Is your heart beating a little too quickly as you stare at your deadline? Are you looking for that perfect spot for your pencil cup because your writing room has to have the perfect feng shui before you can get started? Have you updated your iTunes playlists so that you will have the perfect "creative music" to set the right mood? Have you alphabetized your spice rack in the kitchen? Washed the car? Your hair? Your dog's hair? Your neighbor's dog's hair?
You are so busted.
You can't put it off any longer. You have to get the next draft done. What you need is a script doctor to help you through the rough spots, ask the questions that you've been avoiding and set you on the right track. You can do this. We can help.
WILL CHANDLER
In addition to being a screenwriter & script doctor, Will created and administers the Young American Writers Project under the MFA in Writing and Literature Program at Stony Brook Southampton University in New York. This program sends teaching artists, who are professional writers, into NY school classrooms to teach students how to write in all the disciplines represented in the MFA program: screenwriting, playwriting, fiction, poetry & personal essay. Each program culminates with either a public performance, a short film or an eZine of selected works. (www.sunysb.edu/sb/southampton/mfa/yawp)
Since 1996, Will has worked as a screenwriter both on spec projects and assignment. His first script, CYRANO OF LINDEN VIEW (aka Flying Lessons), won the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Hollywood (www.oscars.org/nicholl/history). Will was signed by CAA.Shortly thereafter, his next script, THUMB, sold in a pre-emptive bidding situation to Sony Pictures. In subsequent years, Will has written a number of film assignments including a gritty historic drama, set in 19th-century Australia for producers Michael Lewis, Jack Thompson and Russell Crowe.
While in Los Angeles, Will was a founding member of a writing group that began as a collection of unemployed screenwriters, united by their common love of story. Members of this group went on to be elected to the WGAw Board of Directors, create the SCREAM feature film franchise, write for numerous episodic series & independent movies, become TV Show Runners and write the TWILIGHT film series.
Since 1990, Will has worked as a development executive, script doctor and story analyst. He has read thousands of scripts for such clients as CBS, NBC, Viacom, New World Pictures, Harpo, Atlas Entertainment, Green/Epstein and more.
Will is also a member of the Stony Brook Southampton MFA faculty and is an instructor during that program's Screenwriting Conference.
ANNETTE HANDLEY
A former Motion Picture Literary Agent, ABC Network programming
executive and film producer in Los Angeles, Annette has produced projects for Paramount, Disney,
ABC, NBC and PBS, among them Ansel Adams:
A Documentary Film directed by Ric Burns which won the 2002 Emmy Award for
Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Program. She recently wrote, directed and
produced a documentary on local vintner and sculptor Walter Channing for Plum
Television.
A writing member of the Writers Guild of America , Annette taught Story Analysis and Screenwriting at UCLA and Pepperdine, and has been a
Teaching Artist for Bay Street Theatre’s Young Playwrights Program and
presently for YAWP, the Young
American Writers Project sponsored by the Writing & Lit program
at SBSH.
Annette is currently the Director of the Southampton
Screenwriting Conference and teaches Screenwriting through the esteemed MFA
Writing & Literature Program at Stony Brook Southampton University. She also
writes fiction and non-fiction for local publications.
