Lab US-2017

2017

Our third annual Writers Lab retreat took place in the Connecticut River Valley, from Thursday, September 14th, through Sunday, September 17th.

Connecticut River Valley

We returned to Guest House in Connecticut for our third Lab, again with 12 feature writers and 8 script mentors from across the US, as well as Special Mentors to run workshops and the TWL Team.

Each of the four days of the lab was richly programmed. Our deep-dive mentor-writer one-on-ones anchored the programming, as always, along with film clips and bonding over meals and evening cocktails. This year, we also added scene readings, pitching workshops and small group feedback sessions.

Our last day was career focused, and we discussed industry trends, next steps for each writer, and how the participants could be proactive in increasing their impact, as artists and businesswomen. The writers traveled back to NYC together, with clear goals for redrafting,  creating companion materials for their scripts, and continuing to build their networks.

The 2017 writers

Judith and Sandra BergHolly BrixVigil ChimeAndi DelottMandy FabianPamela HarrisSamantha Manahan and Carol HostutlerKaren McDermottKat SmithKim and Mai SpurlockShawn TollesonLaurie Whitaker
2017 lab participantJudith and Sandra Berg
THE CONTEST A wise-cracking advertising maven specializing in big-money contests, and a wily waif with an uncanny talent for winning them, team up for a contest to beat ‘em all, in this homage to the romantic capers of the 1930’s.
2017 lab participantHolly Brix
MILE ZERO A secretive young woman goes to a remote Alaskan oil-drilling station, intending to prove that her parents were innocent of committing a series of gruesome murders years before.
2017 lab participantVigil Chime
BRING BACK GIRL A 14-year-old girl, kidnapped by human traffickers and sold as a child bride, plots her escape, even as her father lets nothing stand in his way in his pursuit to recover her. (2017 Nicholl Winner)
2017 lab participantAndi Delott
THE DEAL A headstrong Hollywood executive puts her own career in jeopardy when she exacts revenge on a wunderkind director for a decades-old crime he committed.
2017 lab participantMandy Fabian
LATE BLOOMER When a mousy sexaganarian’s husband dies, she’s awakened from decades of apathy and acquiescence by a rude-as-hell teen during a road trip in pursuit of adventure and forgiveness.
2017 lab participantPamela Harris
JOYVILLE In a near future, three families in a suburban purgatory, observed by an audience of judgmental mutant wildlife, face ecological and moral collapse.
2017 lab participantSamantha Manahan and Carol Hostutler
TAKA-JO After the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese-American mother teaches her son the way of the samurai on their journey from their farm on Bainbridge Island to the Manzanar internment camp.
2017 lab participantKaren McDermott
THE CUSTOM OF THE SEA After three sailors, stranded at sea, resort to cannibalism to survive, a judge must decide whether their desperate act was murder in this courtroom drama based on an infamous 19th-century case.
2017 lab participantKat Smith
…INTO THE LAND OF NOD In the early ‘90s, when a strike at a Florida sugar company threatens a hard-working Jamaican cutter with deportation, he persuades an independent single mother to marry him, disrupting an already volatile family dynamic.
2017 lab participantKim and Mai Spurlock
THE BREAKLINE When a troubled NYC photographer learns that her mother’s remains have been discovered after 20 years, she returns home to coal-mining country to investigate, and puts herself directly in the murderer’s path.
2017 lab participantShawn Tolleson
YAZOO CRYIN’ An African-American war correspondent returns to her hometown in Mississippi to find a dusty civil rights-era murder case finally coming to trial – and the defendant is the man acquitted of killing her own parents years before.
2017 lab participantLaurie Whitaker
WARRIOR GIRL After a horrific car accident kills her parents and shatters her leg, a young Olympic-bound gymnast is sent to Kansas to live with an equally wounded stranger – her Native American grandfather (In pre-production.)

The lab has continued to open doors for me that otherwise would have stayed closed.

Lyralen Kaye
TWL US 2015

The 2017 mentors

Jackie Blain
Susan Cartsonis
Lisa Cortes
Rachel Cohen

Amy Fox
Pamela Gray
Guinevere Turner

Pat Verducci
Ligiah Villalobos
Jamie Zelermyer

Industry Insights

Women accounted for only 12% of writers working on the top 100 films of 2020–a decline of 8% from 2019.

Previous labs
in the US

2015
2016

2017
2018

2019
2020

2021
2022

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