Josh Barkey: 2014 Nicholl Fellowship Quarter-Finalist

Thanks, Academy of Motion Pictures, for saving us all from another long-winded Josh Barkey blog post on this fine Wednesday evening.

I just got word that my script POUNDERS has made the quarter-finals for the most prestigious screenplay competition of them all - the one run by the folks who do the Oscars. Yay, me!

So far this year, POUNDERS has already been chosen as a finalist for the Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and a quarter-finalist for the Bluecat Screenplay Competition.

Now, we all know that contest-judging is highly subjective, and should not be taken as indicative of actual writing ability. The Page International Screenwriting Awards people recently turned their noses up at this very same POUNDERS script, but chose FOUNDER (which the Nicholl people rejected) as a quarter-finalist in their little competition. You never know who you'll end up getting as a reader (and which sort of narcotics they'll happen to have ingested just before they got to your script), so it's pretty much a crap-shoot.

Until I write a script that's so good it places in EVERY contest it's in (and wins at least one), I'm gonna be taking all this contest nonsense with a teacup full of salt. Still, a little salt goes a long way toward making all the rejection I've had to swallow a bit more palatable.

So... Yippee!

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NOTE: if you'd like to check out the first few pages from POUNDERS or FOUNDER, you can click their emboldened titles, above, or find them (and a few others) on my script-website, THE FIRST THREE PAGES (click to naggivate).

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FURTHER NOTE: I've written a number of scripts since finishing POUNDERS, so I've become a much better writer and I'm no longer all that fond of it... which means I'm not really expecting it to progress any further. But this is my second year entering the Nicholl contest, and second year as a quarter-finalist. So... third time's a charm, right?

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EVEN FURTHER NOTE: I just finished the second draft of my second novel this very day... and it's actually quasi-based on the POUNDERS screenplay. I don't know what that says about it, but there you go.