DIRECTOR

HOLLYWOOD SYMPOSIUM EXEC
PRODUCES CBS MOVIE OF THE WEEK

The Hollywood Symposium's Executive Director Eric Edson recently served as co-executive producer and co-writer on LETHAL VOWS, a CBS Movie-of-the-Week project starring John Ritter and Marg Helgenberger.

You'll meet Eric in a second...but first, find out the hidden secrets of many professional screenwriters...

(sh-h-h-h)

ERIC EDSON, Symposium Executive Director

The Hollywood Symposium is proud to have as its Executive Director and guiding light, Eric Edson. Eric brings vast experience and a knowledgeable eye to our script development, screenwriter training, and film production programs, and he spearheads our screenplay contest. Eric's produced feature film writing credits are The Rose and the Jackal, starring Christopher Reeve and Madolyn Smith (Cable Ace Award nominee), Diving In, starring Kristy Swanson and Burt Young, Lethal Vows, (co-writer, co-executive producer) starring John Ritter and Marg Helgenberger, and Soggy Bottom, USA, starring Don Johnson, Ben Johnson, and Dub Taylor. Eric also worked uncredited on the screenplay for Hero, starring Dustin Hoffman and Geena Davis.

Eric Edson has written feature screenplays under contract for Columbia Pictures with producers Laura Zizkin and Alvin Sargent, for Hollywood Pictures working with producer/director Leonard Nimoy, for Warner Brothers with director Arthur Hiller, for TNT with producers Paula Weinstein, Wendy Dytman, and Steve White, for ABC Motion Pictures working with producer Thom Mount, for Geffen Pictures with producer David Bombyk, and with many other companies.

In a partnership as co-executive producer and co-writer, Eric set up TV Movie Of The Week projects at MTM, Aaron Spelling Entertainment, Atlantis, Saban, Zev Braun Pictures, and The Konigsberg Company. He has written MOWs for ABC and CBS, and directed a number of episodes for the syndicated TV series "Westbrook Hospital."

Eric has long been active in the Writers' Guild of America, serving on arbitration, election, and TV Awards committees, and also serving on the committee responsible for creating the new WGA award statuette, which has become the international symbol of the Writers' Guild.

Winner of the Goldwyn Award and the National Story Award, Eric is a professor of screenwriting at California State University, Northridge, and he also teaches screenwriting and film analysis through the renowned Writers' Program at UCLA Extension. We believe that the Hollywood Symposium Screenplay Contest and our other programs could not be in better hands.

5th CONTEST DEADLINE: APRIL 15, 2003 (early) or JUNE 1, 2003 (late). PLEASE SEE APPLICATION FOR DETAILS.

Credits verification available through the Credits Department of the WGA.

Psst. Want a hot writer's tip? Here's one.
Write badly with pride.
Believe it. Ranks right up there with "Structure, structure, structure," and "write what you know."
So save yourself some grief. Learn it now.
Because the hard fact remains that if you don't allow yourself complete freedom to write badly--and I mean really puke out the chunky drivel stuff bad--you'll never reach your goal of writing well. Never. Some scribes become so terrified of writing badly they stop writing all together. Freeze up. Lock solid. Writers' Block. This horrible condition has only one known cause: the demand for self-perfection up front.
Writing is rewriting, after all. Nobody has to see the really atrocious stuff but you.
Ever seen the lump of clay a sculptor starts with? Sort of a wet, oozy, gray mass? No lump, no statue. Real writers, serious ones, play with words. Roll around in words, blow word bubbles, splash words on paper nearly at random and then later decide which few to keep. This trick of the scribbling trade that all successful writers have practiced throughout all history, for some reason seems to be really tough for many people to grasp. Get over it.
Write badly with pride.

--Eric Edson

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