Storytelling for the 21st Century

Welcome to Act One's First Story Symposium!

This conference, held on October 17 and 18, 2008, at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, marked the beginning of Act One's 10th anniversary year. For ten years Act One has been committed to training artists to tell stories which are deeply rooted in the Christian philosophical and moral traditions. For ten years we have relied on professionals within the entertainment industry to help shape our students and our curriculum. This symposium is an opportunity to take a look at the "big picture" and re-evaluate where Act One will go in the next ten years under the Hollywood sign.

Our theme for this symposium was "Story is something that happens to you." We believe that the storyteller has a unique place within society and that their stories carry an immense amount of political and spiritual weight. Therefore the storyteller has a great calling, a vocation, to use character, dialogue and plot to effect a change in individuals and within the greater society.

It is our hope that we can use this Socratic discussion to reshape the way in which we perceive the storyteller, as a moral agent within a growing global audience.

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Our Method

The Socratic Method (or Method of Elenchus or Socratic Debate), named after the Classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of philosophical inquiry in which the questioner explores the implications of others' positions, to stimulate rational thinking and illuminate ideas. This dialectical method often involves an oppositional discussion in which the defense of one point of view is pitted against another; one participant may lead another to contradict himself in some way, strengthening the inquirer's own point.

Click here to listen to any of the audio podcasts recorded during the Symposium

Although she came to Hollywood as an aspiring feature writer, Sheryl has worked as a television development executive (GTG Entertainment) and as a television writer / producer, in both half-hour (Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Dave's World) and hour (Charmed). She has also taught for the UCLA Writers' Extension program and written several collections of chancel dramas.

Dean is Executive Producer of FOX's That 70's Show, where he has been a writer for six years. In addition to writing for the first two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB), he was a staff writer on NBC's Hope and Gloria and wrote for Duckman, Bruno the Kid, Mickey's Campfire Tales, and Nickelodeon's The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

Bobette Buster is a world-renowned lecturer on "What's the Big Idea? The Art and Craft of Feature Film Development" and "The International Principles of Cross-over Success." Bobette was a Creative Executive, working for Tony Scott, Larry Gelbart and Ray Stark, while also serving as an Adjunct Professor at USC. For the past 11 years, she has also been on the Visiting Faculty of both La Fémis in Paris and the Media Business School in Ronda, Spain, and the creator/instructor of the Origination Lab for Screen Training Ireland. She has been a guest lecturer/advisor at the Sundance Lab for Latin American Writers in Mexico, Havana, Berlin, Prague, and film programs in Italy, Denmark, Norway and Japan. Bobette's screen credits for production and story development include HBO's first Best Film of the Year Emmy for Barbarians At The Gate, Weapons of Mass Distraction, and Revenge. Bobette is also completing the book to her international course, tentatively titled, What's the Big Idea? The Audacity of Cinema Storytelling -- what it is and what it ain't: the Orchestration of Emotions, Embarrassing Secrets, Broken Hearts, Feeling the Logic of the Heart, to Infinity and Beyond, and Stuff Like That.

Armando Fumagalli is professor of Semiotics and Director of the Master Program in Screenwriting and Production for TV and Cinema at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. He is also a script consultant for the production company Lux Vide. In this job he has been a consultant for many international TV miniseries such as John Paul II (with CBS, starring Jon Voight) and the European 4 episode miniseries War and Peace. He is also teacher and member of the board of the Master Program in Screenwriting of the Universidad de los Andes in Chile and of a post-graduate program in audiovisual management and marketing of the LUISS University in Rome. He has published and edited many books. Among them, I vestiti nuovi del narratore is about the adaptation from literature to cinema, and Scegliere un film is an annual collection of cinema reviews that has appeared every year since 2004, co-edited with Luisa Cotta Ramosino.

Karen Hall is Executive Producer for Brotherhood (Showtime). Her long list of writing and producing credits includes M*A*S*H, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, Roseanne, Northern Exposure, and Judging Amy. Karen has received seven Emmy nominations, six Writers Guild Award nominations, four Humanitas Prizes and has won the Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Drama Script for the "Grace Under Pressure" episode of Hill Street Blues. Karen is currently developing a pilot for AMC.

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., a Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, is the best-selling author of over 35 books including Making Choices, Back to Virtue, and Fundamentals of the Faith. Besides his prolificity as an author, Dr. Kreeft is a much sought after speaker whose forte is expressing the faith and the competing philosophies of the age in such a manner so as to be challenging and yet accessible to the common man. He is also an expert on C.S. Lewis and his books include C.S. Lewis for the Third Millenium and an ingenious fictional conversation between John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley, and C.S. Lewis on who Jesus is.

David created and executive produced the ABC hit television show Home Improvement. Prior to that he served as executive story editor on the premier season of Roseanne. He has executive produced and co-created television shows with Carol Burnett, Ed Asner, Haley Joel Osment, Dave Chappelle, and Dan Aykroyd. In film, David produced Where the Heart Is, starring Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd, and What Women Want, starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. Recently, he executive produced Walker Payne, starring Jason Patric and Sam Shepherd, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. David has a BA in theater from the University of Evansville and an MA in Theater from Illinois State University. He and his wife Elizabeth have two children: Meredith, age 24, and Court, age 20.

Bill Marsilii co-wrote (with his friend Terry Rossio) the romantic time-travel thriller Deja Vu, which sold to Jerry Bruckheimer and Touchstone Pictures in June 2004 for $5 million in a pre-emptive bid. Starrring Denzel Washington and directed by Tony Scott, the film opened Thanksgiving 2006 and went on to gross over $180 million worldwide . An accomplished comedy writer/performer, Bill was in the original Off-Broadway cast of Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding, and has been featured at Caroline's on Broadway, Catch a Rising Star and numerous other theatrical venues. His television work includes writing and starring in two comedy pilots for the Hallmark Channel, as well as writing several episodes of The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss and Courage the Cowardly Dog. He has also written feature screenplays for The Samuel Goldwyn Company, TriStar, Warner Brothers, and Paramount Pictures. In 2007, Bill sold an action-adventure pitch to Walt Disney Pictures, which is currently out to directors, and is now writing another sci-fi spec with Terry Rossio.

Barbara has an MA in Film from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. She has been a director of development, a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and currently serves as a Board Member of the Magis Institute, a Catholic venture captial group that seeks to heal the culture through Christian spirituality. She wrote The Work, a full-length feature set during the Spanish Civil War, for IMMI Pictures of Beverly Hills. Her feature screenplay Select Society is being developed by Reel Life Women Productions, Bel Air. Barbara co-wrote Mary, Mother of the Christ with Benedict Fitzgerald (The Passion of the Christ) for Aloe Entertainment. Barbara is also an adjunct professor of Film at Pepperdine University.

Chris Riley's first film, After the Truth, a multiple-award-winning German-language courtroom thriller that he co-wrote with his wife Kathy, sparked international controversy in 1999 when it was released in Germany. The husband-wife team wrote 25 to Life, a dramatic thriller for director Jon Turteltaub’s Junction Entertainment and Touchstone Pictures, and The Other White House, a political thriller for Sean Connery’s Fountainbridge Films and Intermedia. They adapted the nonfiction book Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer for Mandalay Television Pictures and the Fox television network. The Rileys recently completed Aces, an action-adventure romance for producer Robert Cort and Paramount Pictures. Chris is the author of The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style.

Charles B. Slocum is assistant executive director of the Writers Guild of America and chair of Act One's board of directors. He has worked in the entertainment industry for almost 20 years in a variety of financial and strategy positions. He has worked for Paramount Pictures in television finance, for NBC as a game show judge, and for ABC in audience research. He has an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Television/Radio from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He is pursuing a Masters in Theology and the Arts from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Rev. Scott Young is Co-Founder and Director Emeritus of the City of Angels Film Festival in Hollywood. He is the director of Grad Student and Faculty Ministry for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Scott has been an adjunct instructor at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA); Art Center: College of Design (Pasadena, CA); Los Angeles Film Study Center (Hollywood, CA); and Biola University (La Mirada, CA).