A LOS GATOS man who's made good in the hard-to-crash field of screenwriting is Scott Frank, who'll turn 36 in March. He was at the Villages in San Jose last week to visit his parents, Barry and Carol Frank. With him were his wife, Jennifer, daughter Sophia, 3 1/2, and son Lucas, 2. Writer of the hit Get Shorty and other films, Frank, who graduated from Los Gatos High School in 1978, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Writers Guild Award for Get Shorty, which he adapted from Elmore Leonard's book. The film was a box-office smash.
"Yes, I did some writing when I was at Los Gatos High," he said in an interview from his Hollywood office. "I wrote mostly short stories but never sold any. I was on the staff of the El Gato." He moved to Los Angeles in 1982 after graduation from UC-Santa Barbara, where he had written an original story, Little Man Tate. "I worked about six months in TV production," he said. "Then I got a night job as a bartender so I could write mornings. People who read Little Man Tate liked the writing, but nobody wanted to film it.
"Then someone sent it to Jodie Foster. She liked it and wanted to act in it and direct it," he said. Before that happened, Scott got a writing assignment at Paramount, where two of his scripts were produced. Plainclothes was not much noticed, but Dead Again was a success. "Then I rewrote Tate," he said. "That was my third film."
Frank had had an unhappy time in 1993 with a film called Malice. "I was very down at that time," he said. A big fan of Elmore Leonard, he read the book Get Shorty. "When I came to the chapter where the guy says how easy it is to write a screenplay, I knew I had to do it." He was surprised, he said, at the film's huge success. Now he's at work adapting another Leonard novel not yet published, doing an original script called Lily, and writing a novel of his own. He's awaiting the release of another film he wrote, Heaven's Prisoner, starring Alec Baldwin. A busy man, you might say.
THE annual Old Timers Dinner, which regularly draws a large crowd of longtime residents, will be held at the Villa Felice Restaurant on April 10, dinner chairman Egon Jensen says. Reservation details will be announced.
WHAT could be more fitting than having Olympic skating gold-medalist Peggy Fleming carry the Olympic torch in the 1996 Olympic Torch Relay? The Los Gatos resident won the gold in 1968 and has been inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, among other honors. Fleming will be one of 800 Olympians among the 10,000 torchbearers who will bring the flame, as it's transferred from torch to torch, to Atlanta in time for the Centennial Olympic Games on July 19.
Besides Fleming, two Los Gatans named as community heroes will be among the bearers of the flame. Launy Senee will run in memory of a friend who died of leukemia. She heads a running team that runs an annual marathon for cancer research. Last year, she helped raise $80,000 toward cancer research.
Another hero torchbearer is Mary Jane Whiteford, who's turned the challenge of paralysis into an active and optimistic life. She has assisted Los Gatos in meeting Americans With Disabilities Act standards. Whiteford is a board member of Tri-Aegis, a residential facility for the developmentally disabled and for the GRASP Foundation.
The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games recognized 46 extraordinary citizens ("community heroes") and eight Olympians from Santa Clara County and surrounding areas. The Torch Relay, sponsored by Coca-Cola, will arrive in San Jose the night of May 2. The next morning torchbearers will carry the flame on El Camino to Foster City. The runners, 12 or older, will carry the torch up to one kilometer (0.62 miles) and will be slotted as close as possible to their hometowns. The 84-day relay spans 15,000 miles through 42 states. United Way of Santa Clara County helped facilitate the local torchbearer selection process.
A PLANNING luncheon was held at Forbes Mill Museum Feb. 22 for the photographic exhibition, which opens there March 2. The photographs are by San Francisco photographer Michael Emery, who was on the crew of the Jeremiah O'Brien on its voyage to England two years ago. An opening day reception at the museum will take place from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.
SPEAKING as an average reader, it's hard to tell how anyone can produce an improved bookmark. Any old card or scrap of paper will do for me. But Bill Alden of Cupertino claims to have done the trick with his ParaMark, which sells for $1.99 at the Saratoga Book Store and West Valley College Book Store. It shows the paragraph where you left off.
A TALK that stressed the disgrace of classroom cheating won a $100 prize, plus an opportunity to contend in a Rotary Club zone speaking contest, for LGHS student Biren Kambra. His answer to the problem was greater teacher discipline. Bert Millen hosted the Los Gatos Rotary Club's annual speech contest, when four LGHS students spoke on the assigned subject, "Act with integrity." (Shouldn't we all?) Dee Barber was runner-up with an impassioned speech on rights of Native Americans.
KAY DUFFY, Saratoga watercolorist, will be showing a group of her paintings at the Los Gatos Meadows, 110 Wood Road, March 5 through March 31. A signature member of the Society of Western Artists and a participant in the Saratoga Rotary Art Show for the past 10 years. The Meadows gallery is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
UFO buffs will be watching a Nova program on KTEH March 7 at 8:11 p.m. titled Kidnapped by UFOs. The show will examine the truth of such stories.
WHAT did I say last week about "beautiful spring-like weather?" Since then Jupiter Pluvius turned on all the spouts. Still, we're more fortunate than most of the country.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, February 28, 1996.
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