7:30 p.m. Monday, June 11, 2018
James Bridges Theater, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
The Event
Screenwriters Showcase is an annual event at the end of Spring Quarter designed to introduce outstanding student work to the industry. Students are invited to submit feature-length and TV scripts which are read and critiqued by industry experts including managers, agents, producers and executives. This year, the UCLA Screenwriting Showcase takes place on Monday, June 11, 2018 at the James Bridges Theater. The event begins at 7:30 p.m. and is open to the public. The Showcase will have speakers from the school and industry, as well as an awards ceremony for the best feature scripts and TV pilots written in the previous year. Reception to follow.
Students Winners
Previous Screenwriters Showcase winners have signed with managers and agents, become staff writers on TV series, optioned winning scripts, and have received many distinctions and awards.
The Distinguished Award in Screenwriting: Jordan Peele
Every year, the program honors a professional writer with the Distinguished Award in Screenwriting. Past honorees include Dustin Lance Black, Eric Heisserer, Callie Khouri, Adam McKay, Graham Moore, Eric Roth and Aaron Sorkin, among others.
PLEASE JOIN US FOR A FUN EVENING CELEBRATING SCREENWRITING AT UCLA TFT!
Feature Comedy
Constance • Joey Siara
In the wake of a family-splintering tragedy, a middle-aged widow falls in love with her bumbling son-in-law.
Corporate — The Musical • Kerry Ann Reid
When ambitious Phoebe gets her first job at her dream company, she is beaten again by her lifelong nemesis, Charles Charles. What carnage will Phoebe leave behind on her quest for corporate domination?
Prince Kyle and the Sword of Victory • Julia Seales
Prince Kyle goes on a quest to save his kingdom, but when he dies immediately, his sidekicks — Princess Nora, Sir Bradley and Trinket the Jester — must finish the quest on their own.
Road Rally • Taylor Ryan Berger
After Grace is admitted to her dream college, she’s distraught over her inability to afford it, but things quickly get out of hand when her best friend hatches a plan to partake in their X-rated senior scavenger hunt in order to raise the money.
Honorable Mention
Anglophile • Maggie Maloney
After using her fake British accent, an awkward American girl is hired to be the British expert on an entertainment news show, but as she gets deeper into the lie, she must figure out if the trappings of fame are worth it.
Pomegranate Rhapsody • Vincent Kazer
An underachieving dishwasher with dreams of international adventure soon regrets his decision to enter into a sham green-card marriage with the niece of an Armenian mobster.
TV COMEDY
Cosmic Janet • Jessie Stenger
A condescending academic hosts an ego-feeding cable access show debunking all things supernatural. But when ingesting a piece of bad sushi grants her psychic abilities, she is forced to ask for help from the very people she’s wronged and completely reassess her life’s work.
Julia Moriarty • Grand Slammed
When a failed 19 year-old tennis pro with anger issues gets banned from the sport, she’s forced to coach a young up-and-comer, who’s chasing the same dream she had. But she’s not quite up to the standard she had expected.
Ian Hamill • Rock Band 2.0
When Rafa Santos, a socially awkward audiophile, inadvertently releases the ghost of Frank Zappa from a mysterious CD, Zappa inspires Rafa to start a rock band. But the advent of Napster presents Rafa with a new, unfamiliar succession of obstacles that characterize the changing nature of the music industry, while demonstrating the growing obsolesce of Zappa’s advice and the increasing relevance of Garrett Dodd’s —Rafa’s technocentric, vitriolic bandmate.
Wonderworld • Julia Harter
After being suspended from his Ivy League university for attempting to commit suicide, a lonely, uptight British aristocrat travels to Wonderworld, a theme park advertised to be the most cheerful place on earth. Upon his arrival in the cosmopolitan metropolis of Orlando, Fla., he forms an unlikely bond with a reckless ride operator, who after becoming pregnant, has lost her highly coveted job as Wonderworld Princess.
Honorable Mention
Parole Model • Schuyler Pappas
Single mom Grace is the black sheep of her gated community. When her teenage daughter gets into some trouble with drugs, Grace attempts to scare her straight by inviting someone from a different kind of gated community — a maximum security prison — to live with them.
The Point • Shannon Reilly
Meet the merry band of historical actors at Pilgrim Point, an accurate replication of early pilgrim life on the coast of Massachusetts. Leading the staff’s debauchery and general ineptitude is Jett, a 30 year-old bum who’s threatened with termination bi-weekly. He might just turn his act around, however, when Maya, an intriguing drama school graduate, is hired to play his fictional wife.
FEATURE DRAMA
Absence of Courage • Yaroslav Altunin
A grief-stricken mother sets out to murder the world’s only superhero when he accidentally kills her daughter while battling his nemesis.
Challenger • Skye Emerson
Becoming the first American female astronaut to travel into space seemed to be Dr. Sally Ride’s greatest challenge — but secrets, coverups and a disaster of unthinkable nature would soon threaten Sally’s foundation, and her future within the space program.
Stella & Marlon • Julia Batavia
Determined to prove Method acting is Hollywood’s future, failed actress-turned-teacher Stella Adler must now channel her dreams through her newest drama student: the young, rebellious Marlon Brando.
Welcome to Sunnyview • William Bennett
williambernardbennett@gmail.
A ’50s housewife discovers her eerily perfect neighborhood is not real: the suburban utopia of Sunnyview is an artificial city encased in a colossal concrete dome in the 22nd century. After learning the truth, she leads her fellow Sunnyview housewives in an armed rebellion against the husbands who enslaved them.
Honorable Mention
Nasty Nancy • Daniel Tino
An ex-convict with a terminal illness abducts her 9 year-old son from his abusive father and takes him on one last road trip before she dies.
Clownesse • Maria Carolan
Set in 1890s Paris and inspired by true events, when a young street performer joins the corps at the Moulin Rouge, she falls tragically in love with a fellow dancer.
TV DRAMA
Coyotaje • Charles Beall
After being deported to Mexico, an undocumented U.S. Army Ranger turns to smuggling migrants across the border in order to survive. He soon finds himself, however, caught between various factions competing for influence on both sides of the ever-shrinking — and increasingly dangerous — U.S./Mexico border.
The Flight of the Red Flower • Nathan Allen
1838. Jin, the only child of China’s richest man, would have inherited his awesome power, but she is a woman. Rather than be forced into marriage, she runs away from home with an American opium smuggler, himself the rightful heir to a powerful merchant family — except he is gay in a Puritanical nation. Their fight for freedom will destroy an empire, kill millions, and change the world forever.
Happy Couple • Eric Mallory Morgan
Everything was going smoothly for lovers and con-artists Becky and Wayne Jenkins but when an encounter with conniving marks turns gruesome, their bond is tested in ways they’ve never dealt with before.
Sun Borne • Ellie Jepperson
When a desperate addict claims a skinwalker stole her infant, Wren, a Navajo Tribal Police Officer struggling with the looming birth of her own child, is pulled into an unraveling mystery that includes her own assumed dead twin.
Honorable Mention
Compulsion • Liz Buda
After the event known as “The Compulsion” — when a dozen unrelated people stepped in front of a train after losing impulse control — a meticulous police detective must untangle a web of lies about the investigation and the victims to find out why it happened.
Passing Through • Barbara Soares
Despite struggling with her own grief, a grief counselor joins a Disaster Management firm where she attempts to restore hope to tragedy survivors. But when she uncovers signs that these tragedies were orchestrated, she must transition from restorer to savior to avoid future ones.
The Distinguished Award in Screenwriting: JORDAN PEELE
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