which for most of us would be cause for massive celebration and an irresponsible down payment on a Maserati but she kept working as a web programmer and writing at night. Over the next two years she wrote two spec scripts none of which sold or garnered any awards.

But her original script now two years old came into vogue when her agent heard that a recent Oscar winning writer and director was teaming up with two other Oscar winning directors to produce a period piece about World War II in a foreign country.

Her agent was reluctant to submit her for the job, after all she had never had a script sold, or optioned, let alone produced. After two meetings she developed a story with a unique perspective and was told she had the job.

She kept working as a web programmer and wrote at night. Her first draft was so well liked by the director that even though she wrote two more drafts he stayed with her initial story.

Well, her father now pitches script ideas to her over dinner and well he should. Her first ever produced work was named "Best Picture" by both the National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. It received a Golden Globe award for "Best Foreign Language Film" of 2006 and was nominated for 4 Oscars including "Best Picture" and "Best Original Screenplay." The director, Clint Eastwood. The producers Paul Haggis and Stephen Spielberg. The film, Letters from Iwo Jima.

I hope you are as inspired as I am. If a soft spoken, down to earth, web programmer can write late into the night and find a way to escort her skeptical father down the red carpet of the Academy Awards then maybe so can I.

June 7, 2007 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | Add Comment