Conversations from the Sundance Institute Labs | Writers on Rewriting with Susannah Grant (ERIN BROCKOVICH) & more

Naomi Foner has spent her career as a screenwriter exploring the exquisite complications of family. She was nominated for an Academy Award and received the PEN West and Golden Globe Awards for her original screenplay RUNNING ON EMPTY, starring River Phoenix and directed by Sidney Lumet.

She also wrote and produced A DANGEROUS WOMAN, LOSING ISAIAH, and BEE SEASON. VERY GOOD GIRLS, which she both wrote and directed, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, starred Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen, and was distributed by Tribeca Films. She is currently working on an adaptation of Kathy Hepinstall’s novel THE BOOK OF POLLY for Amazon and developing a sequel to RUNNING ON EMPTY with the original producers Amy Robinson and Griffin Dunne as well as Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa.

She has taught screenwriting at Columbia Film School, NYU, USC and UCLA, as well as at Sundance Screenwriting Labs, both in the US and abroad.

Naomi began her career as a producer for the Children’s Television Workshop, and was involved with the development of both SESAME STREET and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY, as well as the PBS drama series THE BEST OF FAMILIES.

She has served on the Executive Committee of the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as co-chair of the USC Scripter Awards, as a member of the Nichols Fellowship selection committee, and she was elected to the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America.

She has an ongoing commitment to progressive politics, has been on the board of 826LA, and is an active supporter of the ACLU.

She is most proud of her children, her grandgirls and the Blue Ribbon she earned for her carrots at the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Fair.

Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America today. He is the author of close to 60 critically-acclaimed books, including the just-released John Woman, Down the River Unto the Sea, and the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. Mosley's books have been adapted for film and television with new projects in development. His work has been translated into 25 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and The Nation, among other publications. In 2013, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an 0. Henry Award, the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award, a Grammy, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City, but he is back in LA again this year working in the writer's room for John Singleton's FX series, Snowfall. 

Erin Cressida Wilson won the Independent Spirit Award for her first film, SECRETARY. Other films include THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, CHLOE, MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN and FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS. She is currently writing the live action musical, SNOW WHITE, with Pasek & Paul for Marc Platt Productions at Disney.

Wilson's television work includes serving as a writer and producer on the HBO series, VINYL, executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger. Wilson's stage work has been produced Off-Broadway, regionally and internationally, at such theaters as the Mark Taper Forum, BAM, the Public, Playwrights Horizons, the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and the New Grove in London. She has been honored by the Rockefeller Foundation, the NEA, and the California and North Carolina Arts Councils.

Integral to her writing is her 25 years of teaching. She was Professor and Director of Writing for Performance at Duke and Brown Universities and The University of California at Santa Barbara. Wilson has advised for the Sundance lnstitute's Screenwriters Lab in Utah and has run workshops in Japan, Cuba, Italy, and Greece. 

Susannah Grant is an Academy Award-nominated writer, producer and director whose resume includes film, television and streaming platforms. 

Grant wrote the screenplay for ERIN BROCKOVICH which earned her an Academy Award nomination, a BAFTA nomination and a WGA nomination. Additional feature writing credits include screenplays for THE SOLOIST, IN HER SHOES, 28 DAYS, EVER AFTER, POCAHONTAS, CHARLOTTE'S WEB and THE 5TH WAVE. She also wrote and directed CATCH AND RELEASE and the upcoming LONELY PLANT.

Her television credits include writing and executive producing HBO’s CONFIRMATION which earned Grant an Emmy nomination, a WGA award, and the WGA’s Paul Selvin Award. Prior to that, she created and executive produced the CBS series A GIFTED MAN and worked as a producer and writer of the Fox series PARTY OF FIVE, which was honored with a Golden Globe Award and a Humanitas Prize. 

Grant served as executive producer, showrunner, writer and director for Netflix’s 8-episode limited series, UNBELIEVABLE which was nominated for WGA, PGA, Golden Globe, and Emmy Awards, and received a 2020 Peabody award, as well as a Critics Choice Award, the PEN America Award for Television Excellence, and was selected as one of AFI’s Television Programs of the Year. She was also an executive producer, with Sarah Timberman, Carl Beverly, and Taffy Brodesser-Akner, of the limited-series adaptation of Brodesser-Akner’s novel FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE for F/X and an executive producer of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY for Apple TV+ with Brie Larson and Michael Costigan at Aggregate Films.

Grant is an alumna of Amherst College and the American Film Institute, and received the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. In 2011, Grant received the Valentine Davies Award from the Writers Guild of America.

John Gatins graduated from Vassar College and drove to Los Angeles to become a movie star. In six years he had tended bar, parked cars, been a nanny, and watered Brad Pitt's plants. Gatins also starred in the movies WITCHBOARD II and LEPRECHAUN Ill. At age 26, Gatins returned to Vassar to participate in the New York Stage and Film Summer Theater Festival. Afterward, he wrote a one-act play that eventually became his debut screenplay, SMELLS LIKE TEEN SUICIDE. After Disney bought the script, MTV and Paramount approached him to rewrite VARSITY BLUES. Other screenplay credits include SUMMER CATCH, HARDBALL, and COACH CARTER.

He then wrote and directed his first feature, DREAMER, starring Dakota Fanning and Kurt Russell. He has appeared alongside Eddie Murphy in NORBIT and Ryan Reynolds in THE NINES. Gatins then wrote REAL STEEL starring Hugh Jackman, while also playing the character of "Kingpin". He spent some months of 2011 in Atlanta where the movie he'd been writing for 12 years, FLIGHT, was directed by Robert Zemeckis and starred Denzel Washington. He then worked on KONG: SKULL ISLAND, followed by writing and producing POWER RANGERS. Gatins is now planning on directing a movie he wrote for Paramount.

Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, novelist, and educator. His feature adaptation of the book SAVAGE GRACE for Killer Films and director Tom Kalin, starring Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne as mother and son, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. His other films include AUGUST, starring Josh Hartnett, Naomie Harris, Rip Torn, and David Bowie, and Joe Gould's SECRET, which opened the 2000 Sundance Festival.

Rodman is past president of the Writers Guild of America West; professor and former chair of the writing division of the USC Cinema School; and a member of the National Film Preservation Board.

Rodman's television credits include several episodes of the Showtime anthologies FALLEN ANGELS and THE HUNGER for directors Tony Scott, Steven Soderbergh, and Tom Cruise. Rodman has also written for Errol Morris, Clive Barker, David Lynch, Chantal Akerman, Maurice Sendak, and John McTiernan. In October 2013, Rodman was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. He's in the FinalDraft Screenwriters Hall of Fame alongside Guillermo del Toro, Quentin Tarrantino, Callie Khouri, Nancy Meyers, Aaron Sorkin, Robert Towne.

Among his current projects are an adaptation for Amazon of the Jean-Patrick Manchette thriller 3 TO KILL with producer Chris McQuarrie; a sprawling, lavish 19th-century anti-colonial adventure novel, THE GREAT EASTERN, published in June 2019 by Melville House, and an adaptation of said novel for UK's Great Point Media. Earlier this year Rodman was on the writing staff of THE IDOL, premiering on HBO on Sunday nights in November, created by Sam Levinson (EUPHORIA) and The Weeknd.