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Arts & Entertainment

Actress and Screenwriter Puts Creve Coeur in the Spotlight

A story based on one woman's coming of age tale in Creve Coeur could be movie material.

Even with our recent dose of warm weather,  Creve Coeur may feel especially far from sunny Los Angeles. But one former city resident, is planning to give the town a Hollywood treatment. Stephanie Sanditz, an actress and writer who grew up here, is working on bringing to the screen her award-winning screenplay, Creve Coeur, MO, a dark comedy about a high school student coming of age in her Missouri hometown.

Sanditz attended  and before transferring to John Burroughs for part of junior high and high school. She studied acting and writing at New York University. Soon after college, she landed a part in the feature film Kate and Leopold, and her credits also include roles in the television shows Strangers With Candy and Law and Order and many independent films. Sanditz now lives in Los Angeles and makes her living acting and writing screenplays.

Sanditz has started a production company called Broken Pictures with fellow actress Zosia Mamet, the playwright David Mamet’s daughter. Their focus is developing Creve Coeur, MO. The script, described on the Broken Pictures website as a “dark comedy/dramedy,” tells the story of 16-year-old Alex, a young woman looking for romance while contending with the challenges of high school and her relationship with her dysfunctional family. The description on the website goes on to say that Alex “explores three generations of love stories and the darker side of the white-picket fence to ultimately find herself in this hilarious and heartfelt window into Middle America.” The screenplay received the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival All Access Award for new voices in screenwriting.

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Sanditz was inspired by her own childhood here and the love stories of her parents and grandparents. “I remember being a really young girl and someone telling me the story behind Creve Coeur Lake…I remember thinking it was so romantic.” That story concerns the star-crossed love between a French fur trader and a Native American princess who could not be together and committed suicide near the lake, which looks like a broken heart from above.

She also thought about her parents, Ted and JoAnn Sanditz, who have lived in Creve Coeur since their early 20s, and “the sacrifices they made to live in Missouri and have [a strong marriage],” she said. Sanditz’s grandparents also have a romantic love story. Her grandfather served on a submarine during World War II and wrote beautiful love letters to Sanditz’s grandmother. When Stephanie was 16, she was given the letters, and she remembers “trying to figure out how they could have had such an incredible love affair.”

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Sanditz’s mother, JoAnn, whose parents’ love letters inspired Stephanie, expressed her pride in her daughter. “It’s a hard field to go into, but she’s a very hard worker, and really committed to what she’s doing,” she said.

Sanditz’s theater teacher from John Burroughs, Wayne Salomon, who Sanditz credits as a mentor and “a huge inspiration,” said Sanditz’s talent is undeniable. He taught Stephanie for six years in speech and drama and got to know her well. He called Sanditz’s debut performance, at 15, as Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker

“the best first performance I had seen from any actress ever, anywhere. It was astonishing.” Sanditz is also an accomplished dancer, one of the best Salomon has seen in his 24 years of teaching, he said.

Salomon, who lists the actor Jon Hamm from Mad Men, the actress Sarah Clarke from 24, Ellie Kemper, who plays Erin on The Office, and her sister Carrie Kemper, who writes for the show, among his former pupils but says Sanditz would be placed  "at the very top.”

Creve Coeur’s talented hometown girl is hoping to find a Missouri-based financial backer for her film so that it can be shot here, though financial factors may force the production to dress another location as suburban Missouri. Sanditz and her collaborators are working on securing financing and courting possible stars and directors. If all goes according to plan, the film could be shot this fall. By 2012, locals could be lining up to see their own town up on the silver screen.

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