Blogs Without Borders

I have been blogging for over six years. It’s a part of my life now, honestly. It feels more like journaling than “blogging” although I’m not sure there is a huge difference, since I always set out to entertain, amuse and inform my readers about stuff I think is relevant, interesting or otherwise cool.

I try to keep Just Effing about screenwriting and otherwise flourishing as a writer but sometimes other things creep into the conversation too.

And now, of course, I am working on my other blog, Stories Without Borders, which is a nascent non-profit filmmaking center for Jewish and Arab women to collaborate on making short films together. As participants explore the power of narrative, I suspect that we’ll not only find some undiscovered filmmakers in the Middle East, but in so doing, unleash the voices of so many who have been silent for too long.

So here are some items of interest:

I have been reading Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes and it’s SO interesting!! You can watch Gary lecture on Youtube for free; it’s pretty illuminating stuff. Who doesn’t want to feel more energized and enjoy bacon at the same time?!

This is my latest Huffington Post article about Stories Without Borders – some really nice comments there.

Here is the Stories Without Borders Youtube Channel - subscribe and get updates every time I upload a video of the good, the bad, the ugly, the hilarious and everything in-between as I video journal my upcoming adventures in Tel Aviv!

Oh and here is the link to Radio Slot, where I was invited for a lovely interview the other day. Click on “best mix” to hear it! Here is the wonderful Paul Zeidman’s blog!

IN SCREENWRITING & ENTERTAINMENT NEWS:

To so many of you who have emailed and asked – YES, I will be running the 2012 Just Effing Entertain Me Screenwriting Competition this year.

Thanks to the help of a new, enthusiastic, talented and very organized, motivated judging coordinator, things will be up and running, even in the midst of everything else. So that’s exciting. Doors will open on March 30th and the final deadline will be on or near June 30th, 2012. So come on back to Just Effing for updates on that.

With the help of our new judging coordinator and with of course the impact of Stories Without Borders, the JFEME competition will be looking at adding some spotlight prizes for scripts that feature humanitarian and visionary themes, as well as scripts written by women with great roles for female protagonists. We’re mulling it over as we continue to shape the JFEME competition into not only a fun competition but a meaningful one for winners and participants – professionally and personally. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that so far

In fact if you want to find out much more about how cool it is to win the competition, you should twitter follow the 2011 winner of the JFEME, Jared Kelly – he has SO much cool stuff going on right now that I can barely keep up with him! We had such a good time earlier this year when Jared came in from London to collect his prize(s).

I’m having breakfast with Ben Cahan tomorrow (he created Final Draft!) to discuss his new website, Talentville. It’s a virtual community for screenwriters and it looks to be quite a resource!

And how can we ignore the Oscar broadcast tomorrow? Do you have any faves? I’m pretty excited that Billy Crystal will host, he was always my absolute favorite host. Call me old-fashioned. That man is an entertainer par excellence!

Also, if you don’t follow me on Twitter, you probably should. That is by far the place where I communicate most. I’m @Julie-Gray so come on down to Tweepville and check it out!

SO many people have asked me what they can do to help support Stories Without Borders, it has been amazing. I do need some help and here is what you can do: repost and share the links to Stories Without Borders with as many people as you can. Your friends, colleagues, family – anyone who you think might take a genuine interest in this amazing initiative. As we are in very early days, everything is quite grassroots at the moment but I think SWB is going to become something very significant indeed when it gets on its feet.

I appreciate the generous offers of support for SWB more than you can possibly imagine. And the most effective thing you can do to help is to help spread the word.

Forwarding the Huffington Post article is also a big help.