Dover screenwriter Alfred Thomas Catalfo and Morgan Webster Dudley walked away with top honors earlier this month at the 2015 Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition for their script, “Oil and Water.”
The screenplay is based on the true story of three Seacoast women — including Morgan Dudley’s mother, Dudley Dudley — who launched a grassroots campaign to halt plans by business magnate Aristotle Onassis to build a large oil refinery on the Seacoast in 1974.
“It’s an amazing story, and it’s real,” Morgan Dudley said. “These three young women went up against one of the most powerful men in the world, the governor, and the influential publisher of the only statewide newspaper. Overwhelming political and economic forces were aligned against them, public opinion was against them, yet they prevailed. I’m so proud of what they accomplished.”
Catalfo and Dudley went up against more than 1,300 other entries in the competition.
An attorney by day, Catalfo conducted research and interviews for a year before he and Dudley began work on the script. The story “reads like a thriller,” he said.
In 2014, one of Catalfo’s screenplays came in first place in the competition’s action category and he was a runner-up in the drama category for his script, “Vulture’s Row.”