JON ZELAZNY

2005 WINNER

I WRITE
By Jon Zelazny

I spent my teenage years doing extensive theater, and began making amateur movies at 18 because it was easier to borrow a video camera then put on a play. I began writing feature-length screenplays because I couldn't think of any other way to seduce Hollywood, and I continue to write them because I am as yet unable to rest on my laurels.

As a creator of primarily realistic, fact-based fiction, my goal is to entertain the audience by introducing them to characters and situations they may not be familiar with, yet make the journey into the Unknown accessible and enjoyable by providing rock-solid social and psychological context so that even the bizarre somehow makes perfect sense.

The great 50's director Anthony Mann once described his ideal protagonist as "a man who fixes on a line of conduct, respects it, and makes it respected," and most of the screenplays I write are devoted to lead characters who fit that mold. For whatever reason, I am fascinated by strong-willed, intelligent, individualistic, and often weirdly neurotic men or women who set their sites upon some grand personal goal, then devote their lives to achieving it. This theme has encompassed historical protagonists as diverse as President Andrew Jackson, Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, social activist Agnes Smedley, UFO contactee Orfayo Angelucci, and British rock impresario Kit Lambert.


Jon Zelaznyhas worked in Hollywood for 15 years, most notably for acclaimed German director Uli Edel, serving as development associate, script doctor, and/or editorial consultant on cable films such as TYSON, PURGATORY, THE MISTS OF AVALON, KING OF TEXAS, CAESAR, and THE RING OF THE NIEBELUNGS. He began his career with producer Joel Silver at Warner Bros., and was a story analyst for New Line Cinema, Fine Line Features, and The Samuel Goldwyn Company. As a screenwriter, Jon completed DELIVER US FROM EVIL, a drama about the 1944 plot to kill Hitler, for Twin Bros. Productions, and SHAG HATEM, the saga of an American doctor in China, for Thinking Films.