March Speakers announced!

This just in: Here are our March Screenwriting Guests.

Thursday, March 24th, 7pm - 9pm at Studio 4D in the CMB Building. They'll get here at 7:30pm and go until 9pm. We'll have the 1st half hour for meeting stuff.


DR. BONNIE ORR, writer of over thirty screenplays, two teleplays and three TV pilots, completed the graduate level screenwriting program at UCLA in 1998. Credits include writing and producing The Lights, Corruption.gov and Secret at Arrow Lake at Ranch Studios, where she served as the studio manager for three years. She wrote a script for Fireside Entertainment called Revenge of the Soccer Moms, which was greenlit by the Lifetime Channel and became a series called Inspector Mom. Prior to that she produced her award-winning TV pilot, Poodle Dog Lounge, which is in post production. She wrote a sequel for Contact for Michael Gordon (Narc, The Devil & Daniel Webster). She was a senior staff writer for ScreenTalk Magazine and has received awards in several screenwriting contests, such as Fade In and Script Magazine’s contests. She is a script doctor, and she worked in development for several production companies in LA, such as Nine By Nine Productions and Tony Blain Productions. She is currently in development and preproduction on Texas Venom, The Basement and Hotel Paradise. Agent Mickey Freiberg represents her on several projects and optioned her script Earth on Fire to Lone Tree Productions in Malibu. He is currently working on setting up a TV series called Courtroom Cupcake, co-written with her husband. Dr. Orr has taught screenwriting classes at Austin Community College, GSD&M and the Writers’ Academy. For the last four years, she has taught a seminar on “How to Pitch” at the Austin Film Festival, as well as various seminars on screenwriting and filmmaking across the country.

SUZANNE WEINERT is a screenwriter/producer who previously served as Vice President of Julia Roberts’ New York film production company, Shoelace Productions, where she participated in the development and production of more than 25 projects, including Erin Brockovich by Susannah Grant and Gigi LeVange’s Step Mom, and produced the award-winning wildlife documentaries, Nature Series: Wild Horses of Mongolia for the Nature Channel and Orangutans of Borneo for PBS, as well as the award- winning short film The Call Back starring Sam Rockwell. Prior to that, she interned with director Ron Howard during the production of The Paper starring Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall and Marisa Tomei. Recent screenplays include rewriting Shrinking Violet for Revolution Studios; Road Stories, directed by Steven Seebring and starring Johnny Messner; and Good to the Last Drop, a finalist for Best Comedy at the Austin Film Festival. Her most recent writing/producing project is the dark comedy Ex-terminators, starring Heather Graham, Jennifer Coolidge and Amber Heard, which had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in 2009. It is currently available on DVD and Video on Demand. She also recently completed producing a Western, The Legends of Hell’s Gate, starring Eric Balfour, Henry Thomas, Jenna Dewan, Summer Glau, Robert Buckley and Lou Taylor Pucci. In Spring 2011 she will produce One in A Million Hero, a drama set in the world of NASCAR. Ms. Weinert holds an M.F.A. from the School of the Arts, Columbia University; a Graduate Certificate from The Writing Program, Columbia University and a B.A. in Writing from Columbia University. She is a Professor of Advanced Screenwriting at the School of Visual Arts and Fordham University, both in NYC.