2017 First 10 Pages Script Competition (renamed First 10 Pages Showcase)
The First 10 Pages Showcase recognizes scripts, books, short stories & stage plays in any genre that set up an exciting and compelling story capable of "hooking" a reader within the first 10 pages.
2017 WINNERS
FLESH AND BLOOD
by Jeffrey Nieves and Emily Eslami
Genre: Science Fiction
Logline: A teenager struggles to hide that he has developed the ability to shape-shift into any person he desires.
From the Writers: “Practice secretly, working within, like a fool, like an idiot.” Few first dates open with Buddhist poetry, but that’s exactly how ours began. For Emily, it was a declaration, “I’m a zen-sitting, poetry-sharing, fearless romantic. Take it or leave it.” She was casting a rather small net, but fortunately, Jeff was smitten by the first stanza. He had his own Buddhist practice, often meditating ten hours a day at secluded monasteries.
Jeff soon discovered Emily was also a TV nerd. She too was obsessed with Seinfeld and Brooklyn 99. As we shared our passion for TV, we realized something else. While we both loved it, we felt it had a problem. Many people, like us, had grown up without seeing faces and perspectives they related to on screen. We wanted to help change that.
As a Puerto Rican, Jeff felt that diverse characters were too often defined solely by their backgrounds. Latinas were saucy vixens. Asian men were nerds. Where were the Latino doctors, like Jeff’s cousin David? The Asian artists like his friend Ava? Jeff wanted to write diverse characters who weren’t defined solely by their backgrounds.
Emily noticed a similar pattern with women. The definition of a “strong female character,” had come to mean a women made of cardboard. She kicked butt without smudging her lipstick. She was never insecure or angry. In fact, she wasn’t a person at all. She was a misguided attempt to apologize for the years women have spent being written off the screen. Emily wanted to create women who could be noble one minute, and petty the next. Real women.
Ultimately, we both believe that characters should be seen as human first. That they shouldn’t be defined by what separates them. We all fall in love. We all fall apart. Perhaps a half-Persian girl and a Puerto-Rican guy would be rarely depicted as TV nerds or Buddhists. But that’s real life. As writing partners, we seek to illuminate the things we share because that’s what brings us together, whether it’s Buddhist poetry or Gilmore Girls, or something far greater.
Contact: vince@chapalamgmt.com
GALAXXON: PEACE OF THE PLANET
by Paul Mahoney
Genre: Animation | Family | Comedy
Logline: In a distant galaxy, ZEEBO and his friend BLOBBY, are drafted. They flee to a strange little blue planet called Earth. Maybe it has the answer for everlasting peace?
Bio: Winner of the 2016 Euroscript Screenwriting Competition in London for the Romantic Comedy – Elvis Town. (Option offer currently under consideration). Finalist of the 2014 Euroscript Screenwriting Competition in London for the Coming of Age Comedy – I can turn men. (Option offer received). Top 100 – for the 2016 Emerging Screenwriters Award (over 1,400 entries) for the Comedy Horror Script – Holiday from Hell. Attended the 2016 London Screenwriters Conference & also 2016 Australian Screenwriters Conference.
Writer Statement: I like to write scripts that make people laugh, cry and most importantly think.
Contact: pmahoney@westnet.com.au
GRANDMA’S COMING TO STAY
by Paul Mahoney
Genre: Comedy | Drama
Logline: Doug’s plans for financial security backfire when his demented mother-in-law Ruby accidentally burns her house down and is forced to live with him and his family.
Bio: Winner of the 2016 Euroscript Screenwriting Competition in London for the Romantic Comedy – Elvis Town. (Option offer currently under consideration). Finalist of the 2014 Euroscript Screenwriting Competition in London for the Coming of Age Comedy – I can turn men. (Option offer received). Top 100 – for the 2016 Emerging Screenwriters Award (over 1,400 entries) for the Comedy Horror Script – Holiday from Hell. Attended the 2016 London Screenwriters Conference & also 2016 Australian Screenwriters Conference.
Writer Statement: I like to write scripts that make people, laugh, cry and most importantly think.
Contact: pmahoney@westnet.com.au
MOTEL
by Jerry Jenae Sampson
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A woman with a violent past tries escaping her demons by hiding out in a motel on a coastal town, but she soon faces disturbing sounds on the other side of the wall that may or may not exist only in her mind.
Writer Statement: I tend to visualize life in script format. I hear the possibility of character dialogue in stranger’s conversations, and I close my eyes and can paint scenes that correspond to the soundtrack of music in the background. Always an avid movie buff, I picked up my first screenplay, Baz Lurhmann’s “Romeo & Juliet”, when I was 12 years old and became obsessed with the ability to see a movie come to life on the page. When I was 18 I took a road trip to Southern California, just me and my typewriter, and wrote my first screenplay. Though it was a decidedly horrible script, I remember little else if not the feeling of completing my own original screenplay. My script “Motel” is based off of a particularly terrifying experience that I had on that solo road trip so long ago, and I am more proud of it’s completion than anything else I’ve done thus far.
Contact: howlnightcrow@gmail.com
THE FOURTH COURIER
by Timothy Jay Smith
Genre: Thriller
Logline: An FBI Agent assigned to Poland helps the new Solidarity government solve a series of grisly murders that lead him into an underworld of drugs and nuclear smuggling.
Bio: Raised crisscrossing America pulling a small green trailer behind the family car, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that has taken him around the world many times. En route, he’s found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian Chiefs and Indian tailors: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that saw him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through war zones and Occupied Territories, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.
Tim brings the same energy to his writing that he brought to a distinguished career, and as a result, he has won top honors for his novels, screenplays and stage plays in numerous prestigious competitions. He won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the Paris Literary Prize) for his novel, A Vision of Angels. Kirkus Reviews called a second novel, Cooper’s Promise, “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012. Fire on the Island was short-listed for the 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for unpublished novels. His stage play, How High the Moon, won the prestigious Stanley Drama Award; and his screenplays have won competitions sponsored by the American Screenwriters Association, WriteMovies, Houston WorldFest, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Fresh Voices, StoryPros, and the Hollywood Screenwriting Institute.
Website: http://www.TimothyJaySmith.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TimothyJaySmith
VIRGIN KILLERS
by Tannaz Hazemi
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Three teenage brothers from a wealthy pharmaceutical family in LA are killing virgins to create a potent substance. Until middle brother Peter falls in love with one of their victims.
Bio: Tannaz Hazemi was born in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution — and via Sweden, Chicago, Milan and Paris, she made it to Brooklyn in one piece. At 19, she published a book on contemporary music with MTV Italy, then worked as a freelance journalist, and later as on-camera talent for Tele+ and VH1. For five years in France she wrote fiction while closely observing the cultural patterns of diehard Europeans during a financial crisis. Today she writes screenplays and directs shorts.
Hazemi’s most recent short BEFORE THE BOMB was awarded ‘Best Short Film’ by the Young People’s Jury at TIFF Kids / Toronto International Film Festival. It took her to the Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes Film Festival, and it has won 22 awards, including Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress. For the movie she produced an original cover song with singer SoKo. Her scripts have won several screenplay contests, including in 2016: The World Series of Screenwriting, the Genii Awards, and The American Film Award.
She is currently developing a short film series with VICE.
Contact: hazemitannaz@gmail.com
2017 OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
ALICE IN OZZU by William Sikorski Jr. & William Sikorski III
AN IRRESISTIBLE DESIRE by Elizabeth Hinnant
ANGELS VS DEMONS: GATEWAY TO HELL by Slavica Bogdanov
BABYLON by Mariah Gretchen Robinson
BEST SERVED COLD by Paul Mahoney
BROKEN FRAME by Stephen Boncella
CAMP CAMDEN by Tommy McInnis
CHASING THE WIND by Corean Strong
CONTROLLING by Robert Seckler & Margaret Rogers
DISPATCH 911 by Essence Sullins
DON APPETIT! by Jay Stamatis
DOUG DUNGBEETLE IN DANGEROUS DAYS by Paul Mahoney
DR. ALICE by Steve Wagner
DRAC’S BACK by Paul Mahoney
ELVIS TOWN by Paul Mahoney
FOR SALE by Anthony Bardes
GINGERBREAD HOUSE by Bruce Lamb
HOLIDAY FROM HELL by Paul Mahoney
HOMELESS by Zaric Reed
I CAN TURN MEN by Paul Mahoney
I CAN TURN WEDDINGS by Paul Mahoney
INSURRECTION by Simon Bowler
JAMESES by Laika Lee
LAST STOP by Tommy McInnis
LIFECREDIT by Jay Stamatis
LUMINARA by S.J. Molloy
MAJOR FRANKS by Miriam Cooper
MIL-LEN-NIAL by Josh Kaplan
NEW TO THE ZOO by Paul Mahoney
OLD LADY DILEMMAS by Lora-Ellen McKinney
PROJECT 52 by Daniel Davis Jr.
PROTOTYPE by Nicol Eilers
SCROLL BACK by Jay Stamatis
SEAFIRE by Frank D’Angeli
SEEDS by Sarah Marsh
SEVENTH ANGEL by Richard Prather Perry, Jr.
SIRINGO: UNDERCOVER IN THE WEST by Nathan Ward
SOLDIERS OF GOD by Guy Quigley
STELLAR DRIFT by Anthony Moore
THE BRAZILIAN MUTATION by Stu Heimdal
THE DEMON ARMY by Max Hoven
THE ESSENCE OF EVIL by Rico Jordan
THE EXCHANGE by Juliette Garrigues
THE FOURTH WALL: A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY by Dan Fitzgerald
THE HEARTBEATS OF LOVE by Janis Hepburn
THE HONOR KILLING by Guy Quigley
THE JOURNAL by Roi Tamkin
THE MAGIC OF BEING by Krista Fergusson
THE MASTER’S SON by Guy Quigley
THE NEW MRS. CAMPBELL by Paul Mahoney
THE OTHER MESSIAH by Marcus Herzberg
THE POSESSION OF JESSE by William Sikorski Jr. & William Sikorski III
THE SWITCH by Paul Mahoney
THE WONDERFUL by Demitra Papadinis
TIPPY THE ELF by William Sikorski Jr. & William Sikorski III
TWILIGHT SLEEP by Alan Lambert
UBER ENCOUNTER by KT Parker
YOSEMITE by Michelle Conley
