Local Professor wins Movieguide Award

Lights, camera, action! A Tulane University professor receives a big award and it’s not for his teaching skills.
Harry Kleinman wrote a screenplay that scored him first runner up for the Kairos Prize in the 24th annual Movieguide Awards in Los Angeles. This particular prize honors first time screenwriters.
Kleinman’s screenplay is titled “Wind and a Prayer.” It’s a story of Lieutenant Danji Tanaka, a pacifist WWII soldier in Japan, who escapes in a hot air balloon and ends up saving two lives in the mountains of Oregon before returning to Japan.
Kleinman says he enters contests all the time and was not expecting this award. “The funny thing is after about eight or ten months went by, I really couldn’t remember if I entered this one so I sent him an email and I said ‘hey, did I happen to enter your contest’ and I got an email back from Michael Trent and he said ‘yeah, we got it. ‘Wind and a Prayer’ and it’s actually doing pretty well’ and I thought ‘well, okay. We’ll see what happens.’”
Kleinman began teaching at Tulane’s Mississippi Coast campus in 2010. He was selected first runner up among over 500 entries for the Kairos Prize. To go along with the fame and flight to California, he was also awarded a sizeable monetary prize. He says he plans on continuing his writing.