2009 Screenwriting Expo Featuring John Cleese Coming October 15-18

Mark you calendar now screenwriting hopefuls and movie fans of all denominations. The 2009 Screenwriting Expo is coming in October, and there’s a lot going on for anyone remotely interested in putting their ideas on paper. Check out the Screenwriting Expo’s homepage here. Press release is below.

Acclaimed writer, actor, and producer John Cleese will be a Guest of Honor at the 2009 Screenwriting Expo October 15-18, 2009 at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. He will share the top Guest of Honor spot, the last session of the Expo, with its traditional occupant, two-time Oscar-winning writer William Goldman, at the final session at the Expo on Sunday, Oct. 18.

Mr. Cleese rose to international comedy prominence as a co-creator, writer, and actor in the seminal comedy troupe Monty Python (Monty Python’s Flying Circus television series and feature films, including Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail). He received Oscar and WGA nominations for his screenplay to the 1989 classic comedy, A Fish Called Wanda, the tale of four robbers who scheme to double-cross one another for their loot, and also starred in the movie with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michael Palin.

As a writer, he has more than 100 credits for produced comedy features and television episodes going back to the (speaking of seminal) That Was The Week That Was, a British show which anticipated the style and cheek of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report by some 45 years. In 1975, Cleese returned to television in the role of Basil Fawlty onFawlty Towers, which he co-wrote with partner Connie Booth. The show won BAFTA’s for Best Situational Comedy the two years it aired.

As an actor, he has appeared in numerous feature films, including Fierce Creatures (which he also wrote), Time Bandits, Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone, the second and third films of the wildly popular Shrek franchise, and the 1985 Western Silverado.

In 2005, three of the six members of Monty Python were voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders to the list of the 50 greatest comedians ever. Michael Palin was #30, Eric Idle # 21 – and John Cleese #2.

William Goldman, who is making his sixth straight appearance in the closing Guest of Honor session at the Expo, has earned a reputation as the mentor to some of Hollywood’s best screenwriters. The writer of both the novel and screenplay adaptation of The Princess Bride, he won Oscars for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men. His other screenwriting credits include such varied work as Dreamcatcher, Year of the Comet, The Ghost and the Darkness, Hearts In Atlantis, A Bridge Too Far, and uncredited writing on Mr. Cleese’s Fierce Creatures. His adaptation of The Monkey Wrench Gang is due out in 2010.

“This is where I’m supposed to insert a quote like, ‘Mr. Cleese is one of the most unique comic voices in both film and television and the Expo is honored that he will appear this year,’ said Creative Screenwriting Magazine Publisher Bill Donovan, who is also executive producer of the Screenwriting Expo. “Well, that would be like saying Keira Knightley’s kinda cute. The fact is, I’m gobsmacked, to borrow a phrase from that side of the ocean, and will be forever thankful to both Mr. Cleese and the wonderful William Goldman for asking him to come.”

The Screenwriting Expo is the largest meeting in the U.S. and possibly the world, devoted exclusively to creative writing for feature films and television, with more than 2,000 participants each year. Founded in 2001 by Creative Screenwriting’s prior publisher, Erik Bauer, the Expo includes more than 100 teaching sessions on the business and craft of screenwriting, interviews with guests of honor, panel discussions with producers and agents, an exhibit hall for screenwriters, the world’s only live, on-the-scene screenwriting competition, the CS Open, and one of Hollywood’s most popular pitch fests, the Golden Pitch.

For additional updates, class schedules and details, please visit http://screenwritingexpo.com.