Donor Spotlight: WGFriends
Introducing Donor Spotlight, a new blog series where we highlight donors to the Writers Guild Foundation and their reasons for giving. We’re only able to provide our programs and resources for the screenwriting community because of our donors’ generous support. Thank you to these donors — and all of our donors — for your generosity!
A collection of our WGFriends’ script recommendations.
One screenplay here at WGF that we keep going back to is Groundhog Day (written by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis), which tells the story of a man living the same day over and over and over again. Coincidentally, here at WGF we have WGFriends, our monthly giving program where donors set up an automated, recurring gift and donate over and over and over again.
Monthly giving is an easy, yet impactful way to support the Writers Guild Foundation. Our WGFriends provide financial stability and ensure WGF’s success with each and every gift. This Groundhog Day, we’d like to give them an extra special “thank you” and share some of their favorite scripts.
Next time you visit the library, check out these incredible recs!
Aisha Franco
WGFriend since April 2023
What’s one of your favorite scripts and why does it stand out to you?
One of my favorite scripts is Romy and Michele's High School Reunion written by Robin Schiff - the characters are fun and the writing is hilarious from beginning to end. Ms. Schiff donated an archive box to the WGF library that includes a very early (almost unrecognizable) draft of the script to the Ladies’ Room, the play that the Romy and Michele characters came from, as well as her notes throughout the development process.
Why do you donate to the Writers Guild Foundation?
To support the WGF library, which I think is the coolest place in Los Angeles.
Austen Earl
WGFriend since February 2023
What’s one of your favorite scripts and why does it stand out to you?
I love to read scripts of movies (mostly comedies) that I wish I had written. On the feature side, that would include movies like Wedding Crashers by Steve Faber & Bob Fisher. It's such a funny idea, so clear, so many great set pieces, but all anchored by real love stories and relationships underneath.
On the TV side, I absolutely love Greg Garcia's pilot for My Name is Earl. It's such a brilliantly crafted pilot for so many reasons, but one of the most impressive things is that the first third of it perfectly sets up the entire premise, and then the final two thirds showcase what the show will look like week-to-week... like a sales tool for whoever might want to make it. Obviously NBC did and Greg won an Emmy for it, so I'm clearly not alone in my praise for it!
Why do you donate to the Writers Guild Foundation?
I love to use the library for quiet work and script reading, so it feels like the least I can do to say thank you for making the library available to us and also thank you to all the amazing staff who keep that place running like a Swiss clock.
Erin Ryan Diffenderfer
WGFriend since November 2023
What’s one of your favorite scripts and why does it stand out to you?
Forrest Gump (written by Eric Roth, based on the novel by Winston Groom) - It’s one of the few movies I can watch over and over again (don’t do that with many) and still laugh and cry almost as much as the first time I saw it. There’s something so beautifully and brutally human about it that just “gets” to me in a deep visceral way that’s hard to explain.
Why do you donate to the Writers Guild Foundation?
To support your great work, most especially the Veterans Writing Project that’s supported and impacted my son’s life in positive ways that I couldn’t and can’t. This mom is very grateful to and for you.
Joshua Meltzer
WGFriend since February 2023
What’s one of your favorite scripts, and why does it stand out to you?
Since my father was a screenwriter during the “Golden Age,” I am partial to older scripts. So many to choose from, but I am a big fan of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (written by William Goldman). A nearly perfect film. I remember seeing it as a child with my dad. He told me a story about how he wrote a treatment for a film based on them, but Harry Cohn turned it down. I have lots of great stories from old Hollywood.
Why do you donate to the Writers Guild Foundation?
I donate to honor the memory of my dad, Lewis Meltzer.
Rebecca Kirsch
WGFriend since November 2022
What’s one of your favorite scripts and why does it stand out to you?
Despite the ground that authors Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, and Agatha Christie (among others) broke in Western literature, I find that women are often still overlooked in the genres of science fiction, horror, and thriller.
When we were far too young, my brother and I caught just a glimpse of John Carpenter and Debra Hill's terrifying Halloween on our grandparents' television set, and thus two horror fanatics were born.
Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville; Story by Gordon McDonell) has a beautiful authenticity of voice because Sally Benson and Alma Reville's contributions shape young Charlie Newton with the robust complexities of the woman that Charlie very quickly grows up to be over the course of the film. She is unapologetically allowed to contain multitudes; she is bold but also traditional, scrappy yet feminine, courageous yet nurturing.
And the tragedy of Lynn Venable's short story that inspired The Twilight Zone's “Time Enough at Last" (teleplay by Rod Serling) will forever live rent free in my mind, as a reader who is terrifyingly dependent on the use of her spectacles.
Why do you donate to the Writers Guild Foundation?
I was a little library mouse growing up, and am the happiest when surrounded by books and manuscripts. The good folk at the WGF do heroic work to preserve our unique medium's history of storytelling.
Thank you to ALL of our current WGFriends! This Groundhog Day — and every day — we appreciate your consistent support.
Greg Baker
Michael Barryte
Rachel Bloom
Theodore Cohen
Christopher Cortesi
Jon De' Cluette
Robyn Dettman
Nastaran Dibai
Erin Ryan Diffenderfer
Austen Earl
Aisha Franco
Terri Gilboy
Justin Glasso
William Hamilton
Allan Heinberg
Donald Joh
Rebecca Kirsch
Ken Kristensen
Meg LeFauve
Dennis Lehane
Camille Marchetta
Bill Maxwell
Joshua Meltzer
Anne Mette Kaergaard Olesen
Daniel Petrie, Jr.
R.B. Ripley
Annalise Shaw
David Slack
David Sontag
Leo Stiffler
Kathy Stumpe
Linda Whitaker
Kim Lee Winslow
Celeste Wolfe
If you’d like to join WGFriends and set up a monthly gift to the Writers Guild Foundation, click here!