What's Up With? Erica Beeney

Where You've Seen Her: The Ohio State University M.F.A. graduate had a quick rise to fame as the winner of the second installment of Project Greenlight, with her screenplay The Battle of Shaker Heights. And while the HBO series that documented the filmmaking process mostly centered on all the shooting catastrophes, Beeney said the entire process was a joy. "The final version of the film is not how I would have imagined it would be," she said. "But I'm not sure that the writer's job is to really conceptualize the final version. My process was done when the final script was approved; that's the part I had control over. After that you just have to hand it off. While at times I was fearful of what the movie was turning into, I think in the end what was produced was something I'm really proud of and really closely reflects a lot of the original aspects of the screenplay."

Beeney readily admits that her situation was probably quite different from that of the average first-time screenwriter. "No one was going to fire me," she said jokingly. "I didn't have to be worried that they were going to turn The Battle of Shaker Heights into a shoot-'em-up action movie with a new writer?not a lot of other writers have that security." But, she said, the more she speaks to other writers, the more she has learned that there is no such thing as an average experience. "The screenwriter's experience is different in every situation. Sometimes the final version of your film becomes almost unrecognizable [compared with] what you wrote, in others you work hand in hand with the director, and in the middle lies my experience, which was some level of input, though certainly not the final say."

Getting It All on Tape: Beeney said she was nervous and unsure about being on the set every day but that the anxiety was further compounded by the Project Greenlight cameras documenting her every move. She said, "The benefit of the sometimes embarrassing and painful process of watching myself on television is that I can see the mistakes I made, and I can try to correct them the next go-around. I regret in hindsight that I wasn't more clear about what my role was on-set, who I answered to, and what my authority was. That reflects my inexperience, but it's a battle that every screenwriter has."

Though many "reality stars" lament that the overexposure has done more harm to their careers than good, Beeney isn't concerned. "One of the benefits of being a writer is that ultimately it all hinges on the quality of my work. If people got a negative impression of me, but they still like the product, they can easily buy the script and leave me out of it." Still, she admitted "The show certainly has given me a higher public profile than most first-time writers, and that has its good and bad sides. People think they know you, but I really don't think Project Greenlight manipulated the show in any way.