*Los Angeles, CA – Starting its sixteen year, THE GUY HANKS & MARVIN MILLER SCREENWRITING PROGRAM aka The Cosby Program, will be accepting applications from July 15 to September 15, 2010.

This program was established by Drs. Bill and Camille Cosby at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Unaffiliated with USC, the goal of the Hanks-Miller Program is to develop the pool of qualified African-American writers in the entertainment industry.

This program meets twice a week for 15-weeks beginning February 2010. It is designed to assist writers in completing a television or feature script, while giving them the opportunity to examine African-American history, culture and iconography. Tuition is free to those selected.

Our program is not designed for beginning-level writers. We are seeking writers who have taken the initiative to study television or feature writing through workshops or classes; though a degree in cinematic writing or filmmaking is not required. In an industry that is extremely competitive, we have found our greatest success in assisting those who have a strong foundation in television or screen writing and have a body of work to show for their efforts. Writers selected for this program usually have no produced credits, but are on the brink of great success. They are able to use the product and the relationships they create in this unique workshop environment to advance their careers. The Hanks-Miller Program is credited with introducing more successful African-American writers into the entertainment industry than any other program of its type.

$20,000 Grand Prize!
$20,000 cash, a trip to Los Angeles to attend the Screenwriting Expo
plus free or refunded Golden Pitch pitch tickets, plus other product and services prizes.

Four Genre Category Prizes Totaling $10,000 Cash
Each prize is $2,500 cash plus a trip to Los Angeles to attend the Screenwriting Expo,
plus $1,000 in finalist prizes.  The four winners will be picked from among these nine genre categories.

Action-Adventure, Thriller, Sci-Fi, Comedy, Family,Animation, Low Budget, Indie, Horror, Fantasy

First of all, I’d like to thank the Academy. And, of course, the producer, the director, the actors, my mother, and my mother’s bichon frise, Maddie, without whose constant barking cheering me on, this film would not have been written.

So, I’ve written my Oscar winning speech; I’ve even decided on my outfit (Versace dress, Jimmy Choo shoes). I’ve also worked out that if I have no liquids for three weeks before the ceremony, I will make it through the eight hours you have to stay in your seat in Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre without screaming for the bathroom.

Now all I have to do is write the damned script. Ay, there’s the rub, as Hamlet said. I knew there would be a catch. It was easy enough to watch Slumdog Millionaire pick up its eight statuettes at this year’s Oscars and fantasise about my reaching the same giddy heights, but a lot harder to imagine putting in the hard graft that got director Danny Boyle and his team there in the first place.

There’s no way around it. Unless a screenwriter is writing about one-minute section of life where other sexes do not enter, or a world filled with one sex that practices asexual reproduction, men are going to write about women, and women are going to write about men. But can they do so successfully?

This question has been argued for years, flowing through discussions about literature and female-centric moving media. Regardless of theme, men rule the typewriter, and I would venture to say that it’s most pronounced in Hollywood. It is palpable every time the screenwriter credit pops on the screen, when Oscar nominees are announced, and even on the picket line, as USA Today pointed out back in 2008. (A post which also notes that women make up less than a quarter of the screenwriters in Hollywood.)

On the surface, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “The Hurt Locker” might deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. They’re both explosive action thrillers hitting screens this summer. Both feature young men on a physically grueling quest in the desert, and both even feature robots as their heroes’ unlikely aides-de-camp.

But viewers who happen to see both films will no doubt feel and think radically different things upon leaving the theater. In the case of “Transformers,” directed by Michael Bay, they’re likely to feel pummeled and punched by the movie’s loud, relentless action, not to mention confused by what all the sound and fury was about. Something to do with an ancient robot race extinguishing the sun by way of a sharp metallic dingus in an Egyptian pyramid? Whatever, let’s go grab a Super Gulp and play Grand Theft Auto.

As noted in the previous session, emotions are at the heart of every good film. Whatever emotional struggle you are attempting to dramatize–whatever your premise–your story must bleed out of your characters’ psyches. The most successful screenplays are character-driven, even those with complex plots. In solid, character-driven scripts, all action, or plot, is organic; that is, it flows logically from the characters’ needs and desires.

Every good script starts with a protagonist, or pivotal character. According to Egri, the protagonist “is the one who creates conflict and makes the play move forward…A pivotal character must not merely desire something. He must want it so badly that he will destroy or be destroyed in the effort to attain his goal.” For example, in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), Maximus is driven to exact revenge on the ruler Commodus for the death of his family. Although he is captured and enslaved, he never loses sight of his goal, pursuing it with measured determination until the end. Willfulness, the ability to make decisions and take actions, is a necessary attribute of the protagonist. Without it, the protagonist will be weak, his or her actions will seem inconsequential and the audience will lose interest in both the character and your story.