#NSNC16 – Los Angeles
By Lisa Smith Molinari
Vice President
National Society of Newspaper nnelumnists
Lisa Smith Molinari
At NSNC’s 40th Annual Conference, which will take place June 23-26 in Los Angeles, a panel of Hollywood insiders will give us their behind the scenes perspectives on how written words are transformed for the screen. The panel will be hosted by none other than NSNC’s own 2012 Columnist of the Year, W. Bruce Cameron.
Bruce started as a humor columnist for Denver’s Rocky Mountain News but later saw his words come to life when ABC turned his work into the television sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. Bruce has also co-written two feature films: Muffin Top (released in 2014) and Cook-Off (currently in post production).
Also, Bruce’s novel A Dog’s Purpose spent 52 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list and has been made into a Dreamworks/Walden Media movie, starring Dennis Quaid and Britt Robertson, scheduled for release this January.
Wikimedia Commons photo
The conference panel will also include prominent Hollywood screenwriters, directors and producers — including Gary Goldstein, Aaron Mendelsohn, Tony Cane-Honeysett and Laurice Elehwany Molinari (brag alert: she’s my sister-in-law!) — who will discuss “the challenges, rewards, and special circumstances of the men and women who are writing for the screen, whether it be movies, TV shows, or even new media.”
The panelists will field questions about industry changes that are creating opportunities and destroying established business models. It promises to be a fun and fascinating look at what happens when our craft of writing is applied to show business.
The panel will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, June 25, at our iconic conference venue, Hotel Angeleno, which has had its own brushes with Hollywood fame over the years.
Built in the 1960s, the structure was renovated in 2005 to become the luxurious boutique Hotel Angeleno.The connections that this unique, cylindrical hotel has with movies, television and screenwriters are reminiscent of the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” parlor game.
Our hotel venue first appeared in a 1975 Starsky and Hutch episode, more recently in the 2004 film Sideways starring Paul Giamatti. In between, Al Pacino’s tough-talking LAPD detective character Vincent Hanna, in the 1995 movie Heat, checked into the hotel when his addiction to work put his marriage on the rocks.
His estranged wife, played by Diane Verona, tells Pacino, “You don’t live with me, you live among the remains of dead people. You sift through the detritus, you read the terrain, you search for signs of passing, for the scent of your prey, and then you hunt them down. That’s the only thing you’re committed to. The rest is the mess you leave as you pass through.”
These lines were written by screenwriter/director Michael Mann, who was inspired to get into show biz after seeing Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove. One of Mann’s first gigs in Hollywood was writing episodes of Starsky and Hutch. And if that doesn’t blow your mind, Mann’s idol, Kubrick, once said, “If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.”
Whoa. I think I’m seeing stars.
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Haven’t registered for the conference yet? Hurry! The deadline for the early registration fees is April 30: tinyurl.com/nsnc16la.
Rooms in the NSNC room block at Hotel Angeleno are going like hotcakes! Click here to make your reservation: tinyurl.com/NatlSocietyNewspaperColumnists. Questions? Contact Kristie Cardenas at Hotel Angeleno at kcardenas@hotelangeleno.com, (310) 481-7825.
The Angeleno is at 170 N. Church Lane in Los Angeles. We have a limited number of rooms at a special nightly rate of $169 so register and reserve your room right away.
