Michael Elliott

MICHAEL ELLIOT has spent a lifetime beating the odds. Twenty-five years ago, he was a high school dropout, surviving on the streets of Philadelphia as one of the city's homeless. Today, 43-year-old Elliot is one of the most accomplished African-American screenwriters in Hollywood. Elliot's foray into writing movies began in 1997, after he relocated to Los Angeles and found himself unemployed. With no job prospects, Elliot had a tough decision to make: return to the East Coast and work for someone else again, or stay in Los Angeles and pursue a career in the world he had always loved: the movie business. Staring at the computer purchased by his former employer – hip-hop and fashion mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs – Elliot saw an opportunity to create his entrée into the film industry. Armed with Combs' computer, a book on screenwriting, and a Blockbuster Card, Elliot began teaching himself to write screenplays. Approximately 13 months later – without the help of an agent or manager – Elliot sold his first screenplay to a major movie studio. He was now a working writer. Over the next 12 years, Elliot's writing credits would include the films MTV's Hip-Hopera: Carmen (MTV), which launched the film career of Beyonce Knowles; Like Mike (20th Century Fox), which starred Lil' Bow Wow; Brown Sugar (Fox Searchlight Pictures), which starred Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Mos Def and Queen Latifah; and Just Wright (Fox Searchlight Pictures), which stars Queen Latifah, Common and Paula Patton –in theaters now. When not writing screenplays, Elliot devotes his time to helping aspiring screenwriters launch their careers through his website WritersLittleBlackBook.com, his facebook group The Ladder: Produced Screenwriters Helping Aspiring Screenwriters, and the 'A Conversation with Michael Elliot' Live Webinar Series.

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