USC Scripter Awards
Tuesday, January 26, 2021 at 10:00PM by Nathaniel R
It's a big night for awards -- they just keep on coming. One of the traditions we like most is the USC Libraries Scripter Awards, now in their 33rd year. They're cool because the purpose is very specific and focused. They award screenplays based on previously published material AND that material at the same time. This double honor makes sense since some adaptations are doing heavy lifting and others are kind of doing minor tweaks to the material and it can be difficult to ascertain what was actually done. Their nominees for the year are after the jump...
FILM NOMINATIONS
- Bad Education (HBO Films) Screenplay by Mike Makowsky based on the New York magazine article “The Bad Superintendent” by Robert Kolker
- First Cow (A24) Screenplay by Jon Raymond and Kelly Reichardt based on the novel The Half-Life by Jon Raymond
- Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix) Screenplay by Ruben Santiago-Hudson based on the play by August Wilson
- Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures) Screenplay by Chloé Zhao based on the nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
- One Night in Miami (Amazon) Screenplay by Kemp Powers based on his own play.
It's kind of a bummer that Bad Education was already an Emmy contender because it only had vague success at the Emmys and now it's getting vague success in film awards but had the release/awards effort been really targeted as either a film or a tv show perhaps it would have busted through to more acclaim?
Meanwhile, Kemp Powers is the only nominee who is honored for honing his own original material. This obviously can't be your Oscar lineup but we think The Father is the missing nominee.
EPISODIC SERIES
- The Good Lord Bird (Showtime) Screenplay by Mark Richard and Ethan Hawke for the episode “Meet the Lord,” based on the novel by James McBride
- Normal People (Hulu) Screenplay by Sally Rooney and Alice Birch for the fifth episode, based on the novel by Rooney
- The Plot Against America (HBO) Screenplay by Ed Burns and David Simon for the sixth episode, based on the novel by Philip Roth
- The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix) Screenplay by Scott Frank for the episode “Openings,” based on the novel by Walter Tevis
- Unorthodox (Netflix) Screenplay by Anna Winger for the first episode, based on the autobiography "Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots" by Deborah Feldman
Reader Comments (16)
Bad Education really could have been a big contender at the Oscars had it been released theatrically, just like "Grey Gardens" back in the day.
@dannyboy if Grey Gardens had been a theatrical release Drew Barrymore would be an Oscar winner. She'll probably get an honorary award in about 20 years.
I've seen 3...
(as adaptation):
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom ** - it can never escape the feeling of filmed play. The actors do what they can - which is a lot, given the original material, but the film barely escapes - and in unconvincing ways - the stage limitations.
One Night in Miami *** - again, too stagey, however it is more fluid the way the actors escape the stage, to let us see the world in which they are living in.
Bad Education * - oh, was I bored by it. It felt disjointed, and uninteresting all the way.
Bad Education: wonderful ensemble led by Hugh Jackman giving his best performance.
At the very least, Hugh Jackman would be a nominee, I reckon, if Bad Education was classified as theatrical. They bungled that. They couldn't even get him an Emmy.
THE FATHER missing is another bungle. A much stronger picture than a couple of these, I feel. I also only thought Scripers were for movies based on books (so no plays), but they changed that rule a few years back?
You can feel the pages turning in Ma Rainey’s and The Good Lord Bird. I would never nominate them.
Bad Education, is it a movie? Is a tv-movie? Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
Love the nods for First Cow, Nomadland and Normal People.
Anyone among you here who read Sally Rooney's novel? I want to read it as I am a big fan of the Normal People TV series but I wonder if the delicacy of the moving image version will ruin the experience of reading the exquisite story of Marianne and Connell.
No one really likes Ma's Bottom outside the US.
I started reading Normal People and it comes off as way more of a cliché than the tv series. The whole nerdy girl falling for the jock thing has more layers in the show. We have to thank the delicate direction of Lenny Abrahamson for raising above the material.
I wouldn't bother with the novel.
Nathaniel - Wouldn’t Jon Raymond also be “honored for honing his own original material” even though he shares the nomination with Reichardt?
Was The Father eligible? I thought the Scripter honored US productions, but Normal People is nominated, so maybe not.
I read Sally Rooney's book. It was fine. It was very predictable it would become a tv series or movie, as there's nothing to her prose but dialogue and action. I found the tv series to be a big bore - far inferior to the other four nominees, which are all great or near-great.
@Lucky | Jules
Thanks for the candid assessment on Sally Rooney's book. I'll put it on hold for now; I was just wildly curious since I happen to like Normal People -- the TV series -- a lot. We may just have to agree to disagree on this. And yet I don't usually go for this fare. It might have been a combination of the sobering effects of the lockdown, a tragic family loss, and the fact that I always watch the episodes in the wee hours of the morning when everything is on a standstill. I was so taken by the melancholy of the story, the manner the story is told (a deliberate slow burn), and especially by Daisy Edgar-Jones as Marianne. I'm just glad I got the chance to see it before it was hyped.
Owl - I respectfully disagree with Lucky, as I think Sally Rooney's novel is a masterpiece. And I think her and Alice Birch's adaptation is pretty masterful too, separating the novel into clear chapters for television. The only mis-step was in its very literal take on Marianne's sexual life, which works much better on the page for being more internalised.
ben1283 - I just really liked the approach of the series and didn't find it in the novel. It may have not worked for me but to each its own :)
@Ben1283 -- that's quite an endorsement, thanks. This might be the needed push for me to read it. I finish almost all books I read no matter the length or how I feel when reading it.
Marianne's sexual encounters are studies in self-immolation which I liken to (paraphrasing Wilde) the dislike of seeing Caliban in the mirror.