News

By Noela Hueso

Second-year UCLA TFT graduate student Han-Yee Ling emerged victorious at the 59th Annual Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards on Monday, Nov. 3, earning the $15,000 first-place prize for Spaghetti Bridges, one of five finalist scripts in contention.

John Goldwyn, vice president of the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation, announced the winners during the evening ceremony at the UCLA Faculty Center.

In a tie, the $7,500 second-place prize went to a pair of winning screenwriters: Kevin Human (M.F.A. ’14) for his TV pilot script Hell is Other Cowboys, and second-year UCLA TFT graduate student Gaia Violo for her TV pilot script Absentia. (Violo, who is repped by CAA, already has two scripts, including Absentia, set up at a major studio.) Teresa Sullivan (M.F.A. ’14) and A.J. Marchisello (M.F.A. ’14) came in third ($4,000) for their TV pilot script Doubleblind, while Dan Patrick (M.F.A. ’14) received the honorable mention ($1,000) for Village of Sweet Dreams.

At last year’s awards ceremony, Rocco Pucillo (M.F.A. ’14) took the first place prize for his animation script Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow. Pucillo has since sold a feature script to Warner Bros., Imaginary Foe, which will be produced by KatzSmith Productions.

The awards were started by Samuel Goldwyn, Sr. in 1955 at UCLA to encourage young film, stage and television writers. The awards are open to all students at any University of California campus and screenplays, teleplays and stage plays are accepted. Previous Goldwyn Awards winners include filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola, screenwriters Pamela Gray, Colin Higgins and Eric Roth, and novelist Jonathan Kellerman, among others.

The judges for this year’s Awards were director/writer/producer and UCLA TFT alum Allison Anders (B.A. ’86), who is also a previous Goldwyn Award winner; Ben Feingold, producer and former Sony Pictures president of Worldwide Home Entertainment, Digital Distribution and Product Acquisitions; and Jeremy Kay, U.S. editor of Screen International.

THE WINNERS: (From left) Teresa Sullivan, Kevin Human, Han-Yee Ling, Dan Patrick, A.J. Marchisello and Gaia Violo

Posted: November 4, 2014