‘Hunting’s’ Screenplay Earns More Goodwill

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, already Oscar and Golden Globe winners for the film “Good Will Hunting,” added to their list of honors Thursday at the 24th annual Humanitas Prize presentation, recognizing scripts that “communicate those values which most enrich the human person.”

The two actor-writers shared a $25,000 prize for their screenplay, which judges praised for displaying “the power of friendship, honesty and love to heal the wounds of the past.” A total of $120,000 was handed out by the Pacific Palisades-based Human Family Educational and Cultural Institute during a luncheon at the Universal Sheraton Hotel.

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Additional awards went to writers of the prime-time series “Murphy Brown” and “Nothing Sacred,” the TNT miniseries “George Wallace,” the “Wonderful World of Disney” production “Ruby Bridges,” and the children’s shows “Life With Louie” and “Smudge.”

Marilyn Suzanne Miller won for two “Murphy Brown” episodes dealing with breast cancer, with honors going to Bill Cain for “Nothing Sacred,” the controversial ABC drama featuring a faith-questioning Catholic priest, which was canceled due to low ratings.

Toni Ann Johnson wrote ABC’s “Ruby Bridges”--about the 6-year-old girl who integrated the New Orleans public school system in 1960--while Paul Monash and Marshall Frady collaborated on the biographical “George Wallace,” lauded for probing “the spiritual vacuum that underlies racial bigotry and political corruption.”

“Wallace” and “Ruby Bridges” each garnered $25,000 awards, with the 60-minute and 30-minute series categories carrying prizes of $15,000 and $10,000, respectively.

Children’s programming winners, each recipients of $10,000, were writers David Silverman and Mary Gray Rubin for the Fox animated series “Life With Louie;” and Hilary Jones-Farrow, the writer-producer-director of “Smudge,” a TNT live-action show about a young woman with Down syndrome told she must give up a homeless puppy.

Tom Fontana, executive producer of NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street” as well as the HBO prison drama “Oz,” delivered the event’s keynote address.