UCLA Honors Alumnus Scribe Scott Kosar With Distinguished Achievement

Rising Hollywood screenwriter Scott Kosar will be honored by his alma mater June 12, when the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT) confers its annual Distinguished Achievement in Screenwriting Award upon the writer of the critically acclaimed 2004 dark drama, “The Machinist.”

Past recipients of the award include James Cameron (“Titanic”), Robert Towne (“Chinatown”), and Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, who shared a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for “Sideways” in 2004.

The award is presented each year during TFT’s Screenwriters Showcase event, where five of UCLA’s graduate screenwriting students present staged excerpts of their industry-juried projects.

The script that launched Kosar’s career, “The Machinist,” was written at TFT, though he insists it was not intended as a calling card: “I wanted to write something from the guts, and [TFT faculty members] Hal Ackerman, Richard Walter and Tim Albaugh taught me how to do that.”

“The Machinist” took several years to get produced, attracting attention both for its uncompromising Dostoyevskian portrait of a personality in decline, and for the shocking weight loss undertaken by star Christian Bale to depict the title character’s deterioration.

The script also attracted the attention of producer-director Michael Bay, who hired Kosar to write a remake of Tobe Hooper’s 2003 horror classic, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” for Platinum Dunes. The success of this film led Kosar to another collaboration with Bay’s company, a 2005 remake of the ’70s classic, “The Amityville Horror.”

Kosar is currently adapting John Albert’s lewd baseball memoir, “Wrecking Crew,” for Anonymous Content and Paramount Pictures, and will write and produce a movie about the Manson family later this year for Paramount Classics.

The 13th annual Screenwriters Showcase event, hosted by UCLA alumnus and “Face/Off” co-screenwriter Mike Werb ’02, takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, June12, at the Writers Guild of America West Theater, 135 S. Doheny Dr., Beverly Hills.

Keywords

"scott kosar" "alexander payne" "hal ackerman" "tim albaugh" "richard walter" "mike werb" 

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