SD Native Wins Academy’s Nicholl Fellowship In Screenwriting

BROOKINGS, S.D. (AP) — Amy Tofte can trace her screenwriting award back to her roots on a Brookings farm.

Tofte is one of five people who were announced as winners of the 2015 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition for her script “Addis Abeka,” which she pronounces “A-bay-kah.”

That “Academy” is The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the same one that hands out Oscars to top actors, songwriters, film editors and others each year.

“It’s one of the brass rings for aspiring writers to win. It has prestige and it’s a huge honor to win,” Tofte said. “I’m really proud that I’m one of the fellows.”

The other winners were “What They Had” by Elizabeth Chomko, “Great Falls” by Andrew Friedhof, “Best Sellers” by Anthony Grieco and “Free Agent” by Sam Regnier.

“Addis Abeka” is about an orphan boy in Ethiopia who spends 10 years trying to connect with his brother, Tofte said.

How did a girl from the Upper Midwest think of that?

“In 2013, I went with a group called Seattle Anesthesia Outreach,” she said. “My cousin is a doctor who does humanitarian work with them. She encouraged me to go with them.”

Tofte served as a volunteer for two weeks, doing grunt work and watching the doctors teach and do surgery.

“Amazing to observe that and talk to them,” Tofte told The Brookings Register ( ).

“The script basically came out of my experiences,” she said. “I was seeing the good and the bad all at once. There’s a split between people who have enough and those who don’t.”

She took some trips into the country and contrasted it to growing up on a farm outside Brookings.

“I don’t know if I felt the connection in that way, but it was a combination of all those experiences and that’s what the script came out of,” Tofte said.

She turned to writing when she was young.

“I grew up with a pretty active imagination and I think some of that comes from growing up in a place like Brookings,” Tofte said. “Being on a farm, make-believe is a big part of how you play on a farm.”

Even as a child, she enjoyed making up stories. “I wrote a play for the First Lutheran Sunrise Service when I was in high school, so I was always doing some kind of writing, something creative,” said Tofte, who graduated from Brookings High School in 1991.

She now lives in Los Angeles.

“I started out as an actor, but I was always writing, I was writing in college,” Tofte said. “I think I really like all kinds of dramatic writing, I have written several plays and had the opportunity to see them produced.”

She’s also written some screenplays, television scripts and web series. Tofte got serious about screenwriting in 2008, she said, when she went back to school for her master of fine arts in dramatic writing from California Institute of the Arts.

“The difficulty in screenwriting is you’re constantly making choices of what to include and what not to include. It has to be very clean, no room for excess on the page, but at the same time, it has to be very clear, so the reader doesn’t get lost,” Tofte said. “It’s a challenge of giving enough description but not too much description. Screenwriting is a blueprint (like for a house)… a collaborative endeavor. Everybody needs to envision the same house.”

She had applied to the Nicholl Fellowship before.

“I do get a lot of rejection letters. The Nicholl Fellowship gives the most humane rejection letters. That says a lot about them,” Tofte said.

This time, she didn’t get a rejection letter, she got emails.

Tofte submitted “Addis Abeka” and it was one of 7,442 scripts in the annual competition.

“It’s a world-wide contest,” Tofte said. “The way they do it, it’s a whittling down.”

She got the first email when they notified her she was a quarter-finalist. “It’s exciting. ‘I’m a quarter finalist.’ You think nothing else is going to happen,” Tofte said. The second email said she was one of 149 finalists. “That’s pretty incredible,” she said. Then there were no more emails. “I got a phone call when I was a finalist. That meant my script was one of 12. That’s the day I cried,” Tofte said. “You can’t even imagine. A lot of joy and terror.”

“My husband (Tudor Munteanu) is like ‘Of course they picked you; you work so hard,'” she added.

One more phone call came this time from the entire committee.

“I knew the minute she said, ‘I’m calling for the Nicholl Committee.’ I hope I sounded intelligent,” Tofte said.

Each winner receives a $35,000 prize, the first installment of which will be distributed at an awards presentation on Nov. 4 at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, according to the website www.oscars.org.

So, does her connection to the group that hands out the Academy Awards mean Tofte’s script will be coming to a screen soon?

“Let’s hope so,” she said. “Some of the scripts to win the Nicholl have been made (into productions). It’s a long road, not a done deal.”

“What Nicholl is about is encouraging screenwriters. The focus is on writing and good scripts. I think it’s a good philosophy,” she said. “What the fellowship money is about is writing another script. Just extraordinarily generous.”

Fellowships are awarded with the understanding that the recipients will each complete a feature-length screenplay during their fellowship year, the website said, adding the Academy acquires no rights to the works of Nicholl fellows and does not involve itself commercially in any way with their completed scripts.

Tofte is just glad to have this exposure to her work.

“I’m trying to get enough people to read it, so I can find a champion for the script so I can get it made,” she said. “The world is always happy to see good scripts get made. I think that good stories are good business.” She also knows winning the fellowship will allow her to meet others who share her passion.

“The week I get the award, they have a lot of programming set up for us,” Tofte said. “They have an event for other fellowship winners from the past. That’s exciting to get to meet other screenwriters and learn from their expertise and their good work. That’s a huge thing and that will make me a better writer. I want to write the best scripts that I can.”

But she’s not waiting.

“I’m working on a couple of scripts right now,” Tofte said. “I have several ideas that may be my next script.”

Including one set in Brookings.

“That script has been in my mind for quite a while,” she admitted. Whatever happens, Tofte plans to continue writing.

“It’s an old adage, but really true: you just have to keep writing to get better at it,” she said.

“I’m really addicted to the act of writing, structure and storyline. As long as I’m doing that anything that gets me writing and putting words on a page,” she said. “Hopefully, doing that professionally is in my future.”

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Information from: Brookings Register,