| Spellbound | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Jeffrey Blitz |
| Produced by | Jeffrey Blitz Sean Welch |
| Written by | Jeffrey Blitz |
| Starring | Harry Altman Angela Arenivar Ted Brigham April DeGideo Neil Kadakia Nupur Lala Emily Stagg Ashley White |
| Music by | Daniel Hulsizer |
| Editing by | Yana Gorskaya |
| Distributed by | ThinkFilm |
| Release date(s) | 2002 |
| Running time | 97 min. 95 min. (Canada) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Spellbound is a 2002 documentary that was directed by Jeffrey Blitz. The film follows eight competitors in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature;[1] Yana Gorskaya's editing won the ACE Eddie award for best editing of documentary. Spellbound won the Emmy for Cultural/Artistic Programming and Jeffrey Blitz was nominated for directing. In 2007, it was included as #4 of the "IDA's Top 25 Documentaries" of all-time by the members of the International Documentary Association. Frank Neuhauser, winner of the first National Spelling Bee held in 1925, also appears in the film.[2]
Contents |
The spellers were Neil Kadakia, Emily Stagg, Ashley White, April DeGideo, Harry Altman, Angela Arenivar, Nupur Lala and Ted Brigham. As they appear from left to right on the DVD's cover:
Neil (as speller # 139) missed "hellebore" in the bee to get ninth place. Other words Neil spelled include: encephalon, desecration, mercenary, Darjeeling, and hypsometer. Neil is a graduate of UC Berkeley. Before he went to college, he went on a jet ski expedition with his father and his sister, Shivani, also a speller. He is currently the COO of Greens Global, a real estate company based out of San Clemente, CA. On July 3, 2011, he married Archana Sheth, also a UC Berkeley graduate. An interesting fact about Neil is that he is also an avid chess player, and has earned over 15 chess trophies in his life.
Emily Stagg (speller # 148) was sponsored by the New Haven Register in New Haven, Connecticut and spelled: seguidilla, disclaimant, kookaburra, viand, apocope, brunneous, clavecin (spelled incorrectly as "clavison"). She came in 6th place.
Ashley White (speller 149) represented The Washington Informer in Washington, DC in the bee. Following Ashley's teenage pregnancy (she was 18) , a marketing consultant who had seen the movie managed to rally support from other viewers of the documentary to help Ashley into Howard University. [1] The proctor of the Washington Informer regional spelling bee featured in the film is Mac McGarry.
April DeGideo, who lives in Ambler, Pennsylvania, participated in the 1998 and 1999 bees, in the latter of which she placed third, representing the Times Herald of Norristown, Pennsylvania. April graduated in 2007 from New York University with a degree in Journalism.
Many critics who reviewed Spellbound singled out Altman (speller # 8) as its most interesting "character". Yet Altman only makes it to the finals when he gets stumped by the word 'banns'. Roger Ebert wrote that he "has so many eccentricities that he'd be comic relief in a teenage comedy... He screws his face up into so many shapes while trying to spell a word that it's a wonder the letters can find their way to the surface". He went to the Academy for Engineering and Design Technology in Hackensack, New Jersey. In autumn 2005, he enrolled in the University of Chicago. Harry now attends the University of Michigan Ann Arbor pursuing a PhD in Mathematics.[3]
Angela Arenivar is a former student of Texas A&M University. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish in May 2007. Arenivar obtained her Master of Arts degree in Spanish at the University of New Mexico in May 2009. She hopes to become a university-level professor. Arenivar spent the first half of 2006 studying abroad through Texas A&M at the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. She is a Perryton High School teacher, currently teaching Spanish I and Spanish II.
Nupur Lala was the champion of the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee (as speller # 165), spelling "logorrhea" to win. Nupur won the bee against David Lewandowski, a speller from Indiana who misspelled "opsimath." In 2003, she entered University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to study brain and cognitive sciences and pre-medical studies and graduated in 2007 with a degree in Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science.[4]
Ted Brigham was speller # 1. He represented the Rolla Daily Record of Rolla, Missouri. One of the more notable stories from his experience is the congratulations posted by students on the marquee in front of his high school in which "champ" was misspelled (presumably as an ironic joke) as "chapm". Ted attended medical school in Kansas City, Missouri until his death in December 2007.[5]