Press

The Marietta Daily Journal

Caroline of East Cobb, left, poses with husband, Bill.Friday is a Christian screenwriter who was awarded 2nd runner up for the Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays. (Photo: Thinh D. Nguyen)

Article Published: 2/23/2008
By Amanda Crissup – Marietta Daily Journal Staff Writer

MARIETTA – East Cobb screenwriter Caroline Friday recently received the full Hollywood treatment at the third annual Kairos Prize for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Two dozen roses waiting in her hotel room, a personal stylist before the awards ceremony and a stroll down the red carpet where she received a second runner up and a $10,000 cash prize for her screenplay “Angels on Earth.”  More so than the accolades, however, Mrs. Friday said the key component is the exposure as an up and coming screenwriter.

“It’s just a great way to be introduced.  I considered it a debut into the industry,” Mrs. Friday said.

Sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, which produces the MOVIE GUIDE, Mrs. Friday likened the awards ceremony to a Christian version of the Oscars.  The value is placed not on the religious themes of the scripts, but on its overall positive and inspirational message.

A graduate of Wake Forest University with her juris doctor in law, Mrs. Friday worked as tax and securities lawyer until she chose to stay at home full time to raise her three children.  At the time the family was living in London where Mrs. Friday said she began taking writing classes at the University of London as a hobby.

“I’ve always had a passion for film,” she said. “I had this creative side to me that wasn’t being released.”

She wrote “Angels on Earth” in 2001, but put it aside thinking that no one would be interested in her work.  However, the “Passion of the Christ” changed the movie landscape in 2004, and paved the way for Christian movies as a genre.

“The industry is out to make money and what we’re trying to prove to them is you can make money with the family friendly films,” Mrs. Friday said.  “I just got this revelation that God was raising me up and raising others up to glorify God and a biblical morality.”

“Angels on Earth” is about a hardhearted Southern matriarch who is given the gift of healing yet cannot heal her comatose daughter. Another of Mrs. Friday’s scripts, a Western romance called “The Columbine Trail,” has been optioned by Starz Media and is slated to be shown on the Hallmark Channel.

Along with her husband, Bill, Mrs. Friday is co-founder of film financing company Sixth Day Media.  A native of Jacksonville, N.C., Mrs. Friday and her family have called Cobb home since 2000.

acrissup@mdjonline.com

Kairos

Three Talented New Screenwriters Have Shared the $50,000 Kairos Prizes for ‘Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays by Beginning Screenwriters’ – Now They Have Agreed To Talk about Their Lives and Why They Wrote Their Prize Winning Scripts
By Dan Wooding

BEVERLY HILLS, CA (ANS) — It was a night that three new screenwriters will never forget, when they were honored recently for their craft in the presentation of the $50,000 Kairos Prizes for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays (sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation) at the Annual Movieguide® Faith and Values Awards Gala in Beverly Hills, Calif., attended by more than 200 top studio executives and celebrities.

The grand prize of $25,000 went to Guy Forest of San Pedro, Calif., for his screenplay “If By Chance”.  The script tells the story of a successful African-American professor and pastor who returns to his ghetto neighborhood to reopen the old, abandoned church and revive the community.  “Stairways”, by James Rogers of St. Davids, Penn., was awarded $15,000 as first runner-up, and “Angels on Earth”, by Caroline Friday of Marietta, Ga., won the $10,000 prize for second runner-up. “Stairways” tells the heart-rending story of a young boy who finds that only faith can help him live with the loss of his parents in the World Trade Center collapse.  “Angels on Earth” has one of the least likely transients deliver a religious widow from hardheartedness.

Each of the winning scripts had a common theme of an uplifting or encouraging message for its audience.  Each was based on faith and values, and helped the audience know God and love and understand God better.  Now they share the additional benefit of being read by the top major studio executives in Hollywood – what many of the competitors’ value as the real prize in the contest.

Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher and founder of Movieguide®, announced the winners at the glittering gala.  Commenting that these were three of the best scripts that have ever been submitted in the competition, he said he has high hopes for their future development into great movies.
“Every year, I am blessed by the amount of undiscovered talent we see in these submissions”, Baehr said.  “I am encouraged that this competition is bringing more faith and values to Hollywood.”

Caroline Friday of Marietta, Ga. won the $10,000 prize for second runner-up for “Angels On Earth”.  She told me about her background.
“I am a former corporate attorney having practiced law in Chicago for five years before moving to London where I stayed home with our three children for four and a half years before moving to Marietta, Ga. in 2000”, she said. “I began writing in 1998 at Birbeck College at the University of London, where I took screenwriting classes and was in a writer’s group through 2000 and then continued my screenwriting education in Atlanta at IMAGE Film and Video.”

“Otherwise, I am self taught through numerous books, scripts, movies, and seminars.  I graduated with a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a JD/MBA from Wake Forest University.  I have a husband, Bill, and three children, Anna 13, Braxton 12, and Rachel 10.”

Caroline gave a brief outline of the storyline of her script.

“A small-town southern matriarch receives supernatural healing powers from a divine homeless man, yet is unable to heal the one person she loves the most – her dying daughter.”

She went on to say, “This was the first script I wrote shortly after becoming a Christian.  The seed of the story began with the idea of what a mother would do if something tragic happened to her child.  Would it affect her spiritually?  Would it affect her walk with God and essentially bring her closer to Him?  The remainder of the story was given by divine inspiration – there are no other words to describe it. “My first script as a nonbeliever took over a year of intense labor, but this one was effortless in that it took me all of two months, with of course, seven years of tweaking!  I think the main character is really about me in a way – she goes from being a hardhearted legalist full of religion (and arguably unsaved) to someone who totally surrenders to God, and thus comes to a true faith and understanding of Him.”

When asked what the main spiritual uplifting theme of the story was, Caroline said, “Christianity is not about traditions, legalities, religion, or good works, but about total surrender to Him and His will for your life.”

She concluded by saying, “I love what Movieguide® is doing and all that they stand for.  I support them in all of their efforts and am so thankful for this award and all the blessings it has brought to my life.”

Note: Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the “right or opportune moment”. The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos.  While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies “a time in between”, a moment of undetermined period of time in which “something” special happens.  What the special something is depends on who is using the word.  While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.  In the New Testament, kairos means “the opportune time appointed by God.”

The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Published on: 03/13/08

Communities of Faith: Spiritual Awakening Changes Life’s Script Hollywood Embraces Screenplay
By Christopher Quinn

Caroline Friday reached a point that a movie script would label as the moment of dramatic enlightenment.  All the events in her life were funneled down to that time and her decision nine years ago.

Something was not working for this successful lawyer married to a successful banker, living in London with three kids.  The exterior of her comfortable life covered a growing conflict.  Questions pestered her thoughts.

“Is this all there is?”  “Why am I here?  What is my purpose?”  She was headed for change.

Fade out and fast-forward to Marietta in 2008.  There is more to her life: a new purpose and a fulfillment of long held desires.
Last month, Friday won $10,000 and a trip to Hollywood to meet producers and others in “the business” for winning third place in the annual Kairos

Prize for spiritually uplifting screenplays.

The prize money came from the John Templeton Foundation, founded by the investment billionaire and philanthropist who has strong spiritual leanings.

Friday’s screenplay reflects the changes that took place in her own life: growth, spiritual yearning and learning.

“I went to church all my life, but I never really got it,” she said.  “I just thought it was boring and dull and fake,” she said.  “I just called out to God and said, there has to be more to this church thing than going and listening to a boring sermon.”

She gave church another chance by signing up for a 16-week crash course in Christianity developed by the Anglican church.  Something happened this time, she said.  She got it.

And things began to change.  She embraced her faith, which changed her interest.

She had been taking script-writing courses at the University of London. She began applying what she was learning of goodness and mercy, love and forgiveness to her longtime love of writing.

The script had its start in 2000.  She reworked and retouched it through the years.

It is about a Southern lady, a church member, who did not get it until a magical and, in some ways, tragic meeting with a homeless man.
Some of that reflected what was going on in her life, she said.

The script was judged by Hollywood professionals working for major studios such as Warner Brothers and Walt Disney Studios, said Ted Baehr of California.

Baehr helped coordinate the contest and is a TV producer and publisher of Movieguide magazine and Web site, a review of films from a conservative Christian perspective.

He said by phone that Friday’s script was well written and gave him the feel of “Driving Miss Daisy,” the Oscar-winning 1990 movie.

Friday went to Hollywood to receive the prize from a vice president of Fox Studios and mix and mingle with Hollywood insiders. She said she is shopping another script to the Hallmark Channel.  “I feel very confident I will get an agent out of this,” she said.

Baehr said Hollywood has been more open to making films about faith and ones that promote family values in recent years.  Some of those movies, such as “The Passion of the Christ” and the movies based on “The Chronicles of Narnia,” have been some of the industry’s top money makers.  He hopes the Kairos Prizes help promote more of those.

Friday said she never gave up her dream of seeing one of her scripts come to life on the screen, even though she wrote in obscurity for years.  “I just felt like I had to keep going.  And this year is the year when things are starting to happen,” she said.

The Christian Index

Script Mirrors Life, Wins Award for Georgia Baptist
By Margaret McCommon Dempsey, Special to The Index – Published August 28, 2008

Interest in writing eventually became a calling for Caroline Friday, a member of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta.  Today she and her husband, Bill, are co-founders of the Christian-based Sixth Day Media.

MARIETTA – The script of her life embodied the American dream.  She was a successful attorney; her husband, a successful banker.  They had three healthy children and, seemingly, not a care in the world.

When the family relocated to London for a temporary work assignment for her husband, Caroline Friday took a leave of absence from her career.  Then and there, her spiritual journey began.

Having been a church-goer her entire life, the 30-something wife and mother finally gave her life to the Lord, she recalled.  Friday said that she knew about God from her religious upbringing but did not understand that she could know Him in a personal relationship until she took a 16-week Bible study at an Anglican church in London.

I was like a sponge, she said, I couldn’t wait to go to Bible study.

The couple eventually returned to Atlanta and began attending an Episcopalian church while she simultaneously attended a Bible study at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church.  She and her husband decided a Bible-based church, where the Word was preached, was where they were more comfortable.  They soon made professions of faith and were baptized at the Marietta church.

While still living in England, Caroline was taking writing classes at the University of London.  Writing had always been an interest; it soon became her calling.

The Only Requirement

Today, on this side of the Atlantic, the script of her life has had a major re-write as a result of that conversion.  Friday and her husband, Bill, now living in Marietta, eventually gave up their professional careers, hers in writing and his in the banking industry, to pursue a spiritual calling to America’s film industry.

The film industry is a mission field, she said, and I am called into it.  The only requirement is that I give up all worldly possessions and rely totally on God.

The couple founded Sixth Day Media, a film production and finance company dedicated to producing family-valued, morally centered, and spiritually inspired films.  A passion for their company is fueled by recent studies indicating movies with strong Judeo-Christian themes and positive moral messages earn more than movies without such content.

Caroline leaves much of the daily managing of the company to her husband while she focuses on writing screenplays. The couple’s career change decision has brought years of long explanations to family and friends, laborious work with little reward, and disciplined commitment to walk by faith, not by sight, she explained.

Still, despite the hardships, she has never been tempted to give up.  Giving up would have been like the Israelites going back to Egypt, she believes.  We were willing to sacrifice everything.  We knew that God was going to bless us so that we would have influence in what all of us see in local theaters.
In February her calling and commitment were affirmed.  A phone call confirmed that she had won third place in the annual Kairos Prize for spiritually uplifting screenplays.  The award, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, was established in 2005 to encourage individuals and companies to produce entertainment with positive messages about faith and values.

Her award-winning screenplay, Angels on Earth, tells the story of a religious, yet legalistic, widow whose daughter lay in a coma from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.  A transient man became the unlikely hero in the story to bring this Southern woman to a true faith.

The screenplay, which was first written in 2001, had been tweaked in the following years.  Friday admits that the spiritual struggle of the Southern matriarch in her screenplay mirrors much of what she was going through during her spiritual awakening in London.

The award was such a validation for me, she said.  It was a reminder that God has blessed my efforts.

With the award came a check for $10,000 and, more importantly, a trip to Hollywood to meet producers and others working in the film industry as well as commitments that top major studio executives will read the script.  The awards gala, complete with a red carpet and about 200 top studio executives and celebrities, was sponsored by Movieguide: A Biblical Guide to Movies and Entertainment.

In the midst of the glitz and glamour of the awards ceremony, I felt like God was debuting me, she smiled.

During the past seven years of living out her call to the mission field of the film industry, Caroline has noticed subtle, yet significant change.  God is changing the hearts and minds of people in Hollywood, she explained.  He is changing the landscape.  Actors and production people are believers.  Many have the heart to present the truth to the industry.

Now with 11 screenplays to her name, she continues to write, with the crystal Kairos award close at hand for encouragement.  I know one day I will have a wonderful testimony of how God has used me, she said.