Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the team behind "thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life," have been named recipients of the Writers Guild of America, West's 2012 Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television, the WGAW said on Wednesday.
The award was established by the WGAW to honor lifetime achievement in television. Past winners include Steven Bochco, Stephen J. Cannell, David Chase and Larry David.
“Beginning in the 1980’s, Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz were among a small group of writers who revolutionized the television drama," said WGAW president Christopher Keyser in a statement announcing the award. " … So many writers of this generation were drawn to television because of what Marshall and Ed told us, in ['thirtysomething'] and then in show after show, it was possible to do – to write stories about real people, with honest and compelling emotional stakes, about what it feels like to be alive.”
Herskovitz (above left) and Zwick have served as writers, directors and producers on a string of television series and films, and are four-time Emmy winners and two-time winners at the Writers Guild Awards.
They also collaborated on the screenplays to the films "The Last Samurai" and "Love and Other Drugs," which Zwick directed.
The award will be given to Herskovitz and Zwick at the WGA's West Coast awards ceremony on Feb. 19 at the Hollywood Palladium.
In other awards news, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts will present Martin Scorsese with the Academy Fellowship at the Orange British Academy Film Awards ceremony on Feb. 12 in London.
The award is the highest honor bestowed by BAFTA, and has in the past gone to Stanley Kubrick, Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Anthony Hopkins and Laurence Olivier, among others.
Scorsese's 2011 work included the 3D family film "Hugo" and the HBO documentary "George Harrison: Living in the Material World."
(Marshall Herskovitz photo by Elisabeth Caren; Herskovitz and Zwick photos courtesy of WGAW)
