July 16, 2003
Tibaldi seeks successful screenwriter career
CHS graduate and NYU student interns at MTV and Saturday Night Live
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Merging her interest in acting and writing, Katie Tibaldi has visions of a Hollywood career as a successful screenwriter.
A student at New York University's prestigious film school, Tibaldi has one year left before graduation. But she already made her mark at MTV during an internship last year where she worked on the documentary show True Life and a World AIDS Day special.
Tibaldi is learning the ropes of networking and networks, while gaining the stamina and skills to make it in the drop-dead competitive field of screenwriting. Between school and internships over the past two years, she has been writing, writing and then writing some more. Even this summer, rest and relaxation is taking a backseat to the call of her laptop and writing a screen play, polishing a draft of a sitcom and finishing a third (and final) draft of another screenplay.
"The hardest thing is it's a never ending job," she said. "It's not like 9-5 work where you work all day and then go home - you write all the time."
Unstoppable persistence is the only road to success in the field she's chosen, so Tibaldi is actually grateful for her rigorous schedule of classes and internships, the exacting and demanding professors.
"Everyone I know who is successful in the business, you always have to keep writing, keep writing, keep writing," she noted. "If you don't write, then you're never going to get your script out or an agent. So there's a lot of pressure a lot of the time."
Tibaldi has also interned at Saturday Night Live and Guiding Light. As a classroom assignment, she has written an episode of the HBO program "Sex and the City," drawing on her real life experience of accompanying a cousin to a breastfeeding class. (She keeps a notebook for ideas - stories heard from friends or things she has seen-to use for storylines or when creativity dries up.) Tibaldi is proudest of this script, especially since it stretched her creative horizons.
"I didn't think I was funny so that's why I took sitcom writing," Tibaldi said. "Both of my professors helped me realize that I can be funny. That was really great, because at first I was real timid but I had to find my voice."
Tibaldi is specializing in the dramatic writing department and has also written a dramatic screen play and a romantic comedy. In fact, Tibaldi is always juggling multiple projects and styles.
"As soon as you're ahead on one project, you start with another," she said, noting she has pages due every week. "It is really not a typical college experience, it is very competitive, very intense and a lot of work."
Tibaldi is a 1999 graduate of Central High School. She was active in the choral program and participated in the annual musicals. She began acting at the Old Town Playhouse while in junior high school. She said the mentoring relationships and friendships she formed were another motivating force in her career choice.
"I've always been really into writing and I've always been really into acting ... since the third grade," said Tibaldi, who moved to the Traverse City area with her family when she was in the eighth grade.
Tibaldi attended the University of Michigan for the first two years. She transferred to NYU in 2001, arriving in New York just two weeks before September 11. She has since grown to love the city and the non-stop parade of culture and excitement, though she acknowledges that Traverse City is a great place for people interested in the arts.
However, brighter lights beckon Tibaldi, who is determined to land a writing job after graduation next year. While she will miss New York, California is where the action is for screen writers.
"I've had job offers in production but I want to get an agent and work in screen writing," she said. "It is a scary business but I know it is what I'm supposed to do."