A & E Editor

When Clint Eastwood spewed out the classic line Go ahead, make my day, or Jack Nicholson screamed out at Tom Cruise, You can’t handle the truth in A Few Good Men, audiences were wooed with these characters’ wit, charisma and spontaneity.

The actors may have given the characters life, but it was the writer behind the scenes that created the characters and crafted the dialogue. Without good writing, it is possible to have good movies, but the films will never be great movies.

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This month, the Richard M. Blumenberg Screenwriting Competition will allow student writers the chance to see just how their scripts measure up. The feature-length screenplays will be read by a pool of judges from the film industry, and the winning script will be awarded $1,000.

The scripts must be turned in to the Cinema and Photography Department by Jan. 30, and the winner will be announced at the department banquet in the spring.

After submission, the screenplays will be sent off to be judged by former SIUC students with experience and contacts in Hollywood.

Cinema and Photography faculty member Gary Kolb said the role of the screenwriter is critical to the movie making process.

It’s where everything starts. Without the screenwriter, the movie wouldn’t exist, he said. With the generating of ideas, the screenwriter motivates everything to happen.

SIUC screenwriting instructor Jean Stawarz said the competition offers the writer material for a resume, as well as a shot at achieving recognition in the movie business.

It’s always a great resume thing to have won a competition. In terms of going on to graduate school, it’s a really an excellent thing to have on your resume, she said. In terms of getting out there in the business, it’s great to look for an agent and be able to say, And I won a screenwriting competition at Southern Illinois University.’

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Anything helps in terms of recognition.

The contest has been in the works for five years but was sprung last year by the late Blumenberg, an SIUC screenwriting professor who died in June.

Kolb said the contest was started, not just as an incentive for students to have their work seen, but also for other people to recognize the screen work being done within the Cinema and Photography department.

Screenwriting has been a big part of this program for a long time, and under Richard Blumenberg it became a cornerstone, he said. It’s important to recognize our students work and reward them in substantive ways. They can use that in any way they choose, whether it furthers their career or gets them an apartment in L.A.

Students hoping to submit their television scripts are out of luck. Film scripts are all that will be judged because writing for movies and television incorporate totally different styles.

Film and television are two entirely different things, so you can’t judge a TV script and film script on the same basis, Stawarz said. We would have to have a different set of judges and different prize money, and that wouldn’t be fair to the people that are writing them.

The contest could even provide a perfect ending for any writer’s dream though the chances may be remote if one of the judges feel the screenplay has the capacity for production.

As far as someone seeing the script and getting it sold is unlikely, but you never can tell if someone may make a referral to an agent out of it although that’s not what [the competition] is about, she said.

It’s a funny business. Anything is possible.

Factoid:Screenplays must be 90-120 pages in length, written in standard script format and registered with the Writer’s Guild of America. They must be turned into Rhonda Monroe in the Cinema and Photography Department by Jan. 30. For information, call 453-2365.