by Nathaniel R
With only 44 days until Oscar nominations and lots of confusion as to what might be nominated for screenplay (there are seemingly 7 locks for Original and only 1 contender for Adapted -- the math doesn't work. Haha!) let's use today's numerical trivia prompt for writing awards. Fact: Oscar's 4 favorite screenwriters have 44 nominations between them for writing. That's a lot of hogging of writing honors. They are...
OSCAR'S 20 FAVORITE SCREENWRITERS
(Numbers below are for screenwriting categories only)
01 Woody Allen (16 nominations and 3 wins)
He's also been in the Acting and Directing races. Classics include Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan and more...
02 Billy Wilder (12 nominations and 3 wins)
He's also been in the Directing and Producing races. Classics include Sunset Blvd, The Apartment, Some Like it Hot, and more...
03 John Huston (8 nominations and 1 win)
He's also been in the Acting, Directing, and Producing races. Classics include The African Queen, The Asphalt Jungle, Prizzi's Honor and more...
04 Federico Fellini (8 nominations but he never won for writing)
He's also been in the Directing, and Producing races and of course his films have taken multiple Foreign Language Film Oscars. He's the Academy's favorite Italian... yes, even more than Sophia Loren. Classics include La Dolce Vita, I Vitelloni, 8½ and more...
It's perhaps no surprise that all of these writers are also directors and thus were in charge of bringing their own words to visual life. With greater control comes greater consistency in results. Without checking before you hit the jump can you guess which working writers are next in line to join this group?
05 Charles Brackett (7 nominations and 3 wins)
He often wrote with Billy Wilder
06 [TIE] Joel Coen & Ethan Coen and Ben Hecht (6 nominations and 2 wins)
You know the Coen brothers. Hecht's classics include Wuthering Heights and Notorious
08 [TIE] Oliver Stone and Carl Foreman (6 nominations and 1 win)
You know Oliver Stone. Foreman's classics include Guns of Navarone and High Noon
10 Francis Ford Coppola (5 nominations and 3 wins)
All of his writing Oscars come from films that also won Best Picture: Patton, and the first two Godfather films
11 [TIE] Joseph Mankiewicz and Robert Benton and Michael Wilson (5 nominations and 2 wins)
Mankiewicz and Benton were both also famous directors. Wilson was a blacklisted screenwriter so some of his Oscar nominations were retroactively reinstalled since he initially received no screen credit for the last three of his five nominations, all of them major Oscar players: Friendly Persuasion, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Bridge on the River Kwai
14 Richard Brooks (5 nominations and 1 win)
All of his nominations came from adaptations of famous plays or novels from The Asphalt Jungle through In Cold Blood
15 [TIE] Ingmar Bergman and Mike Leigh (5 nominations but they never won for writing)
Mike Leigh will soon be 75 years old. Maybe it's time to start thinking about an Honorary Oscar for this singular filmmaker?
17 Paddy Chayefsky (4 nominations and 3 wins)
Classics include Marty, Network, and The Goddess
18 George Seaton (4 nominations and 2 wins)
He won for Miracle on 34th Street and The Country Girl
19 [TIE] Stanley Shapiro, Eric Roth, James Poe, and Julius J Epstein (4 nominations and 1 win)
From there the ties become far too multitudiness to manage. The still-living people who are next in line to enter this top 20 are Warren Beatty, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and Paul Thomas Anderson who each have 4 nominations for writing but no wins in those categories. Paul Thomas Anderson will enter this top 20 if he's nominated for Phantom Thread and make it a three way tie with Bergman and Leigh (not bad company to be in!). But what about longshot Alexander Payne for Downsizing I hear you shouting into the void? Yes, he'd also join this top 20 if he were to receive his fourth Oscar nomination. He's already won the screenplay Oscar twice so that would tie him with George Seaton above.
What about the women?
The top female writers are all sadly outside that list though the writer's branch is more inclusive than some of the other below-the-line branches. The highest ranking woman in Oscar's screenwriting club is Frances Goodrich (most famous for the classic comedy franchise The Thin Man and work in the movie musical genre) who was nominated 4 times with her writing partner/husband Albert Hackett though they never won. Here's the full list of top women
OSCAR'S TOP FIVE FEMALE SCREENWRITERS
1. Frances Goodrich (4 nominations but no wins)
2. [TIE] Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Frances Marion (3 nominations and 2 wins)
All of Jhabvala's honors came from her collaboration with Merchant/Ivory but she was the sole screenwriter on their beloved films. All of Marion's nominations came from Oscar's first decade in which she wrote films like The Champ and The Big House
4. [TIE] Nora Ephron and Ruth Gordon (3 nominations)
As beloved as Ephron and her films (Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, etcetera) were, she never won. Ruth Gordon did eventually win an Oscar but it wasn't for her writing nominations (A Double Life, Pat & Mike, Adam's Rib) but for her unforgettable acting in Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Living Female Screenwriters
Sadly all of five of these giant talents are deceased. No living female screenwriter comes anywhere close to their Oscar honors. Fran Walsh (Lord of the Rings), Emma Thompson (Sense & Sensibility), Diana Ossana (Brokeback Mountain), Callie Khouri (Thelma & Louise), Jane Campion (The Piano), Diablo Cody (Juno) and Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation) all won either Original or Adapted within the last 30 years but, with the exception of Fran Walsh, all of those Oscar wins were from their sole nominations as screenwriters.