Big Nicholl push left me groggy

The deadline for the Nicholl Fellowship is past.

Our writing group submitted eleven scripts. Three people submitted two.

Now, is there a compelling reason to post any of them on AS?

Is there a new contest in the future?

The alternative is a Writing Assignemnt for "12 Princesses.' Time to spend some time working on that, I suppose.

Deadline is May 15 for that one.

Hi Andy!! Hi everybody!!!

My Nicholl script was "Ghost Dance at Fort Courage"

It was a true story about an Indian elder who converted to Christianity and conducted Ghost Dances all over the West to summon the spirit of Jesus to protect his people.

And it's going to win!!!!!

So I take it your an American Native, possible Lakota or perhaps Cheyenne?

Sorry that's directed to Norma H.

"American values being adopted by less advanced cultures because they're better."

I simply disagree with you. Especially on this matter. I am Sioux and it is, and was not, that simple.

I the words of a better...

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Angus is absolutely right.

This is not an argument.

The fact is; Your biased and racist, we all know that.

But I have to correct you on this point. "Christiany was a superior culture in theory." Is a fallacy.


It is not.

"American values being adopted by less advanced cultures because they're better."

So it's a comedy?

Will,

Why do you always try an skew every post to your same old diatribe of ignorance on hate?

Can you just let it go for once. We get it you believe your part of an elite group. Shit you don't see me using these forums as a podium...



All I really wanted to know was; Norma H are you an American Native? and perhaps what is the view point of your story.

Angus said, This is not an argument.

Actually, it is.

The problem is, you don't realize that the other people have equally valid viewpoints. You are mistaken if you think you're the only one with a valid opinion.

Do you understand what conflict means? Two people can take opposite positions, and by choosing which information to share, cna convince themselves they're the only ones entitled to speak on the issue. You can check out the books on the Amazon site (always a smart idea)

An 1879 codification of Maryland statutes prohibited blasphemy:

Art. 72, sec. 189. If any person, by writing or speaking, shall blaspheme or curse God, or shall write or utter any profane words of and concerning our Saviour, Jesus Christ, or of and concerning the Trinity, or any of the persons thereof, he shall, on conviction, be fined not more than one hundred dollars, or imprisoned not more than six months,

The US Supreme Court in Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952) held that the New York State blasphemy law was an unconstitutional prior restraint on freedom of speech. The court stated that "It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches or motion pictures."

America now has Free Speech as part of our constitutional law. The right to disagree, essentially. Back in the 1800s, the courts didn't apply the First Amendment to states.

So, Angus, have you ever heard of the Ghost Dance? Ever write a script about it?

Angus said, always try an skew every post to your same old diatribe of ignorance on hate?

You really don't understand what screenplayh writing is about, Angus.

Looking for conflict... isn't something I would naturally do, but for a Nicholl script, it's how you win.

Let me see if I can follow this messed up logic put forth.

The people of Fiji are more advanced than the people of Tonga

Because the GDP of Fiji is 4.5 billion

where as the people of Tonga's GDP is only 700 million.


No... that doesnt make any sense what so ever.

The Sioux tribes knew how to make birchbark and dugout canoes, but more often, they traveled overland. Originally the Sioux used dogs pulling travois (a kind of drag sled) to help them carry their belongings.

Once Europeans introduced horses to North America,

the Sioux became known as expert riders and traveled greater distances. Originally the Lakota and Dakota Indians were corn farmers as well as hunters, but once they acquired horses they mostly gave up farming, and moved frequently to follow the seasonal migrations of the buffalo herds.

This is one of the themes that Norma used in her script. The settlers brought the idea of riding horses and it changed the Native culture in a very basic way.

Actually there are fossil records of horses in North America going back 4 million years.

While some bands had a few horses by 1707, if not earlier, the Lakotas did not fundamentally become Plains horsemen until 1750-75,

The Great Sioux Nation, known as Oceti Sakowin, or "Seven Council Fires," is a confederation of closely allied cognate bands. They speak three mutually intelligible dialects of the Siouan language family: Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota. They became known as the Sioux, or a word like it, in the seventeenth century, when their enemies, the Ojibwas, told the French that that was what they were called. The word derives from the Ojibwa term Na dou esse, which means "Snakeline Ones" or "Enemies."

The Lakotasr conviction that they were created by Wakan Tanka (Grandfather, the Great Spirit) and emerged from a cave (Wind Cave) in Paha Sapa, the Black Hills of South Dakota. This place, more than any other, is sacred to the Lakotas.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, at the very time the horse-riding nomadic way of life of the Lakotas was flourishing, the grasslands were being invaded by European Americans. The U.S. government initiated an aggressive military policy in the Plains during the 1860s. This policy included building additional military posts and pursuing Indian groups characterized as "hostile," activities that inflamed already tense relations between the federal government and the Lakotas and their allies. The Great Sioux Nation and its allies proved formidable opponents, militarily and politically, and brought the U.S. government to the negotiating table twice at Fort Laramie (1854 and 1868) to sign treaties. The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie established the Great Sioux Reservation, spanning more than half of the modern state of South Dakota

By the 1870s intolerable pressures led to a series of "Indian Wars," the most famous of which was the annihilation of Gen. George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Calvary at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 by Sitting Bull's Lakotas and their Cheyenne allies

The 1890s were difficult years for the Sioux. Confined to reservations, where indifferent and self-serving Indian agents controlled them, they were expected to farm arid land. Their children were shipped to boarding schools, such as Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, where they were urged to abandon their Indian ways. The Sun Dance, which had always served as an integrating mechanism for the Lakotas, had been banned along with other Lakota rituals in 1882. Although it was banned, the Lakota Sun Dance was never eradicated; it simply went "underground" to await a more tolerant era.

So, as a screenwriter... Westerns aren't big in Hollywood right now, after the crash and burn of "Cowboys and Aliens"... but for a Nicholl script, the Ghost Dance legend has so much original, integral conflict and it's part of our nation's history...

As far as winning a Nicholl Fellowship goes, Norma's script is 100% on target. Don't deny her that.

Actually, the horses were bought to Florida by the Spanish in the early 1500s - way before any real settlers.

My Brother-in-Law was born on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation

He is Lakota Souix

and one thing the man really hates is european people telling him what his peoples history is...

Here, Hear, Jim.

I hope Norma does well in the Nicholl. But the thing that makes the Nicholl one of the best contests is that it is more about writing and execution than it is about the "concept".

Scott said, it is more about writing and execution than it is about the "concept".

Two sides to that one, too.

If you start with a topic with essential humanity, with different kinds of original conflict, the end result comes out better.

Yes, the Nicholl is looking for great writers, and they assume that studios will hire the writers and assign them projects... but winning a Nicholl Fellowship is much easier if you...

Let me try this a different way. Angus, you said you entered the Nicholl this year. What is your script about?

I spent a lot of time helping Norma with her concept. It is dripping with conflict. It was her job to make sure history was served, to do the research, and she did that. it's a script that Disney could make, no problem.

Can you give us your Logline, Angus?

Though if an element of the script is really "American values being adopted by less advanced cultures because they're better", then I fear her script is in deep, deep trouble.