Messenger - Vol. 1, No. 3, Page 22 Spring 1992 Alumni Profile; Screenwriter's pen dips into her past Call Laurice Elehwany a natural. A novice screenwriter, her script, My Girl, was developed into a movie that's a box-office hit, grossing more than $50 million to date. Elehwany moved to Los Angeles in 1989 to enroll in the American Film Institute. Less than a year later, at age 25, she sold My Girl to Columbia Pictures. Starring Macauley Culkin, Dan Ackroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis and newcomer Anna Chlumsky, the movie centers around Vada, a young girl played by Chlumsky, and her best friend, played by Culkin, and Vada's reaction to her friend's unexpected death from a bee sting. Set in a small town in Pennsylvania in the 1970s, the script incorporates bits of Elehwany's own childhood, from playing with Barbie dolls to watching "The Brady Bunch" on television. "I really wasn't a part of the industry until the script sold," says the 1986 Delaware graduate. My Girl opened doors for her to meet directors, producers and other movie executives. Paramount has hired Elehwany to write a script based on a family reunion set on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where she spent her teenage years. "I don't kill off any 11-year-old boys in this one. No one will die," she says. Elehwany sees herself one day writing television drama/comedy shows such as Northern Exposure and The Wonder Years. "I grew up watching TV," she says. "I think I know more about TV than film, actually. My friends actually laughed at me when I got accepted into film school because I'd just never gone to the movies." Script ideas come spontaneously. "I'll read a book and it will just pop into my mind, or I'll be watching TV and something will just grab me. And then I'll feel compelled to base a whole script around it." Elehwany shares ideas and scripts with members of a writers group she formed while at the American Film Institute. "When your writing is going well, you're usually helping the other person, or vice versa. I don't write in a vacuum, although there are a lot of writers who do." Although not revealing the windfall from selling My Girl, Elehwany confirmed that script prices before the recession ranged from $100,000 to $1 million. Writers also are paid for rewrites and receive residual income from video sales and rentals and cable and network TV showings. From the time she sold My Girl, to its release last November, she got a first-hand education on movie-making. "Many hands have touched the script by the time you see it in the theatre. I sort of see now why a lot of writers become directors, just to preserve their original script." But Elehwany says she wouldn't have done anything differently. "This really was a big break. I've got my foot in the door now. I learned a lot for the next time around." -Bill Clark, Delaware '82