by Gina Keating
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (Reuters) - The movie world's screenwriting glitterati welcomed five fledgling scribes to their ranks as they handed out the Motion Picture Academy's first honors of the Hollywood awards season.
The aspiring screenwriters, who have never been paid for their work, saw their careers slam into hyperdrive on Thursday night as they picked up the $25,000 check and industry buzz that goes along with winning a Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship.
"I assure you, you are changing lives here," said Matt Harris, whose western, Moon of the Popping Trees, got him the fellowship for his first screenplay.
Philadelphian Creighton Rothenberger, who won a fellowship with his Korean War drama The Chosin, called the weeklong series of meetings with agents, directors, producers and established writers "overwhelming."
The fellowship was established in 1985 by Gee Nicholl in the name of her husband, Don, a writer, producer and co-creator of "The Jeffersons" and "Three's Company."
"All I want to say to the writers here is, please find us some good stories ... not just the usual T-and-A stuff," Nicholl told the attendees, who included The Big Easy writer Dan Petrie Jr., Erin Brockovich scribe Susannah Grant, and The Rookie writer Mike Rich, a former Nicholl winner.
When accepting her check later in the evening, writer Pamela Kay promised that her winning screenplay Nude and Naked had "no T and only a little A."
The low-key ceremony at the posh Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel kicked off the annual Hollywood Awards season that leads up to the Academy Awards -- the film world's top honor.
The five Nicholl fellows were chosen from more than 6,000 entries -- the largest number of scripts ever considered by the Academy members who acted as judges.
Old Hollywood regaled their new comrades with tales of the solitary writing life -- disappearing agents, "Beverly Hills obscurity" and the indignity of being upstaged by youngsters.
"When I read Moon of the Popping Trees I admired your chutzpah for creating a hero with a drinking problem -- and solving it by killing him," Hal Kanter, who penned Pocketful of Miracles told Harris.
The evening's only somber moment occurred as Kurt Kuenne picked up his check for Mason Mule, which he dedicated to his best friend, a doctor who was brutally murdered last year.
"This was a gift from him," he said.
The fifth winner was John Ciarlo, whose script Bend in the River featured an elderly couple forced to go on the lam to avoid being split up when the wife is sent to a nursing home.
© 2002 Reuters