Welcome to The Write Question, a program that explores the world of writing and publishing in the Western United States. Our guests today are screenwriters Alex Smith, Andrew Smith, and Ken White.

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ALEX SMITH is a prize-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, educator and author of short fiction. Alex teaches Screenwriting and Directing at the University of Texas at Austin, and is the Creative Director of the non-profit University of Texas Film Institute (UTFI), where he recently produced Dance With The One—a full-length feature-film made entirely by students, but mentored by professionals in the film industry.

ANDREW SMITH is a filmmaker, poet, screenwriter and Assistant Professor in the School of Media Arts at the University of Montana.

THE BROTHERS SMITH co-wrote and co-directed the award-winning feature film, The Slaughter Rule, starring Ryan Gosling and David Morse, and Amy Adams. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, and continuing on to be one of only two American features to screen at the prestigious 2002 New Directors/New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art, The Slaughter Rule garnered top awards at the Santa Fe, Nashville and Sydney Film Festivals, as well as the Critic’s Prize at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Released in theaters in spring 2003, The Slaughter Rule was released on home video, and is currently featured on Showtime, IFC and Sundance cable channels.

As professional screenwriters, the Smith Brothers recently wrote Crazy Mountain, an hour-long contemporary western set in Montana for the F/X network, and are adapting The Ruler of the Realm quartet of novels, for Framestore Productions in the U.K. They recently adapted the graphic novel Son of the Gun by the legendary cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Alex and Andrew also received a rare film development grant from the Montana Cultural Trust to write The Wide Open, a revisionist western set in the Jazz Age of Sheridan County, Montana. They have written scripts for Fox Searchlight, Columbia Pictures, HBO, Disney and ESPN Films.


KEN WHITE is a poet, screenwriter, and member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, who received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. His poetry has appeared in The Boston Review, The Tusculum Review, and is forthcoming in Columbia: A Journal. His screenplay "Blight," co-written with John Jackson Braider, was optioned by Titan films in association with Sony Pictures. He has also written screen adaptations of Goethe’s "The Sorrows of Young Werther," and the seminal medieval Irish epic, The Tain Bo Cuailgne – The Cattle Raid of Cooley. He is currently working on a new script, The Wereman.

Visit the Winter In The Blood movie Web site.

Read an article about the movie written by Jamie Kelly of the Missoulian.

The Write Question is produced by Chérie Newman.

Executive producer, Michael Marsolek.

Special thanks to Lisa Simon, David Moore, Barbara Theroux, and Kim Anderson.

This program is supported in part by Humanities Montana, enriching intellectual, cultural, and civic life for all Montanans. And by the Montana Cultural Trust.

This program included music by Springhill, Drum Brothers, and Aaron Minnick.

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Guests on the The Write Question are writers, publishers, and illustrators living, or working for an extended period of time, in the western United States. The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.