A local pharmacist has gotten national recognition for screenwriting.
Joey Fama was born and raised in Beckley. He is a pharmacist by day and a screenwriter by night. Something he didn’t realize he’d be good at until after college. He went to Concord University where he was a sportswriter, but he soon figured out he might enjoy writing something different. So he started submitting his work to film festivals.
Joey Fama, said, “I never really thought I would I just honestly I just submit to some film festivals and I kind of well I finished I need to do it then you start winning awards and start building confidence that’s something every writer needs some confidence.”
That confidence is what led him to win many different awards that gave him national recognition. One being, his script “A New Sound” – a screenplay that was nominated for Best Comedy Screenplay Under Twenty Pages and Second Prize in Best Science Fiction Screenplay Under Twenty Pages at the 2017 Northern Virginia Festival.
Fama tells me his stories are so successful because he takes his time.
“It can be anywhere from a couple months to really almost a year even for a short because you want to put a quality product out that you’re proud of,” he said.
He said a lot of people are surprised to hear he’s from West Virginia when he attends film festivals.
“You know you think because you’re in West Virginia that you’re kind of away from the centers, New York and LA that you can’t be successful but that’s the great thing about writing movies that you can be anywhere in the world, I mean you can literally, well you can be in Beckley, West Virginia writing films,” said, Fama.
Fama is currently working on the post production for “Carnival Kid’ musically inspired by the golden age of Hollywood. It does not have a premiere date yet but hopes to have it in Beckley. You can look up more about ‘Carnival Kid’ by clicking on this link: http://facebook.com/carnivalkidmovie
7/27/17
