All male writers won the 11 writing categories at the 2015 Austin Film Festival despite women writers being finalists. 11-0 is a shut out and makes you wonder if an unconscious bias took place with the scripts. The names of the finalists were made public so the gender of the writers was not a secret. The blog Women and Hollywood tweeted about noticing the shut out when it happened. The festival will hopefully be more diverse with winning writers in 2016. I agree that entering contests needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Look up who the judges are. Many contests won't tell you that. Look at the prizes. Does the contest pay for you to travel to receive the award or are you footing the bill and financing the "privilege" of receiving a piece of paper saying you won?

Nicholl experienced a scandal in 2015 when one of its readers made very sexist and inappropriate comments about a script named THE BIG D: http://mashable.com/2015/08/25/academy-woman-screenwriter-porn/ My comments aren't designed to trash Austin Film Festival or Nicholl but to make people aware that issues exist and need to be addressed.

To offer a counterpoint: A few months ago finished a script and uploaded it to The Black List. I'm still in the early stages of learning the craft, so had no intention of selling the script or gaining representation -- I was purely interested in the feedback. I found the feedback frustratingly unhelpful. It was weird, didn't compute with the number ratings I received, was quite brief, and seemed to be written by a British person, which, seeing as it was a comedy, made me wonder if this was the right person to provide feedback. Contrast this with a competition I entered shortly thereafter -- the BlueCat Screenplay Competition (which was recently kinda of slagged on Scriptnotes). With entry I received very detailed and constructive feedback and criticism. It was extremely helpful, and really nailed the problems with my script. When I go to rewrite I'll be putting that feedback to direct use and probably won't even look at what I got from the Black List. Mind you, the script sucks. I knew that when I finished it. I'm not angry that I got negative reviews -- both were highly critical. One just gave me actually useful criticism, and seemed to care, while the other didn't. I'm not the only one in my writing group who has had this experience with the Black List. In fact, I'd say my experience was far better than most. Of course, these are isolated incidents. But if you are primarily interested in feedback and know this probably won't be the script that breaks you into Hollywood, I would say skip the Black List and spend your money elsewhere -- maybe a competition, even if it isn't a prestigious one.

The Black List is very expensive. It's $25 to host a script each month, and $50 per review. In order to qualify for their real time lists or email blast about scripts that score an 8 or higher, you need TWO reviews. So that's $125 ($25 monthly hosting and 2 reviews at $50 a pop). Not exactly a friendly proposition for writers with limited incomes.

I will pass along comments re the Black List website and script reader service to them. In my experience, they welcome critiques, and want to do right by writers. Thanks for your honest appraisal and feedback. It's good for me to know what folks' experience is.

Stephen, I couldn't agree more. There is an established pattern across the board of institutional underrepresentation relative to gender and ethnicity when it comes to virtually every area of work in the entertainment industry. You can read my 4 part interview with Darnell Hunt, director of the university’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American studies who each year puts out a Hollywood Diversity Report and the numbers are, frankly, staggering. You can download the 2015 edition here. There are glimmers of hope. While other areas of this year's Oscar nominations typical on the underrepresentation front, it's encouraging to note that four of the ten nominated best screenplay projects feature women writers or co-writers. Still a long way to go. Frankly this issue is one of many why I jumped at the chance to be the official screenwriting blog of the Black List. Franklin shares my passion to find and nurture different and new voices to enter Hollywood's film and TV community. With empathy being hounded by so much public fear-mongering, we need great stories and great storytellers - of ALL backgrounds - now more than ever. Thanks for your comments, Stephen.

Please see the original post as I have updated to include a response from Franklin Leonard.

For me screenplay contests are a must. How else are you going to find out how good your writing really is. The industry standard is recommend (3% of scripts), consider (7%) and pass (90%). Contests mirror this harsh but true fact. Contests should not be confused with Script Analysis/Coverage services (a good idea), or the Blacklist Annual Survey (also a good idea), or script hosting services (make your own mind up). You should separate all four in your own mind and research the pros and cons carefully. Research starts with: http://screenplayscripts.com/screenwriting-contests/ http://screenplayscripts.com/script-coverage/ http://screenplayscripts.com/script-hosting-sites/ http://goodinaroom.com/blog/script-coverage/ The issue of inequality in all aspects of film making is a worthy discussion point which perhaps we'll get into in more detail in another blog entry or another day, but that discussion can only become real when the Blacklist, Nicholl and the business at large starts to collect and publish data, not just give their impressions. Since there is no legal obligation on them to do so, no spotlight can properly shine on this issue. Here in Europe such obligations are commonplace.

Thanks, Michael, for your observations and the links. Much appreciated. Your point about separating contests from coverage, hosting sites, etc, super important.

Data would be a very valuable tool. It'd be interesting to learn how many women and POC are submitting scripts and what their average "scores" are from readers vs. white men. While this may make people in the industry uncomfortable, it may expose an unconscious bias taking place with readers when scoring scripts. Or it may show that there's no difference with the scores. I'm curious whether people's names affect their advancement in the industry. If someone has a female name, or an ethnic name, how do they fare vs. a "white male" name? There is a woman submitting scripts that had been rejected under a man's name, to see if there's a difference in response: http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/guest-post-submitting-like-a-man-my-year-resubmitting-scripts-as-a-dude-20160113 One also has to wonder if appearance plays a role in hiring, too. Sexism, racism, and ageism are all issues to combat in Hollywood (and elsewhere).