BANGOR, Maine — Andrew Lanham, who last week was named one of five recipients of a 2010 Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, got word on Saturday that he also has won two more important prizes for his screenplay “The Jumper of Maine.”
Bangor lawyer Sam Lanham, father of the 26-year-old graduate student, said Saturday that his son called about 3:30 p.m. to break the news to his parents.
“He’s taking it in stride,” the elder Lanham said.
Sam Lanham said winners of the $30,000 Nicholl Fellowship must agree to write an additional, original screenplay over the next year. The two new awards from the Austin Film Festival, in the drama and independent categories, are together worth an added $15,000, with no restrictions on how the money is used, he said.
Andrew Lanham, who is earning a master’s degree in screenwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, got a phone call from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last Tuesday telling him he was one of five winners of the Nicholl Fellowship for new, unproduced writers.
“I was stunned. It kind of blew my mind,” Lanham said in a phone interview after that call.
Since learning in August that he was one of 10 finalists for the Nicholl, Andrew Lanham has been approached by a number of film industry agents and managers eager to discuss his career.
“It’s really been a huge foot in the door already,” Lanham said. “I’ll probably have a manager or agent within the next few weeks.”
Lanham’s prizewinning screenplay tells the story of a paramedic with Tourette’s syndrome.
Andrew Lanham is a 2003 graduate of Bangor Christian Academy.
BDN writer Emily Burnham contributed to this report.