Boston-Area Screenwriters Win Top Award; Greyhound Story Wins Platinum Medal At Prestigious Film Festival.

Entertainment Writers

BOSTON--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--May 3, 2001

Two Boston-area screenwriters have won their second medal at a prestigious film festival. Mirana Comstock of Hull and Liz Joyce of Boston's South End were awarded the platinum medal for their feature film screenplay "Fast Friends" at the Worldfest International Film Festival in Houston, Texas on April 28, 2001.

The duo, who won their first Worldfest prize in 1997, captured this latest medal for their family-friendly story of an 11-year-old prep school scholarship student from the wrong side of the tracks and his budding friendship with Daisy, a racing greyhound he meets at his after-school job at the dog track. The story's inspiration: Comstock's fawn-colored greyhound, Perci, rescued just last year.

"Like our hero, Alex, I had no idea how bad conditions are at the tracks," says Comstock. "Or that two out of three of these beautiful, gentle dogs are killed by age five!" A true believer in the adage, "write what you know," Comstock helped a grass roots referendum come within two percent of the votes necessary to ban dog racing in Massachusetts this past November. She also recently testified on pending legislation at the Massachusetts State House. "I've met so many wonderful people, as well as dogs, and their stories have become very much a part of our story."

Comstock and Joyce won their platinum medal in the family-film category, a genre which Joyce feels is under-represented in Hollywood. "My mother is a middle school teacher and I have been involved with inner-city children's charities for years, so I appreciate the need for good family entertainment," says Joyce. " `Fast Friends' tells an uplifting story that shows kids they can make a difference while, at the same time, appealing to a wide audience of all ages."

The Worldfest International Film Festival is one of the nation's oldest and largest competitions for screenwriters and independent filmmakers. Festival chairman and founding director J. Hunter Todd says that he and the festival judges are big fans of a good story well-told. "(`Fast Friends') is told in a very powerful and forceful way. I hope it helps the mission," he says, calling the story "very human" and "brilliant."

This year's festival featured prize-winning work from all over the country and the world, from France to Wales, Bosnia to Australia, India to Sri Lanka, Iran and Japan. Previous winners who won their first-ever film awards at Worldfest include: Ang Lee, Oliver Stone, Ridley Scott, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, the Coen Brothers, David Lynch, Jonathan Demme, John Badham, Hal Hartley and Robert Rodriguez.