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Local writer wins screenplay prize BY PAUL FATTIG Jon West and Henry David Thoreau have a few things in common. That link led to an uncommon honor for West. West, a 1982 graduate of Medford Senior High School, has won the 1999 Massachusetts Film Office Screenwriting Competition for his screenplay about Thoreau, the writer who wrote about the simplicity of nature at Walden Pond. The son of Gloria Cox of Medford, West, who now lives in Eugene, went to Roosevelt Elementary School, Hedrick Junior High School and Medford Senior High School. He graduated from the University of Oregon School of Journalism in 1987. While in college, West had written several screen plays and about 50 songs but wasn't satisfied with them. "I threw everything away -- I was looking for a subject that would be meaningful to me, one I could write with passion," he said in a telephone interview. The subject popped into his head one day after West had completed a music CD with his wife, Donna O'Neil, a musician and yoga teacher. For five years, West worked on the screenplay while studying the life of Thoreau. "I got every book I could find at the library about Thoreau," he said. He discovered that he and the famous author had several things in common: Both became interested in Eastern philosophy upon graduating from college and both went to New York to work for a year during the same period in their lives. "We had also decided to get back to nature and immerse ourselves in major projects," he said. West discovered the Massachusetts screenwriting competition on the Internet. For winning the competition, which drew entries from throughout the nation, West was flown to Massachusetts where he visited Walden Pond, the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the library in Concord where he read some of Thoreau's manuscripts. In addition to that trip and a cash award, West won a trip to Hollywood where the Massachusetts Film Office has set up interviews with him and movie producers. That trip is scheduled for later this month. "It's a difficult clique to break into but I'm going to give it a try," he said, noting that he already has finished another screenplay. When West isn't writing, he works as an administrator for a Eugene-based nonprofit group which finds employment for people with disabilities. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA