Getting their big break

It sounds like any aspiring screenwriter’s fantasy: to work one-on-one with accomplished directors, producers and writers as they meticulously pore over, pick apart and refine the script that could be your career-maker.

But it’s no fantasy. It’s the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, a yearly fellowship program for five fortunate filmmakers who are selected based on the strength of the scripts they submit.

The Outfest 2013 lineup includes three feature films from the lab: Yen Tan’s “Pit Stop,” Doug Spearman’s “Hot Guys With Guns” and George Northy’s “G.B.F.”

“Pit Stop,” which screened Monday, was a 2013 Sundance favorite chosen as Outfest 2013’s U.S. Dramatic Centerpiece. This evocative, tense yarn about blue-collar gay love in a Texas town is from filmmaker Yen Tan, who worked on fine-tuning the script for 10 years before watching his vision come to fruition with the help of the lab.

Tan had spent so much time on “Pit Stop” that he’d grown weary of it – until the lab inspired him to breathe new life into his tale. “I worked on this for so long that I figured I might as well give it a shot,” Tan laughs as he recalls his decision to submit his script for consideration. “Having the mentors and having individual sessions with every one of them was very intimate and very constructive.”

Doug Spearman was working as a TV commercial director when he wrote action-comedy caper “Hot Guys With Guns” on a lark. He sent his script to the lab and it was accepted.

“It was pretty amazing to be, first of all, writing a movie with gay characters, but not only that – to have it welcomed, supported and enriched,” Spearman says. “It’s not like Hollywood’s out there looking for the next great gay script. It’s either ‘Brokeback Mountain’ or ‘The Birdcage.’ So it’s extraordinary to get that kind of encouragement, especially if you’re trying to make a gay film.”

“G.B.F.” (“Gay Best Friend”) is Outfest 2013’s Closing Night Gala film. A clever teen comedy wherein gay boys have become the popular high school girls’ accessory of the moment, the movie was the brainchild of George Northy.

Northy was working a day job on the East Coast when he wrote “G.B.F,” and this first-time screenwriter’s experience with the lab has been nothing short of transformative. One of the lab mentors – actress, director and “American Psycho” screenwriter Guinevere Turner – even hooked Northy up with director Darren Stein, well-known for ’90s teen black comedy cult favorite “Jawbreaker.”

“It kind of changed my life and got me in the door,” says Northy, who’s currently in the process of moving to Los Angeles to pursue filmmaking full-time. “If it weren’t for the lab, I’d still be in New York working as a copywriter.”

—Alex Weber, Brand Publishing Writer