I am very honored and humbled and beyond thrilled to announce that the short film Beautiful Strangers on which I served as the writer has won First Place at this years Producers Guild Weekend Shorts Competition.

We were tasked with including a number of elements in our film that spoke to the style and themes of the late great Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Working Girl, Postcards from the Edge.)

Requirements that we chose to include from the list were:

Setting:
-hallway
-1980s/Reagan Era

Elements/Props (these elements had to appear in the film, one of them had to play a significant role within the story):

-cream pie
-wings
-rear-view mirror

Theme:
Dynamics between men and women: Mike Nichols’ films are filled with explorations of the ways that archetypal relationships between men and women play themselves out, as spouses/romantic partners, mothers and sons, teachers and students, and doctors and patients, among others.

And as AJ Vargas the producer and winner of the piece said, “don’t watch this on your phone. Because it looks pretty gorgeous.”

Thank you to the judges and the Producers Guild for this honor.