LISTEN: From Anchorage to LA, this screenwriting duo just won an award at Sundance

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Ari Katcher, left, and Ryan Welch are screenwriters who collaborated on the movie “On the Count of Three,” which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy photo)

A pair of friends from Anchorage, now living in Los Angeles writing scripts for movies and TV shows together, recently won a screenwriting award at the Sundance Film Festival.

Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch received Sundance’s Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for “On the Count of Three,” a dark comedy directed by and starring Jerrod Carmichael, with whom Katcher worked on the Carmichael Show.

Katcher says he had never actually heard of the award, and while he was honored to receive it, the writing partners really just hope it helps open more doors to future screenwriting projects. And, Katcher says, it’s really been like that all along, with no singular moment that they’ve “made it.”

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Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Caseyhere

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