In Contention

Tag: Best Adapted Screenplay

  • A night at the Scripter Awards

    Cover of Q&A by Vikas SwarupUSC’s Scripter Awards ceremony is moving on up.  It’s evolved form an intimate gathering to a full spread awards dinner over the years, and last night’s festivities marked the first time the Scripter winner was unveiled at the show rather than beforehand.

    It gave the atmosphere a tinge of anticipation.  Even with the “Slumdog” writing on the wall, the Scripter is a place where the adapted screenplay race can at least find some variety.  Or at least it used to be.  Like any precursor as of late, it seems the Scripter might be bent on predicting Oscar.  So of course, Simon Beaufoy’s name was called (along with “Q&A” author Vikas Swarup) for “Slumdog Millionaire,” and the steamroller keeps moving.

    Jamie Lee Curtis was a nice enough emcee, bringing her signature brand of dry, slightly crazy humor to the table (a slight shift from Jason Alexander last year).  Earlier in the evening, Michael Chabon accepted the Literary Achivement Award (not a Lifetime Achievement Award, as last year’s introductory recipient Steven Zaillian made loudly clear).  Zaillian was on hand to present the honor and Chabon’s speech was touching, funny and certainly humble.  The best line: “I think it was Vladimir Nabokov who said, “Keep giving me prizes.  Prizes are awesome. (Laughter spreads throughout the room.)  He had the Russian accent, so…”

    Chabon was also quite self-deprecating, noting that he had no creative input into the screenplays adapted from his work that seem to be met with success or at the very least production (2000’s “Wonder Boys” and the upcoming “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”).  But five years of his toiling away at an adaptation of his own “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” has not even yielded a green light, he said.  “I was lucky enough to work on the second ‘Spider-Man’ film,” he said.  “You know the part where Spider-Man is holding up that big wall at the end and he says, ‘Hi,’ and Mary Jane says, ‘Hi,’ and Peter says, ‘This is really heavy’?  That was me.”

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  • Personal theory

    I don’t see any way in hell “The Dark Knight” gets a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination and then fails to show up in the Best Picture category.  So…if we hear the brothers Nolan and David Goyer’s names uttered…we’ll know.

  • All eyes on left field

    Josh Brolin in WThe nominations announcement is, oh, 18 hours away (yeah, we count minutes at this stage).  Even though I’m well on the record as being a prognosticative pussy this year, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re in for our share of surprises.  I doubt I’m alone.

    You can go back over Oscar history and write a whole book on the nominations that blind-sided everyone.  Sometimes the contender in question might have popped up briefly during the season, though they were forgotten in due time.  Other times, they simply manifested from thin air and smacked Oscar watchers in the face.  But they’re always there, lingering, waiting to plant that seed of doubt in the viewer the next year.  And the year after that.

    It’s enough to pull your hair out.

    Earlier today, John posted an interesting thought about Benicio Del Toro’s chances in the lead actor category, which followed a recent musing on Woody Allen’s chances as a lone director nominee.  This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about.

    So with that in mind, I’ve collected a brief list of four contenders that I legitimately think could pop up tomorrow and join that lineage.  Some of them are certainly more plausible than others, but none of them, I feel, are terribly out of bounds.  I don’t have the cojones to predict them, of course.  But this is what I’m thinking.

    (By the way, if I DO happen to change any of my predictions at the last minute tonight, I’ll be sure to offer a post indicating as much.)

    My thoughts on the left field…

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  • Here’s another question…

    Can anyone tell me why “Let the Right One In” and “A Christmas Tale” are not eligible for a nomination in any category at the Oscars?

    Sure, so the latter film was never going to score with them anyway. But I was considering “Let the Right One In” as a dark horse possibility for Best Adapted Screenplay — a category that frequently throws up surprise nominees — until I saw neither film is on the official AMPAS list. (You’ll be relieved to know, however, that “Disaster Movie” is securely in the running.)

    Both films had 2008 Stateside releases, as far as I know. Illuminate me, readers.

  • WGA nominees

    WGAOriginal Screenplay
    “Burn After Reading” (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
    “Milk” (Dustin Lance Black)
    “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (Woody Allen)
    “The Visitor” (Thomas McCarthy)
    “The Wrestler” (Robert Siegel)

    Adapted Screenplay
    “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (Eric Roth; screen story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord; based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
    “The Dark Knight” (Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan; screen story by Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer; based on characters appearing in comic books published by DC Comics; Batman created by Bob Kane)
    “Doubt” (John Patrick Shanley; based on his stage play)
    “Frost/Nixon” (Peter Morgan; based on his stage play)
    “Slumdog Millionaire” (Simon Beaufoy; based on the novel “Q and A” by Vikas Swarup)

    Documentary
    “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story” (Stefan Forbes, Noland Walker)
    “Chicago 10” (Brett Morgan)
    “Fuel” (Johnny O’Hara)
    “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson” (Alex Gibney; from the words of Hunter S. Thompson)
    “Waltz With Bashir” (Ari Folman)

    So, the lesson?  “The Dark Knight” is in this thing for real now.  As I said last night, this was going to be the real test.  “I wanted to see what you’d do.  And you didn’t disappoint.”  The rest of the adapted screenplay nominees will likely translate to Oscar 5/5, but I somehow doubt the Coen brothers will turn their guild mention into an Oscar berth.  Remember, the WGA likes comedies, so “Burn After Reading” was always going to have a leg up here.

    More love for “The Wrestler,” and though it’s not entirely unexpected, I must say it was a pleasant surprise.  And we all figured Thomas McCarthy would find love with the same group that nomianted him for 2003’s “The Station Agent.”  He may or may not translate that into an Oscar nomination, but it’s certainly a good possibility.

    And remember, animated films are not eligible, so “WALL-E” still has a shot at sliding in.  Maybe.  It is, indeed, the most critically acclaimed film of the year, but it’s a slightly different case than “Toy Story,” “Finding Nemo” and “Ratatouille,” I think.

    Biggest snub: “Rachel Getting Married” (very odd, but frankly, a welcome exclusion)
    Needed this one bad: “In Bruges” (the studio is trying hard); “The Reader” (that Scripter nod might have provided elevated hopes)

    Anyway, I think Christopher Nolan’s DGA nomination is pretty much in the bag tomorrow.  I’d be tempted to call the Best Picture five a done deal after that, but we must always remember “Almost Famous and “Being John Malkovich,” two films that landed nominations from the PGA, DGA, WGA and a grabbed a SAG ensemble mention, yet failed to make into Oscar’s Best Picture five.  And “The Dark Knight” didn’t even get the SAG Ensemble nod, so “Doubt” is still lurking.  It ain’t over yet.

  • Is ‘Dark Knight’ an original screenplay?

    Or is this Bob Verini article in the latest issue of Script Magazine just desperately in need of a fact checker?  Normally I wouldn’t bring it up, but crazy stuff like this happens all the time.  Clearly, it’s a case of “based on characters created by,” etc.  But there tends to be a lot of discussion on how much material was original to the piece, and I think it’s fair to say that, while a number of the situations in the film recall installments such as “The Long Halloween” and even “Batman” #1, the Nolan brothers did a great job of manifesting circumstances for their narrative.

    I’ve made some calls, haven’t heard back yet.  My guess is it’s a mistake.  But while we’re talking about it, I can’t help but think Eric Roth’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin BUtton” is so much more an original screenplay than a piece adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story.  I’ve been wondering what might happen with that at the WGA all year long.

    Anyway, I’m somewhat out of pocket today and tomorrow.  Guy should be popping back in from vacation to keep the train rolling before long.  If I don’t make it back here beforehand, everyone have a happy and safe new year.

  • Is ‘Gomorrah’ this year’s ‘City of God’?

    Since May, based on nothing but a gut feeling following the film’s Cannes reception, I’ve been predicting that Matteo Garrone’s astonishing “Gomorrah” would score nominations for Best Director, Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing — in addition to a Best Foreign Language Film nod. (Garrone has recently slipped from my Best Director predictions, but he’s still on my radar.)

    It may seem a far-fetched proposition, but clearly I’m not alone in thinking it’s possible. The news this morning that distributor IFC Films has shifted the film’s L.A. release to December, in order to qualify for main-category Oscar consideration, is a clear vote of confidence. One wonders if they have “City of God” at the back of their minds — a similarly violent, kinetic foreign-language study of urban social decay that stunned pundits in 2004 when it scooped four Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

    It’s a slightly different situation, of course — “City of God”‘s amazing haul was surely partly motivated by the Academy’s embarrassment over its exclusion the previous year from the foreign-language race. “Gomorrah,” however, is eligible for the gold in that category this year, so the Academy may feel that would be sufficient recognition for it.

    Still, we all know how the directors’ branch of Academy likes to throw arthouse curveballs now and then (in addition to Fernando Meirelles, think Mike Leigh and Pedro Almodovar), while I think a Best Adapted Screenplay nod looks increasingly likely given this year’s sparse slate of contenders in that category. (The Hollywood Reporter agrees that the film’s writing may represent its best shot.)

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  • ‘The Class’ trailer

    Apple has a shiny new trailer for “The Class,” the Cannes Palme d’Or winner that was my favorite film of the London festival, and is surely one of the frontrunners for Best Foreign Language Film. (In a rather barren Best Adapted Screenplay field, I wouldn’t discount its chances of a nomination there either.)

    For me, the trailer doesn’t quite convey the film’s quickfire conversational energy, but it’s a difficult film to sell in two minutes. Watch it in gorgeous HD here, or YouTubed below:

  • ‘Elegy’ the second film to go out to AMPAS

    Screeners of Isabel Coixet’s “Elegy” are set to go out to Academy members this week, fresh on the heels of Sony Pictures Classics’ “Frozen River,” which went out over the weekend.

    Key pushes for the film are Best Actor (Ben Kingsley),  Penélope Cruz (Best Actress), Dennis Hopper (Best Supporting Actor), Patricia Clarkson (Best Supporting Actress) and Nicholas Myer (Best Adapted Screenplay).  Let the games begin.

  • Garrone on ‘Gomorrah’: “It’s not real, but it’s true.”

    Viva Italia, is all I have to say. In the past 48 hours, I’ve been lucky enough to see the two films that have widely been heralded as marking a renaissance for the Italian film industry, a world cinema titan that had been lying dormant for a couple of years. No more.

    One of them is Paolo Sorrentino’s blistering, return-to-form political thriller “Il Divo,” which I will discuss closer to its appearance at the upcoming London Film Festival. The other is Italy’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film race, “Gomorrah.” Possible masterpieces, both of them — and as solid a case as any for abolishing the silly “one film per country” rule that so plagues this problematic Oscar category.

    Walking out of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts after Sunday’s UK premiere of “Gomorrah,” which was followed by a lively Q&A with director Matteo Garrone, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might have just met one of next year’s multiple Academy Award nominees.

    Far-fetched, I know, but the film’s achievement is that staggering and far-reaching. Under the foreign-language committee’s new voting system, a nomination in that category should, by rights, be a slam-dunk, while Best Director and, particularly, Best Adapted Screenplay nominations are, to my mind, well within the realm of possibility. I will resist further gushing until I post a proper review in the next day or two, but for now, I want to share some of the thoughts Garrone offered at the Q&A.

    A modest, thoroughly disarming presence, far younger in demeanor than his 40 years suggest, Garrone himself seems a little bewildered by the film he has made and the discussion it has wrought. For those who don’t know, “Gomorrah” is a documentary-style examination of the Camorra crime syndicate that terrorizes Naples, based on the bestselling non-fiction expose by Roberto Saviano.

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  • Steve Lopez and ‘The Soloist’

    I stopped by Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena yesterday evening to hear Steve Lopez read from his new book “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music,” fully expecting a run-of-the-mill book release PR thing. As it turns out, Lopez is a quick-on-his-heels delight of a public speaker, engaging, never tedious and insightful when it really counts.

    And actually, there was no book reading, since Lopez had “lost his glasses for the third day in a row.” Instead, the LA Times columnist simply recounted, in maybe an hour’s time, his relationship with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless resident of downtown Los Angeles and Skid Row — and a Juliard-trained musician all the same, whose story might be hard to believe, but can be captivating to the most cynical.

    L.A. residents are quite familiar with Lopez’s “Points West” column that runs daily in the Times. One of the few living, breathing journalistic spirits of considerable heft at the paper, it seems, Lopez turns a phrase and transforms the mundane into the captivating with a truly gifted sense of the English language. He has introduced readers to members of an entire scale of notoriety, always with equal aplomb, and his articles about Ayers lit a spark for many Angelenos.

    The articles, of course, have been adapted by screenwriter Susannah Grant into a film to be released later in the fall by DreamWorks. And Lopez’s book release this week is the beginning of a long road for Ayers’ story, one that will bubble to the surface on a much larger scale when the film lands in November. But what I learned listening to Lopez speak yesterday was how much of a concerted effort the book was for forwarding the issue of mental disorder in the United States, ailments that leave the public stigmatized, a dirty secret, of sorts, that the country seems unwilling to deal with in any up-front manner.

    There are those, I’m sure of it, who feel this project seems a grating experience on the horizon of the film awards season. I, too, had my doubts as to something this potentially schmaltz-laden hitting the screens. But my view has shifted somewhat after hearing Lopez tell it. However opportunistic it might seem to the jaded for the film industry to seize upon a story like this, I have to say, I believe a lot of good could come of it in the end. I look forward to Joe Wright’s work even more so with this added context.

    In the film, Lopez will be portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., while Jamie Foxx will portray Ayers. Oscar nominee Catherine Keener also stars.

    I recorded Lopez’s talk, which runs right at an hour. I thought it would be a great way to initiate a new multimedia aspect of In Contention, and so, I offer it to you now. It’s a funny and insightful 60 minutes from one of the industry’s best columnists.

    Have a listen:

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  • Call it 170

    Reading through Jeffrey Wells’s Hollywood Elsewhere this afternoon, I see he’s spitballing about the length of the script for David Fincher’s upcoming “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” written by Eric Roth.

    I made a call and got a different figure: 170 pages — with some considerable narration to boot.

    Wells’s point seems to be, “uh-oh, it’s gonna be long.” But as far as I’m concerned, a good movie can’t be long enough. So, you know, so be it if “Button” clocks in close to three hours long.

    A commenter at Hollywood Elsewhere, meanwhile, had this to say:

    I know somebody who’s seen a rouch (sic) cut (possibly just the assembly) and says it came in at 3 and a half hours.

    They also said it was a REALLY good 3 and a half hours, so there you go.

    Well, indeed. There you go. We’ll know more soon enough, but this is one of my most anticipated efforts of the season.

    Additionally, Roth is taking off from a 64-page short story, so we can bet on a lot of original material that, hopefully, adds to the emotional context of the original work. And the cover of the recently re-released short story, by the way, showcases the words “The inspiration for the upcoming motion picture,” so I wonder if, at the end of the day, the script might be deemed an original work because of what will likely be a profound, if necessary, departure from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words.

  • INTERVIEW: Patrick Marber

    Patrick MarberIn some sense, playwright and screenwriter Patrick Marber could best be described as he endearingly refers to friend Daniel Craig: “He’s just a dude.”

    He sports a shock of black hair with hints of gray, looking still younger than his actual years. He’s fond of his cigarettes and has the same icy blue eyes as fellow Oscar nominees Peter Morgan and Guillermo Arriaga. However, where he seems to break away from that, or any company, for that matter, seems to be in his idiosyncratic nature. He’s warm and open, but clearly there’s more underneath.

    This is a guy concealing his hand.

    A glimpse at Marber’s film work alone will reveal two strikingly different portraits of obsession and dependency. In “Closer,” which he adapted from his own play for filmmaker Mike Nichols in 2004, the sexes wage war in unforgivable, bitingly honest ways. In “Notes on a Scandal,” adapted from the Zoe Heller novel and directed by Richard Eyre, the scathing realities of “Closer” give way to equally painful notions of fantasy, longing and self-delusion. How does a guy with three young children and a healthy professional status allow himself to “go there?”

    To be fair, “Closer” came at a troubling time for the writer. Though he doesn’t subscribe to “writing as therapy,” the drama and characters of that stage hit certainly served such a function for him at a crucial time. And he’ll be the first to admit the work reads better if you happen to be concurrently experiencing the crushing truths it puts on display. That was a decade ago, however, and even today, he can’t seem to feel those same emotions when he revisits the work. To Marber, it’s just material now.

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  • ‘Syriana’ suddenly deemed an original screenplay by the Academy

    This story will break in the trades tomorrow, but here’s the scoop.

    In a rather shocking turn of events, the screenplay for Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana, a Golden Globe winner for Best Supporting Actor Monday night, was apparently classified by the Academy as an original screenplay in a meeting held in mid-December.

    The Academy’s decision, which is obviously a month old at this juncture, was not revealed in any way as awards season accelerated through the last 30 days. Gaghan himself was not even made privy to the classification until today. Meanwhile, his work as writer of the screenplay has seen recognition from the Writers Guild of America in the adapted category, and was also a nominee for the USC Scripter Award which recognizes the writers of heralded adaptations each year in addition to the source material that spawned them. Syriana was even a finalist for the Scripter win along with Capote, a competition that came down to the latter taking the award earlier this afternoon.

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