Jen Clay
Staff Writer
Pepperdine alumnus Patrick Andrew O’Connor brought back to life a classic story of love and a study in gender relations in his script “Don Juan.” For his efforts, he is now $10,000 richer.
The 1999 communication graduate received first place in Scriptapalooza’s 2004 screenwriting competition, which was judged by professionals from renowned literary agencies and production companies including A Band Apart and HBO Films. O’Connor, 26, was one of 4,150 participants.
In mid-August, O’Connor found out he had won the competition after checking Scriptapalooza’s Web site.
“I checked and saw my name under the first prize, and it was just like, I mean literally one of those double-take moments, I just couldn’t believe that, that was my name,” O’Connor said.
“I actually e-mailed them and said, you know, I think there might be a typo.”
For his script, O’Connor put a twist on the Don Juan legend, placing a contemporary dating scene in the middle of the 1800s.
Relating the exploits of its title character, the self-proclaimed “greatest lover in the world,” “Don Juan” follows its hero as he pursues the love of Inez, the daughter of his archenemy. Inez proves a hard conquest, and Don Juan faces losing his coveted title to gain her love.
O’Connor said he purposefully developed a powerful female lead to make a statement about relationships between men and women, one he believes was even true of strictly regimented 19th-century society.
“It may be a man’s world, but women are the one thing that can control a man,” O’Connor said.
While always interested in screenwriting, O’Connor said it was a scheduling conflict during his senior year at Pepperdine that gave him the perfect opportunity to first pursue the craft. Then a senior, he was given permission to substitute an independent study course for a telecom class that he needed to graduate.
Under the guidance of telecommunications professor Susan Salas, O’Connor began writing a script. His assignment was to complete a rough script by semester’s end.
“I took to it so much that after seven weeks, like halfway through the class, I already had my rough draft done, and by the end of the class I had a final draft done,” O’Connor said.
After O’Connor’s graduation, Salas paired him with some of her industry contacts, giving him his first taste of Hollywood.
Since that time, O’Connor, who has worked as a news writer for KTLA Channel 5 since October 1999, found a manager through a mutual friend and has written seven scripts. “Don Juan” was first written in the summer of 1999; however, at the suggestion of his manager, O’Connor picked it back up early last year and the two revised it.
It is the revised version that O’Connor submitted to the Scriptapalooza competition in April.
O’Connor’s mother Esther, office manager of the communication division at Pepperdine, said she was “ecstatic” when she found out her son had won the competition. She has read “Don Juan” and said she saw a lot of her son in the script.
“I see a lot of him come out of this, just his mannerisms, his feelings,” she said.
Esther said her son has always been passionate about film and writing, and she remembers him studying older films.
“He used to rent a lot of them and then go upstairs and watch them,” she said.
In terms of contemporary cinema, O’Connor cited “Good Will Hunting” and “Field of Dreams” as favorites, but said Jon Favreau’s critically-acclaimed “Swingers” was the film that truly inspired him to pursue his dream.
“They [Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn] were my age when they got it made, and I thought, you know what, if these two young guys can do it, then so can I,” O’Connor said.
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” creator Joss Whedon has also inspired and influenced O’Connor, who said he loves the writer-director’s twists.
“He has a scene and you think it’s gonna be one of the clichéd scenes that you’ve seen in hundreds of movies and television shows, and he completely turns it on his head, and that’s kind of what I wanted to do [with Don Juan],” he said.
O’Connor is looking for a literary agent who could pass his work along to actors and actresses. In addition, Scriptapalooza has sent out 80 copies of his script, and O’Connor expects this next month to be his busiest yet. His advice for those also interested in pursuing screenwriting is simple: just write.
“You have to understand that even the best screenwriters are going to hear ‘no’ more than they hear ‘yes,’ and you just can’t get discouraged by all the failures. Just keep writing and eventually your day will come hopefully,” O’Connor said.
“The cool thing about writing is, it doesn’t matter whether you’re man, woman, straight, gay, black, white, whatever, if you write a good story, people will want to readit and people will want to make it.”
09-16-2004