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Olf
Wins Screenwriting Award at International Competition
"Anthony," Theater professor Julian Olf's second screenplay, won a gold award in the Dramatic Adaptation category of screenwriting at WorldFest, an annual international film festival. It shared the honor with "The Humming Stone," by Greg Hall, at the 10-day event. Olf's first screenplay, "The Liar," was a finalist in the same competition and three national contests in 1998. The festival had 4,300 entries from 33 nations and nearly 23,000 people attended. Forty-five feature films premiered and 120 short films were shown. Olf had an inkling he'd done well when he was contacted by a Los Angeles agent, who asked to read the screenplay, before he'd been notified that he won. He hopes to see it produced as a film. "Anthony," one of more than 50 entries in its category, is based on Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Contacted by film-industry agents after his success with "The Liar," Olf was encouraged to write a contemporary, Hollywood-style piece. His first reaction was negative. "The thought of sitting down and cranking out a Hollywood formula didn't appeal to me," he said. "But then I thought, 'Can I write a screenplay that follows the Hollywood formula and still satisfies my artistic needs?'" Olf began writing "Anthony" late last spring, creating something he describes as a commercial plot with non-Hollywood characters. The story is set in contemporary New York and addresses the internal states of the central character, Anthony, a man who, as a boy, saw his father murdered. "He's a dangerous character because he reveals the things that Shakespeare's character conceals," Olf said. "If you're not looking for Shakespeare, you might not notice it's Shakespeare." "I had long been fascinated by the play 'Hamlet,'" Olf said. "The intensity of Hamlet's inactivity really intrigued me. I thought it must conceal unbearable activity in the brain. "The destination defines the journey: If you get obsessed with revenge, you're always in a state of becoming. It's really the basis for paralysis." Refusing to experience any paralysis himself, Olf has acquired the rights to begin his next screen adaptation. "I'm not going to sit around an wait," he said. "I'm going to begin a new project." He plans to write a script for a short film, based on assistant professor of English Noy Holland's story, "Delicious." |
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