Hollywood Screenwriter 'Straight Outta' Framingham

When NWA released its debut album Straight Outta Compton, in 1988, Andrea Berloff was just 14 years old.

Sunday night, now in her 40s, Berloff was one of four writers nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay, for the 2015 film based on the hip-hop trailblazing group.

Berloff and her fellow writers lost to Spotlight, the movie about the Boston Globe’s investigation into the sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston, last night.

She tweeted a photo of herself on the Red Carpet Sunday night, which is attached to this report.

Berloff told GoldDerby.com, she was watching the nominations show on television with her son and screened when learned she was nominated for an Oscar.

Berloff said she began working on the project in 2010. She said she spent 10 months conducting interviews and doing research and came up with 1,000 pages of transcripts. She said she worked on the project for 3 years until it stalled.

And then the project made its way to universal where Berloff teamed with up with writer Jonathan Herman.

Berloff said the project was years in the making and required many drafts.

“We had a really hard time getting ‘Compton’ made,” Berloff told GoldDerby.com, “because there weren’t a lot of movies to compare it to. So the people who were in charge of the money were nervous about it.”

Despite critical success, the movie only received one Oscar nomination.

In a year, when there were protests about few blacks nominated for Oscars, Berloff, who is caucasian, wrote about the rise of gansta rap and the controversial hip-hop group comprised of Arabian Prince, MC Ren, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, DJ Yella, and Dr. Dre. The film was directed by an African-American director with a predominately black cast.

Ironically, Berloff told Globe, she didn’t grow up listening to NWA in Framingham.

Berloff told the Boston daily newspaper, she was hired for the project because she had experience bringing true events to the big screen.

Berloff co-wrote the screenplay for World Trade Center, which was about two Port Authority police officers, who trapped under the rubble of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11th, 2001.

The 2006 film directed by Oliver Stone, earned Berloff a nomination by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists for screenwriting.

The next projects for Berloff to be released is Sleepless Night, about a police officer with criminal connections trying to find his kidnapped son, and Blood Father, about an ex-con who is reunited his his daughter, 16, but needs to protect her from drug dealers.