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Screenwriter Interviews
MovieBytes Interview:
Screenwriter Christopher Canole
An interview with screenwriter Christopher Canole regarding the A/Exposure Writing Competition.
Q: What's the title of the script you entered in this contest, and what's it about?A: Felix the Flyer
The true story of a young Cuban mailman who ran the 1200 miles of the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis to reach his goal of running in the 1904 Olympic Marathon. The Marathon itself is one of the most infamous Olympic stories in history; filled with cheating, drug abuse, racism, torturous conditions and non-stop twists and turns that changed the very nature of Marathon races forever. Felix is an inspiration for all underdogs seeking to cross their own finish line with pride.
A: Waiting for the results of a yearly contest can be agonizing, so I decided to enter one of the “monthlies” knowing even though there are no early rounds to verify my script amongst thousands submitted, I would only have to wait a month to see if I was the one and only script chosen by the A/E WriteMovies.com judges. After being announced as a winner in the 2004 Screenplay Festival contest last year I decided to re-write Felix and enter it into many of the top contest as I could afford. So far Felix has made the semi-finals in the Scriptapalooza, Page International and San Diego Film Festival, as well as the quarter-finals of the AAA Screenwriting and FilmMakers International, and I received a hand written note from the Nicholl Fellowship saying Felix was in the top 10%. As I wait on many other contest results I have submitted many of my other scripts to contest, and enjoy entering 24-hour competitions like the Writer’s Arc and NYC Midnight Madness.
Q: Were you satisfied with the adminstration of the contest? Did they meet their deadlines? Did you receive all the awards that were promised?A: The WriteMovies.com organizers were very efficient in both notifying me in advance of the posting on their web site, sending me my winnings within a week, and constantly contacting me during my month of victory to see what more they could do to make my victory be noticed in the industry.
Q: Were you given any feedback on your script? If so, did you find the feedback helpful?A: The best part of this contest is the feedback. Each winner has a lunch with an industry executive, who happened to be a former head of productions at Universal Studios and now independent producer, Tom Craig. During our meeting I gained valuable insight into the value of screenplay contests. He pointed out it is often just as important to make the semi-finals of a contest like Scriptapalooza or the Page International as to be a finalist or overall winner, because the winner is often selected by a judge who is interested in one particular kind of screenplay. Advancing through the early rounds is an indicator your work was appreciated by many more individuals who have the hardest task of all, filtering from 6,000 to 60 screenplays rather than from 20 to one. After all, my semi-final script in last year’s Scriptapalooza contest was optioned by TripleTake Media for a third of the winner’s prize.
Q: Has your success in this contest helped you market your script? Were you contacted by any agents, managers or producers?A: The win in this contest added momentum to my previous win in which the manager Leslie Rabb of RPM International took me on as one of her clients. And believe you me, a manager like Leslie is worth a hundred contest wins.
Q: What's your background? Have you written any other screenplays or television scripts?A: I am a union set photographer and actor who decided it was time to create my own stories. In the past three years I have written ten screenplays: Bloodgroove (60’s college story), Drawn Together (political thriller), DVD Day (science fiction doomsday), Spring Snow (Mishima novel adaptation for my PhD in literature), Runaway Horses (Another Mishima), Z.I.A. (Family Zoo story), Counter-Clockwise (Science fiction romance), Felix the Flyer (sports biography), Pen Dragon (comic book fable), and The Last Limo (post 9/11 American Odyssey).
Q: Do you live in Los Angeles? If not, do you have any plans to move there?A: I live in La Jolla, California and thanks to Amtrak I head up to LA every time someone needs a face-to-face.
Q: What's next? Are you working on a new script?A: Due to my background as a fencer, and popularity of my two female lead character scripts on the Inktip.com web site (1300 downloads in just four months), I am currently writing “Her Swastika Sword” a sports bio-pic about Helene Mayer the Jewish-German Olympic fencer who crossed-swords with everyone from the American Olympic committee to the Nazi organizers for her own mysterious motives. Fortunately, during my lunch with Tom Craig he let me know his interest in Felix the Flyer was to shop it around as a part of an Olympic Games television series. So maybe winning a monthly contest like WriteMovies.com can produce just as much buzz as one of yearly contests.
Posted Thursday, August 18, 2005
