DONNA MCNEELY WINS SCREENWRITING FELLOWSHIP

When Donna McNeely wrote her first short story nearly 30 years ago, adamantine Alma Schrader School third-grade teacher Miss Katherine Stein returned it with five gold stars at the top and a note to her parents that said "Donna is going to be a writer!"

Earlier this week, the now-38-year-old McNeely's screenplay, "Julia's Child," won for her a prestigious fellowship from the people who hand out the Oscars.

McNeely's and four other writers' scripts were selected for Don and Gee Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowships. They won from among 4,446 received from across the United States and from 21 other countries.

Curtis Hanson, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter-director of "L.A. Confidential," will be guest speaker at the awards gala in November.

If the fellowship is not the Hollywood screenwriter's dream come true -- a sale or at least an option is -- it provides money so she can concentrate on writing for a year and represents moral support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

"I would be flying high if I was not so grounded in dirty diapers and breast feeding," McNeely said from the Southern California home she shares with her husband, James Di Pasquale, and their 5-week-old son, Marco.

After starting out as a television reporter in Cape Girardeau and Springfield and documentary filmmaker in St. Louis, McNeely has spent the past nine years trying to find a place in the movie industry.

At the end of the 1980s, she secured a sought-after spot as a Producing Fellow at the American Film Institute but eventually decided she wanted to be a screenwriter after all. She paid the bills with work as a secretary, restaurant hostess and cleaning woman among other jobs.

Winning nearly $40,000 in cash and trips to the Greek islands, the Bahamas and Lake Tahoe on the TV game shows "Jokers Wild" and "Trivial Pursuit" helped out.

Five years ago McNeely went back to writing TV news, this time for Los Angeles stations. "I'm not one of those people who believes in being a starving writer," she said.

But she still worked on her screenplays in the mornings.

"Part of gaining some success here is just perseverance," McNeely said.

In some ways, show business is the family business.

Her husband is an Emmy-winning composer. Her uncle, Jerry McNeely, has been a successful television writer for many years, and his son, Joel McNeely, has written music for a number of movies, including "The Avengers," "Air Force One" and the upcoming "Soldier."

Now, the cousins have started writing songs together. Their first, "I Wanna Swing Her," will air on an upcoming episode of the new series "Buddy Faro."

Her father is the well-known former KFVS weatherman Don McNeely. He and his wife, Sue, are proud of their daughter's accomplishment.

They have tried to support their daughter's pursuit of a life as a writer, he said.

"I would certainly not be one to discourage her."

Though she lives in L.A., both screenplays completed by the 1979 Central High School graduate have been set in Missouri. The action in the first, "Sail On, Sydney," follows a canoe trip down the Mississippi that includes a stop in Cape Girardeau.

"It's about a 30-year-old woman who finally grows up," McNeely said. "It's somewhat autobiographical."

"Sail On, Sydney" brought McNeely numerous meetings with producers but more importantly an agent -- much prized by those working on the Hollywood fringes.

"Julia's Child" tells a story about a misfit, a 12-year-old boy from the Ozarks whose father dies, forcing the family to move to St. Louis. He's lost in St. Louis but through public television discovers the French chef, Julia Child, and his life's calling.

"Julia's Child" also was one of five finalists at this year's Austin Film Festival.

The Nicholl Fellowship competition was open only to people who had not sold or optioned a screenplay or teleplay. Each winner will receive $25,000 and will spend the next year completing a new screenplay under the tutelage of a screenwriting mentor.

The five winners were selected by a committee chaired by producer Gale Anne Hurd. Among the other members are well-known writer Dan Petrie Jr., actress Eva Marie Saint and director Robert E. Wise.

McNeely says she and her husband must live in Los Angeles now because of their work but someday hope to move back to the Midwest.

"I'm 38 years old and I live in L.A.," she said. "How did this happen? I have a love-hate relationship with the place."

But since the fellowships were announced, lots of show business people have been calling her agent to schedule meetings.

"It feels like a validation of the work I've been doing in private," she said. "But I'm the same writer I was last week when nobody would meet me."