Dr. Lew Hunter
Held each year to engage filmmakers and screenwriters alike, the American Screenwriters Conference will educate new and experienced screenwriters on the state of the art today. Much more than JUST a writers' Conference: this event also welcomes filmmakers like Mark S. Allen to discuss their craft as both writer AND producer.
But we'd be remiss if we didn't honor the founder of the conference who passed away this year.
A native of Nebraska, Dr. Lew Hunter He worked extensively in television, first in programming and production on a wide range of popular television shows such as Bewitched, Batman, and Little House on The Prarie. before he moved into the creative side, writing TV movies. Lew joined the UCLA faculty in 1979 as a professor of screenwriting. In 1988, he was made chairman of the department. While at UCLA, he started "The Writer's Block", a gathering of writers at his home in Burbank. "Writers Block North" as it was described was started by a screenwriting prof at Sac State but it was Lew's annual visits that gave the program wings. Eventually, that morphed into the American Screenwriters Conference.
Dubbed the "Godfather of American Screenwriting" by Steven Spielberg, Lew has literally trained more Academy Award-winning screenwriters than anyone on the planet. He literally wrote what many consider the "bible", Screenwriting 434, titled after the name of his class at UCLA. Hunter returned to Nebraska in 2003, living in the small town of Superior, where he taught seminars for aspiring screenwriters from 2004 to 2014. He retired completely from teaching in 2016 but continued with activities related to our conference until his death from COVID-19 in January of 2023.
Lew & Francis Ford Coppola
This year's American Screenwriters Conference is dedicated to our mentor and friend, Dr. Lew Hunter. As he'd have wanted it, a tcket to this year's screenwriting conference also includes a 3-Day pass to the ENTIRE Sac Film Festival.
Thanks to wikipedia for sources and text.
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