GREG FORTIER
(Screenwriter)
Greg befriends the elephant in the room, puts a hat on it, and invites it to the party. Winner of "Best Comedy Feature Screenplay" at the Austin Film Festival, twice optioned & famously humble, he grew up the middle kid in a family of five, wedged into a two-room apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. There he learned how to turn fights into laughing fits. Today, he writes comedy that taps into what makes us hopelessly, hilariously human.
After graduating with a BA in Psychology from The George Washington University, he lived out the destiny of all liberal arts majors, writing fiction in the morning, delivering burritos on a bicycle as a Postmate in the afternoon and night. In 2014, his pilot script caught the eye of Emmy-nominated producer Bradley Ross and NURSE JACKIE director Brendan Walsh. The three of them went on to co-produce the half-hour comedy, TODAY’S SPECIAL, starring Andrew Schulz, which became an official selection at the New York TV Festival, SeriesFest, and won “Best Pilot” at the Hoboken International. A few years later, he was hired by then stay-at-home-mom-with-big-dreams Zarna Garg to write a script and develop her stand-up routine. That feature, REARRANGED, was optioned by Marginal Mediaworks and Zarna now has a special on Amazon. In 2018, he co-wrote the web series UPCODE, which has over 750,000 views on Youtube. To date, Greg has been hired to write on ten projects, becoming the go-to writer for repeat clients who value his ability to collaborate, implement feedback, and help them tell the best version of their story.
His original portfolio includes SPROUT, a Cinestory Fellowship TV Finalist and THE BIG SWINDLE, which placed in the Launch Pad Feature Competition Top 10, the Screencraft Comedy Finals, and ranks in the Top 1% of scripts on Coverfly. Greg is now a story analyst at LA-based Story Mastery, founded by Michael Hauge, author of Writing Screenplays That Sell, where he works with producers, directors, and writers to elevate their screenplays. He currently lives in San Pedro, California where he empties out his clichés while taking long, pensive walks by the sea.
Fun facts about Greg:
• Worked as a bike messenger in NYC, racking up 10,000 total deliveries, countless stories,
and didn’t get hit by a car, not even once.
• Sports fanatic. If I weren’t a screenwriter, I’d be a sports writer.
• Both parents are classical musicians.
• Attended THE largest high school in the country, Brooklyn Tech, 8076 students.
• Proficient in Spanish.
AWARDS:
Finalist - Screencraft Comedy Screenplay Competition
Winner - Austin Film Festival “Best Comedy Feature Script”
Top 25 Writers to Watch - Austin Film Festival
Semifinalist - The Nicholl Fellowship
Top 10 - Launch Pad Feature Competition
Winner - ISA “Best Short Script”
Semifinalist - Emerging Screenwriters
Semifinalist - WeScreenplay Feature Lab
Finalist - Cinestory TV Fellowship
Best Pilot - Hoboken International