Lucy Alibar
Lucy Alibar | |
---|---|
Born | Lucy Harrison 1983 (age 40–41) Florida, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Screenwriter, playwright |
Lucy Alibar (born Lucy Harrison in 1983) is an American screenwriter and playwright best known for co-writing the 2012 film Beasts of the Southern Wild with Benh Zeitlin.
Early life
Lucy Alibar was raised near Monticello, Florida; her parents are Baya M. Harrison III, a criminal defense attorney, and Barbara Harrison, an artist who taught painting classes in prisons.[1][2] She went to high school in Tallahassee, Florida, where her mother worked, and began spending time reading in public libraries "until the library closed every day". It was there that she discovered experimental theatre and aspired to become a playwright.[2] She won a writing competition at the age of fourteen run by Young Playwrights Inc. When she turned eighteen, she legally changed her surname from Harrison to Alibar, a portmanteau of her mother and grandmother's first names (Barbara and Alice), since "they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness [and] I wanted to have that like an amulet."[3]
Career
Alibar attended New York University in Manhattan, where she studied under the Tisch School of the Arts' experimental theatre program.[2] After graduating from NYU, she continued to live on New York's Lower East Side, working multiple jobs as a sandwich maker, bartender and waitress while writing plays in her free time.[2][3] Around 2010 she wrote Juicy and Delicious, a play based on her own experiences in dealing with her father's declining health.[2] In the play, a young boy named Hushpuppy faces the illness and death of his father, which paralleled her reaction to her father's cerebrovascular disease and coronary artery bypass surgery.[3] She showed the completed script to her longtime friend, filmmaker Benh Zeitlin, who suggested that they adapt the play into a film.[2] For the film, Hushpuppy is a girl. Alibar and Zeitlin began to develop a screenplay, which was chosen by the Sundance Institute to be developed with support from other filmmakers at the institute's Screenwriting Lab. After the script was completed, Alibar moved to Louisiana to assist in the production of the film, titled Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was being directed by Zeitlin. It was selected for screening at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival; in order to afford the travel fares to attend the festival in France, she raised money through the crowdfunding website Indiegogo.[3] The film was released in June 2012 and Alibar and Zeitlin's script received numerous awards and nominations, including a Humanitas Prize and an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay,[4] while Alibar won the award for Woman of the Year at NYU's Fusion Film Festival.[2]
After the release of Beasts of the Southern Wild, Alibar wrote a film adaptation of The Secret Garden to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and adapted one of her plays, Christmas and Jubilee Behold the Meteor Shower, into a screenplay for the production company Escape Artists. The resulting film titled Troop Zero debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019. In late 2013 she also sold a novel, The Prophet of Grady County, to Scribner.[4]
In 2019, Alibar joined other WGA writers in firing their agents as part of the WGA's stand against the ATA and the practice of packaging.[5] Lucy wrote the screenplay for Where the Crawdads Sing.
Personal life
Lucy married producer Pavun Shetty on August 29, 2022 in Florence.
References
- ^ Hinson, Mark (January 10, 2013). "Writer Lucy Alibar scores Oscar gold with 'Beasts'". USA Today. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f g Lukenbill, Mark (March 12, 2013). "Interview: Oscar Nominee Lucy Alibar On Meeting Tony Kushner, Working with Guillermo del Toro, and Life After 'Beasts'". Indiewire. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Friedman, Steve (October 16, 2012). "Lucy Alibar: From Broke to Phenomenon". Elle. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
- ^ a b Setoodeh, Ramin (October 7, 2013). "'Beasts of the Southern Wild' Scribe Lucy Alibar Sells First Novel (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
- ^ "WGA: More Than 7,000 Writers Have Fired Their Agents". Deadline. 22 April 2019.
External links
- Lucy Alibar at IMDb
- v
- t
- e
for Best Script
- Soylent Green – Stanley R. Greenberg (1973)
- Sleeper – Woody Allen (1974)
- Young Frankenstein – Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder (1975)
- Star Wars – George Lucas (1977)
- The Sixth Sense – M. Night Shyamalan (1999)
- Galaxy Quest – David Howard and Robert Gordon (2000)
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – James Schamus, Kuo Jung Tsai, and Hui-Ling Wang (2001)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson (2002)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair, and Peter Jackson (2003)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson (2004)
- Serenity – Joss Whedon (2005)
- Howl's Moving Castle – Hayao Miyazaki, Cindy Davis Hewitt, and Donald H. Hewitt (2006)
- Pan's Labyrinth – Guillermo del Toro (2007)
- WALL-E – Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, and Pete Docter (2008)
for Outstanding
Dramatic Presentation
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day – James Cameron (1992)
- Babylon 5 – J. Michael Straczynski (1999)
- 2000X – Tales of the Next Millennia – Yuri Rasovsky and Harlan Ellison (2001)
- Joss Whedon (2008)
- District 9 – Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell (2009)
- Inception – Christopher Nolan (2010)
- Doctor Who: "The Doctor's Wife" – Richard Clark and Neil Gaiman (2011)
- Beasts of the Southern Wild – Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar (2012)
- Gravity – Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón (2013)
- Guardians of the Galaxy – James Gunn and Nicole Perlman (2014)
- Mad Max: Fury Road – George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nico Lathouris (2015)
- Arrival – Denis Villeneuve and Eric Heisserer (2016)
- Get Out – Jordan Peele (2017)
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman (2018)
- Good Omens: "Hard Times" – Neil Gaiman (2019)
- The Good Place: "Whenever You're Ready" – Michael Schur (2020)
- WandaVision – Jac Schaeffer and writing staff (2021)
- Everything Everywhere All at Once - Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (2022)
- Barbie - Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach (2023)