Fayetteville : UA team presents comedy idea to Hollywood execs
Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007
Standing in front of some of the country’s top television executives last week, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville graduate student Ashley Edwards felt amazingly calm.
She and 17 other UA students were in Hollywood trying to sell executives from Warner Bros., NBC and Fox on a television show concept they developed as part of an intensive television writing class.
“I felt really confident,” Edwards said. “I felt we had worked really hard and we deserved to be there.”
The four-day trip concluded the course taught by television writer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, best known as writer and creator of the shows Designing Women and Evening Shade.
She was the first holder of the McIlroy Family Visiting Professorship in Performing and Visual Arts in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.
Bloodworth-Thomason, her husband producer and director Harry Thomason, writer Allen Crowe and design director Dwight Jackson spent a week working with the students to create a pilot episode.
Because Bloodworth-Thomason’s focus was “write what you know,” the students looked to their lives in Fayetteville for inspiration.
Carnall Hall is a comedy about four graduate students and two undergraduates living together in a house, said UA graduate student David Wright.
In the pilot, one of the students comes back to Fayetteville to learn he has impregnated his best friend.
Students worked on the concept throughout December and early January, said Edwards, a third-year graduate student studying playwriting.
“It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these students,” said Don Bobbitt, dean of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. “You can’t imagine the kind of access they had.”
The trip was the first visit to Los Angeles for many of the students, drama professor Patricia Martin said.
The students pitched their show to executives at Warner Bros. and later to executives at NBC.
“Everybody was very receptive,” Martin said. “Our students were very confident and very professional.”
The students toured Warner Bros. Studios, and also pitched their idea to Fox.
While the studio passed on the show, they suggested the students develop it as a Web-based show.
Ed Wilson, president of Fox Television Network, is a UA alumnus.
The students also met with a representative of Creative Artists Agency, the country’s largest agency for actors and writers.
Jackson said the goal was to expose the students to a world they knew little about.
“Show biz is a collaborative venture,” Jackson said. “It takes a lot of professionals working together to create a great product. The best work is done as a team and egos have no place on a team.”
The class’s estimated $ 30, 000 cost was paid for through the endowment that funds the McIlroy professorship and funds from the Fulbright College, Bobbitt said.
Michael Riha, a drama professor, said the trip was an “eyeopening experience” for the students and faculty. “It was really important for students to see how another part of our industry works,” Riha said. Wright, who lived in Los Angeles, said it was an invaluable networking experience. He has been involved with several film projects, including his own 2002 film Changing Hearts, starring Faye Dunaway and Tom Skerritt. Wright said he plans to return to Los Angeles once he completes his novel.
To contact this reporter: cpark@arkansasonline. com
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