Nancy Nigrosh
Nancy Nigrosh is a former literary agent who has represented such screenwriters and directors as Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty), Richard Boyle (Salvador), Barry Morrow (Rain Man), and Chris Eyre[1] (Smoke Signals). She also represented authors, including Amanda Brown, the author of Legally Blonde. She is currently an independent consulting editor and literary consultant to authors and screenwriters. Her "Memo to Screenwriters" column on IndieWire.com offers advice to screenwriters about how their beliefs and behavior influence the quality of their careers.
Education
While still an undergraduate at NYU, Nancy Nigrosh was a script supervisor on the New York location shoot of Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets.[2] She also co-wrote an original screenplay with one of her mentors at NYU, Terry Southern, who urged her to apply to UCLA's Master Screenwriting program, where she earned her MFA. In 2011, she also earned her MA in Education from Antioch University, and currently teaches at UCLA's Extension Writers' Program.[3]
Agency career
n the 1980s, Nancy Nigrosh (aka Nancy Blaylock, as she was then known) built and headed the "lit" department at the Gersh Agency. Some clients’ work was groundbreaking, such as representing the sole African American studio screenwriter in Hollywood for over two decades, Richard Wesley, and openly gay screenwriter Natalie Cooper. Other clients included the writer director of Purple Rain, and the screenwriters of Short Cuts, The Outsiders and Beaches. She joined Innovative Artists in 1998 and signed then unknown writers, Randy Brown (Trouble With The Curve) and Leslye Headland (Bachelorette), Stuart Beattie (Pirates of The Caribbean, Collateral) as well as well known filmmakers, Mark Rydell and Peter Bogdanovich. She also worked in close collaboration with the agency's talent department to chart the careers of numerous performers who also became multiple award winning writers, producers and directors: John Cameron Mitchell, Julie Delpy, Mario Van Peebles, Joan Chen, Chad Lowe, Sean Astin, Isaiah Washington, and the legendary Sammo Hung among them.
External links
- Nancy Nigrosh
- Memo to Screenwriters: Stop Acting Like It's 1999 -- DIY and Click 'Follow'
- Memo to Screenwriters #2: Like E.L. James, You Can Change the Game
- Memo to Screenwriters #3: Being Solely Identified by Your Scripts Leads to Permanent Identity Crisis
- Screenwriting in Hollywood: A Modest Proposal, Thompson on Hollywood, IndieWire, 2008-10-02
- Cheat Sheet - The Daily Beast
- Reality Bites: Life of a Screenwriter In Hollywood by Jaden
- Literary Business