Contest Judges
Below is a list of our 2011 judges who determined the top-three scripts and the winner of the 2011 Big Break™ Contest. Final Draft, Inc. thanks them for their time and passion for supporting scriptwriters.
The judges for the 2012 contest will be announced in early summer.
 Jewerl Ross - Silent R Management
Jewerl Ross grew up in Los Angeles and left Southern California to study political philosophy at Yale. After graduating in 1997, he returned to L.A. to work in entry-level positions at ICM and Paradigm before joining APA as an agent in early 1999. Three years later, after Ross made a name for himself selling spec scripts, Marathon Entertainment hired him as a manager. In January 2006, Ross left to form his own company, Silent R Management.
With over 12 years in the business, Ross can boast a hot slate of writer and director clients. Ross just sold one of the biggest specs of the last few years: Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses, written by longtime client Matthew Aldrich. Matt Damon is attached to star and Warner Bros. purchased it in a bidding war that concluded with the sale price of $500,000 against $800,000. Other clients include comedy writer David H. Steinberg. Best known for American Pie 2, Slackers, and DreamWorks’ Puss in Boots, Steinberg is currently rewriting Furry Friday for New Line and Mandalay Pictures. English thriller writers Dominic Morgan and Matthew Harvey just landed John Moore to direct their spec The Bridge, which is currently out to cast. Sci-fi writer Trevor Sands is currently writing The Electric Church at Sony for producer Jimmy Miller after completing a successful adaption of the prestigious book series, Hyperion Cantos, for producer Graham King (who won an Academy Award® for Scorsese’s The Departed) and Warner Bros. Thriller writer David Logan is rewriting Sebastian Knight at Paramount and adapting Once Were Cops for Articulus Entertainment. In television, Ross represents Brad Buecker, a supervising producer and director on Fox’s hit series Glee for Twentieth Century Fox Television and Ryan Murphy Productions. For more information on Ross and his company, please click here: http://www.silentrlit.com
 Palak Patel - Roth Films
Palak Patel is president of production of Joe Roth's company, Roth Films, which recently produced Alice In Wonderland for Disney and Knight And Day for Fox starring Tom Cruise. They are currently in preproduction on XXX3 for Paramount starring Vin Diesel.
Patel was president of production at Paula Weinstein's Spring Creek Productions which had a first-look deal at Warner Bros. While at Spring Creek, Patel was producing over a dozen projects including the high profile Thundercats, a tentpole for Warner Bros. with Jerry O'Flaherty (Gears of War) directing. In addition, Patel is producing In the Heart of the Sea, with Ed Zwick directing, Mob Cops, with John Hillcoat directing, Men with Todd Phillips directing, and Irreparable Harm with Eugene Jarecki directing.
Patel worked closely with Weinstein overseeing Monster-In-Law, Rumor Has It, Envy, Blood Diamond, and Recount directed by Jay Roach.
Prior to joining Spring Creek, Patel was West Coast story editor at Focus Features, working closely with Russell Schwartz, Scott Greenstein, Donna Gigliotti, and others. While at Focus, Patel worked closely with senior executives on Traffic, Gosford Park, Nurse Betty, Deliver Us From Eva, Possession, The Kid Stays In The Picture, The Man Who Wasn't There, and assisted the acquisitions department on Monsoon Wedding and Wet Hot American Summer.
Patel started out in the business as an intern/assistant on The Sixth Sense in his hometown of Philadelphia. After moving to Los Angeles, he worked as a development assistant at Paul Schiff Productions on Wes Anderson's Rushmore.
Jon Mora - Development Executive at Quadrant Pictures
Jon Mora is a Development Executive at Doug Davison’s (The Ring, The Departed) newly formed production company, Quadrant Pictures. Prior to Quadrant, Jon worked in the motion-picture literary department at ICM, a major talent and literary agency representing clients in publishing, film, television, music and theatre. He received a B.A. in International Business from the University of San Francisco and studied at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.
 Rudy Scalese - VP of Development & Production – NALA Films
Rudy Scalese is the VP of Development & Production for NALA films, where he helps identify and develop material to fulfill the company’s production slate of four to five mid-level budgeted films per year. Scalese recently oversaw the production of House of My Father, written by Andrew Steele, directed by Matt Piedmont, and starring Will Ferrell. Rudy also co-produced the company’s film Ceremony, written and directed by Max Winkler and starring Uma Thurman, Michael Angarano, Reece Thompson, and Lee Pace. Scalese also assisted in the company’s other films: Shelter, a supernatural thriller starring Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and In the Valley of Elah, written and directed by Paul Haggis and starring Academy Award®-winners Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon. Scalese also produced the horror documentary Going to Pieces:The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film for Starz/Encore. Prior to his position at NALA Films, Scalese helped run the Screamfest Horror Film Festival and oversaw the programming and all festival screenings along with festival partner, Academy Award®-winner Stan Winston. Scalese also worked as a manager for D-No Entertainment.
 Joyce San Pedro – Creative Executive at Zhiv Productions and Escape Artists at Sony
Joyce San Pedro is a Creative Executive working with Alex Siskin of Zhiv Productions and Escape Artists at Sony. She began her career in development after having worked in the publishing industry in various capacities - Foreign Rights, International Sales Director, and as a Managing Editor.
The entry into the industry was through working with talent.She worked for talent manager JC Robbins, and then moved onto covering talent and literary agents at Metropolitan Talent Agency. She then moved to Out of the Blue Entertainment (Big Daddy, Mr. Deeds, Akeelah and the Bee) at Sony, which is what provided her with the transition to work in development with Alex Siskin.
They are currently working on I Dream of Jeannie, The Equalizer, and Forgotten Allies. In addition, she is an associate producer on Al Pacino's docu-drama Wilde Salome and is working to develop and produce Jasper Milliken, last year’s comedy winner of the Austin Film Festival screenplay competition.
 Tony Zequeira - Manager at Larchmont Literary Agency
Tony Zequeira is a manager/producer affiliated with Larchmont Literary Agency. He currently works with Joel Millner in finding talented young writer-directors and helping them develop a career within the Hollywood studio system. Tony has worked with talents like Peter Gould (Breaking Bad, Too Big to Fail), George Hickenlooper (Casino Jack), Brian Dannelly (Saved!, Weeds), and Chuck Pfarrer (Red Planet, Arlington Road). Larchmont Literary Agency has had a reputation in the business for discovering many of today’s most successful talents such as Brian Helgeland, Stuart Beattie, Peter M. Lenkov, and Allison Anders.
Prior to his work with Larchmont, Tony was at Evolution Management and worked with producers Mark Burg and Gregg Hoffman where he assisted in acquiring one of the most successful horror franchises, the Saw series of films. He has also worked with Charlie Sheen, Farrah Fawcett, Brett Butler, and Sharon Stone, as well as producers Tony Smith and Simon Fields. Tony is a graduate of The Film School at Florida State University.
 Drew Vinton - Head of Development at Pearl Street Productions
Drew Vinton has headed up development for Pearl Street Productions, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's production company, since 2008. Among many of Drew's responsibilities is finding written material -- be it a screenplay, book, or article -- that has the potential to be turned into some form of "cinematic bliss.'" He is at his most content when sitting in front of a fresh, original, and well-crafted story. It takes a lot of work to create and hone such a work, and Drew has the utmost respect for those writers who attempt to accomplish the feat.
Pearl Street Productions has a first-look deal with Warner Bros. Pictures which recently acquired Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses, a screenplay by Matthew Aldrich, for Pearl Street to produce and Matt Damon to direct and star.
 D.J. Gugenheim - Director of Development at Captivate
D.J. Gugenheim grew up in New York, Israel and Florida. At 16, he moved to L.A. by himself to pursue a girl and acting. Despite his itinerant lifestyle, he was admitted to UCLA a year early and studied theatre and business. There he won the Gilbert Cates Award for outstanding production (it was a multimedia/multiplatform version of Fahrenheit 451). After graduating, he worked at the Woodrow Wilson Center (a think tank in Washington, D.C.) as well as on Capitol Hill. He came back out to L.A. to work for filmmaker Joel Zwick (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and used that experience to produce a short film with Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live). Following that, he worked for talent agent Rick Kurtzman at CAA and subsequently as an assistant and coordinator at Paramount Vantage. He is currently the Director of Development for Captivate.
The following judges are members of the Broadcast Film Critics Association.Their three votes will be combined to count as one industry judge’s vote used to determine the winner.
 Molly Mayock – Screenwriter
Molly Mayock is a screenwriter, film critic and television reporter/writer/producer. Her screenplay China Girl was a top-10 finalist in the Ben Affleck/ Matt Damon Project Greenlight. She has been an entertainment reporter for Philadelphia's WTXF-TV, a film critic for E! Entertainment Television, an Emmy®-nominated producer for Good Day L.A, and has written and produced more than 50 hours of television for networks that include the Discovery Channel, A&E, National Geographic Channel, Lifetime and History Channel. She is currently the showrunner for the hit National Geographic Channel series, Wild Justice.
 Jennifer Merin – Film Critic and Reporter
In addition to covering nonfiction film for About.com (http://documentaries.about.com), Jennifer Merin is the film critic for Women's eNews (www.WomenseNews.org) and is president of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, a nonprofit organization of leading women film journalists in the U.S., Canada and the UK, where she helms AWFJ Women On Film (www.AWFJ.org), the organization's online journal. Jennifer has also been a film reviewer for New York Press and SoHo News, and columnist for the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Tribune Media Services, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsday, as well as a film and culture reporter for Westwood One Radio, CBS Radio Networks and NBC Radio Networks.
 Daniel Gutierrez – Radio Film Critic
When working as a producer at an FM talk station, I developed "The Directors Cut Radio Program," a two-hour radio show about movies. The show was picked up on other stations -- FM, HD and Internet stations. Eventually we grew to over 16 stations across the country carrying the two-hour program. Other stations that can't carry the program, due to the length of program and their lack of airspace, began to use our short form reviews for their programming. This growth has spiraled into stations using me as a "movie expert" for bits and interviews. Beyond my work in radio, I am a writer, producer, and an editor at ReelzChannel, TV about Movies.
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2010 Judges
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