I haven't posted much here because for the last few years, I've been writing scripts and waiting until I felt that I had enough of a body of scripts so that a producer, studio, agent, manager, etc will say "Wow, you got all of that? "
1. An hour long dramady.
(Leads: Native American Female, White Male, Black Male, Native American Teen)
2. An IP that has Oscar potential.
(Leads: American Mexican Male, Puerta Rican Female, Black Male)
3. A sci fi feature film
(Female Lead, Two Male Leads)
4. A romantic comedy screenplay.
(Female Lead, Male Lead)
5. An hour long police/community response hour-long pilot
(Black Male Lead, Latina Female Lead, White Male Lead)
And of course, I have a background in cops and crime. I still work with a local police force.
I think now is my time.
Wanna check me out? I can easily be reached via my attorney Leroy Bobbitt or my Facebook account
Oh yeah, I have a Brown BA in Latin American Studies, a Mizzou MA in Journalism, and a 2007 MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch.
I've sold several scripts and am a member of the WGA. But, then I went to teach at a university that catered to the military at Fort Bragg for several years as an effort to give back.
I'm Afro-Latina-Mississippi Choctaw. My dad is Afro-Choctaw and my mom is Belizean-Guatamalan.
Skye Dent is a relentlessly-single, multi-raced soul (Black/Latina/Choctaw) raised in
the dangerous then predominantly black-latino projects of Roxbury, Boston with
the irrepressible impulse and tantalizing talent to be a writer.As she puts it, “Writing is, was, and always
will be…my morning cup of Joe, the path for a teenager to possibly escape
poverty/violence, and a way to understand and help people of all backgrounds
empathize with unfamiliar worlds, be they a continent or a bus ride away.”
In fact, it was because Skye regularly escaped and hid out
reading in the Boston Public Library after the murder of her 15-year-old
brother, that junior high English teacher Jean Rowen found her there, discovered
her reading and writing abilities, and arranged for Skye to take the A Better
Chance test.
ABC arranged for Skye to spend the next three years at
Northfield Mt. Hermon high school. She
had no idea how prestigious or expensive NMH was until the daughter of an Oscar
winning actor came from Hollywood…with her horses.Skye went on to Brown Univ., Obtained a BA in
Latin American Studies and then to Univ. of Missouri where she obtained her journalism,
M.A.
She then enjoyed a decade as a crime journalist for The Cape
Cod Times, AP, The Oakland Tribune, and CBS News in NYC and CBS writing about
subjects ranging from the agony of being a crime victim… to the thrill of
flying 800 mph upside down and right stuff over in a two-person Air Force F14…
to the simplistic joy of ice skating on cranberry bogs.
In need of writers who knew story and plot, Discovery Channel then
enticed her into writing/co-directing several documentaries and interstitial
short films about joint feature Paramount films. So, relocation to Hell-A was the next step to
writing for TV and Film.
A script called Be Bop Blues about three Belizean teens who
form a Punta Rock band got her into the ABC/Disney Scriptwriting Fellows
Program.But, it was really meeting Helen
Levitt, one of the oldest living writers blacklisted during McCarthyism, that provided
her with the best writing teacher ever. Yes, a second white female who society tried
to keep down helped Skye go to places where neither of them had gone before.
Working on the Disney Lot and then later the Paramount lot
with TV and film writers made Skye realize that she, too, had the ability to
write fantastically-original TV and film scripts about oftentimes dangerous or
even hilarious worlds that simultaneously entertain and challenge audiences.All she needed was a chance.Star Trek producers Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga
gave her that chance with an episode of a Star Trek series, from which sprung a
recurring alien race, The Vidians. It
aired to rave reviews. Another first.Skye became the first black female writer of a Star Trek franchise.But, black females were not as welcome in entertainment
as they are now.Black lives didn’t
matter then.So, her career languished
with sporadic bursts.
Since then, she’s worked for two primetime series (The Burning
Zone, Dirty Sexy Money) and learned directing while working with Charles
Burnett on two of his films. She wrote
the Calvin Simmons Story for Showtime.Two
spec screenplays include a South African period piece of struggle, a
fire-fighting drama, a Sundance semi-finalist science-based romantic comedy (Michael
Cuesta attached), and a father-daughter auto-racing story that Jeffrey Katzenberg
described as “the script Tom Cruise shoulda’ waited for.”
Because life in Los Angeles put her in touch with several
veterans from a regional jump zone, she started to realize the importance of
the military.So, she moved east and from
2010 to 2012, she gave back to the military by teaching them, their spouses,
and their offspring at Fayetteville State University, an HBCU/UNC next to Ft.
Bragg that services all people as well as all people military in the
Fayetteville section of North Carolina.
There, she co-created the journalism/scriptwriting division of
the school of communications, a program that premiered Hollywood feature films
for college students, as well as creating the five-day FSU Student White House
Invitational 2012 (financed by a collaboration of friends, filmmakers, TV
writers-producers (including N.C.I.S.), and journalists).Executive Producer Tom Ortenberg kicked off
the filmmaking program by premiering Spotlight in Fayetteville to a theater
full of college students (many of whom brought their moms as their
plus-ones).The premiere, the followup
discussion, and the fact that Spotlight won the Academy Awards Best Picture
Oscar encouraged many of the students to get into entertainment.
No longer the young no-nothing that TV desired, Skye realized
that if she wanted to produce and write, places like Columbia and NYU had
developed the kind of production and writing divisions that she needed.NYU paid for her entire two-year MFA
degree.
She recently optioned the rights to a courtroom drama that
will change what Americans thought they knew about our country’s defining
history. Optioned the rights to Sidney Poitier’s Warm December and wrote a
script based on the hit.Wrote a
hour-long TV dramedy series with the sensibilities of Northern Exposure about a woman forced into investigating her possible Wampanoag roots.And she is putting the final touches on a
community policing TV crime drama based on several years of volunteering sleepless
nights with an inner-city homicide team.
Over time, she’s found success in writing for film and TV by
following her heart instead of a genre. She
also teaches a script writing class on line at Columbia University’s
scriptwriting program.For the wounds of
a heart etched in pain by the murder of her teenage brother when they were
students, leads her to both write for adults as well as give back to students.Her references are many,but secret to protect the innocent.
Walter Bernstein Dies: Blacklisted Writer In 1950s Who Returned With ‘Fail Safe’ & ‘The Front’ Was 101
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Walter Bernstein, who was blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s but returned to writing on many films, including the Oscar-nominated script for The Front, has died at 101.
Bernstein died Friday night, according to former WGA West president Howard Rodman, who reported it on Twitter.
Bernstein’s credits included the films Fail-Safe (1964), Semi-Tough (1977), Yanks (1979) and The Front, (1976), the
latter which starring Woody Allen as Howard Prince, who was hired by
three blacklisted TV writers to become the face of their work. It was a
ruse Bernstein knew well, having employed the tactic himself when he was
blacklisted.
The Brooklyn, NY-born Bernstein joined the Communist Party while
attending Dartmouth College, then served in the US Army during World War
II.
In the 1950’s during the early days of the Cold War, Bernstein was
blacklisted after he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) on claims that his work was subversive and injected
Communist propaganda into films. Like many blacklisted writers, he
continued writing under pseudonyms or “fronts”.
After he was blacklisted in 1950, Bernstein was not credited with any
work until 1958, but used pseudonyms and hired fronts who passed off
the work as their own to help Bernstein.
Bernstein finally restored his real identity for the 1959 Sophia Loren film That Kind of Woman,
directed by Sidney Lumet, who vouched for his integrity to film
producer Carlo Ponto, Loren’s husband. Bernstein eventually wrote three
films for Loren. including Michael Curtiz’s A Breath of Scandal and George Cukor’s Heller in Pink Tights, both released in 1960.
In his later career, Bernstein taught screenwriting at Columbia
University, NYU and City College, and received an Emmy nomination for
writing the 1997 HBO telefilm Miss Evers’ Boys.
Bernstein published Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist, in 1996.
Bernstein was a longtime member of the WGA East’s Council, and was
the recipient of its Ian McLellan Hunter Memorial Award for Lifetime
Achievement in Writing in 1994, and the Evelyn F. Burkey Award in
2008. Named in his honor, the guild’s Walter Bernstein Award
honors writers “who have demonstrated with creativity, grace and bravery
a willingness to confront social injustice in the face of adversity.”
Bernstein served on the Council of the Writers
Guild of America, East for decades. In 1994, he received the Guild’s
Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Writing, and in
2008 he was presented with the Guild’s Evelyn F. Burkey Award for
bringing honor and dignity to writers.
In 2017, the Guild introduced the Walter
Bernstein Award to honor one of the union’s most distinguished and
courageous members. The Walter Bernstein Award is presented to honor
writers who have demonstrated with creativity, grace and bravery a
willingness to confront social injustice in the face of adversity.
Beau Willimon, president of the Writers Guild
of America, East, noted “The labor movement was built on courage,
perseverance and an unwavering sense of duty to one’s sisters and
brothers. Walter exemplified all three as a fierce and generous union
advocate since the earliest days of the Guild. I was very lucky to have
begun my tenure in leadership when Walter was, in his nineties, an
elected Council-member advocating on behalf of writers. He has given
generations of Guild members a role model for how to make a true
difference and leave the union better than you found it. As we grieve
his loss we also celebrate his long and meaningful life, and share deep
gratitude for the thousands of writers whose lives he improved along the
way.”
Michael Winship, immediate past President of
the Writers Guild of America, East, said, “Walter not only was a
brilliant writer and committed activist, he was my friend, colleague,
role model and confidante. He was the one I’d call whenever we were in a
fix and I needed his special brand of sage advice. His innate wisdom
and lifetime of experience always pointed the way toward a decision that
was just and fair, even if it rankled those few who would place
self-interest above the greater good of the writers we represent. We
will deeply miss his courage, wit and guidance.”
Jeremy Pikser, former VP of the Writers Guild
of America, East, wrote, “Walter got every award the Writers Guild had
to give him. One of them was for “bringing honor and dignity to
writers,” and when Walter accepted it, at the age of 88, after spending
freezing winter hours on the picket line several times a week during the
strike of 2007, he said “two things a writer should never have are
honor and dignity” That was Walter. Humble, self-effacing, funny. Sharp
as a razor and as sweet as honey, kind as a saint, and tough as nails.
His commitment to the welfare of humanity, his belief in justice, his
compassion for others were as integral to his life as the air he
breathed. I’ll miss him every day for the rest of my life.”
“Walter would reject the characterization that
he was the conscience of the union and he would do it with sly humor.
We will miss him so much, especially the way he would let us all have
our say about weighty and complex matters, sometimes at bewildering
length, and then with a few words bring the clarity and coherence that
had eluded us,” remembered Lowell Peterson, executive director of the
Writers Guild of America, East. “Walter was on the committee
interviewing me for this job. We met for lunch and we ended up talking
for hours. I knew that working at a place with smart, funny, sardonic,
committed writers and activists like him would be a dream.”
Bernstein is survived by his son, Andrew Bernstein, and his widow, literary agent Gloria Loomis.
No information about a memorial was immediately available.
