1999 Taos Land & Film Screenplay Finalists

THE WINNER:

* RAW TALENT by Buzz Nutley

Synopsis: A burned out road comedian hits the Midwest backwater road circuit with a bubble-headed blonde rookie comedian. His career seems to take an upswing when a management company takes him under their wing and starts to sponsor his climb back towards the big time. Things aren't what they appear to be.

THE FINALISTS:

* THE NEVADA ROOM by Matt North

Synopsis: A dark comic tale about two road comedians touring the grim casinos of northern Nevada on their way to the Tahoe Comedy Festival.

* FINDING DAVID by Chris Boone

Synopsis: David's birth mother has found him, but the half Inupiat Eskimo wants no part of the woman who gave him up for adoption. When his alcoholism becomes a problem, he is given the choice of going to jail or going back to his birth family in Alaska. He reluctantly goes with the mother he hates and mistrusts. Can he find himself with the help of his Inupiat Community or will he go back to his bottle?

* CARMEN BASILIO! BASILIO! by Lou Buttino

Synopsis: The true story of a boxer who persevered despite defying and refusing to buckle under to the mafia controlled World Boxing Association of the 1950s.

* CLUBS by John Hanna

Synopsis: Legendary golfer Joe O'Malley returns to his native Australia with his son to find the man who taught him how to play golf as a young boy. With the help of his mentor, a milkman, a mystical golf course and it's mysterious greens keeper, Joe learns all about golf again and also gets to know his son for the first time. It a story of second chances and the true gift they can be.

* LIMBS by Danika D. Dinsmore

Synopsis: Two young women deal with the loss of an arm and how it affects their relations with others. And, how they find their own truth.

* MOJADOS by Grant McCaw

Synopsis: An old man travels back to his southern New Mexico homestead to clear up a series of fifty year old unsolved murders of "wetbacks".

* THE PASSAGE by Michael Raymond

Synopsis: A young boy travels back in time where he must come to terms with his family heritage and great-grand father's traumatic adolescence.

* GOD DON'T LIKE UGLY by Jiovanni Iacoviello

Synopsis: Two detectives and a group of criminologists investigate an apparent suicide.

* RUTHLESS by Tim Sexton

Synopsis: The life and times of a Compton drug dealer who rises to the top of the rap music business and then dies of AIDS. His name, Eazy E. His group, NWA (Nigga's With Attitude).