by Nathaniel R
The annual USC Scripter awards honor film and television adapted from other literary sources. The cool thing about them is they award both the current screenwriter and the original author being adapted.
It should be one of the nomination announcements that excite us the most each year in terms of assessment of screenwriting -- the jury is generally made up of writers and critics -- but they often fail to live up to their potential. Usually that's a result of them hewing very close to the Oscar conversation rather than suggesting that the full jury has actually been watching plentiful movies year round and thinking about the craft of writing. Whch is not to say that some of their choices aren't strong but there's usually at least one title that suggests they've been reading Oscar tea leaves rather than books and screenplays. I'll leave it to you to glean what that title is this year. They get a little more creative with the TV side, perhaps because there's no current awards buzz (Emmys were over a few months ago) to piggyback on...
Their nominees this year are:
FILM
- Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio — Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale, and Matthew Robbins (based on the fairy tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi)
- Living — Kazuo Ishiguro (based on the novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy)
- She Said — Rebecca Lenkiewicz (based on the nonfiction book, “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement” by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey)
- Top Gun: Maverick— Peter Craig, Ehren Kruger, Justin Marks, Christopher McQuarrie, and Eric Warren (based on characters from the 1983 “California” magazine article “Top Guns” by Ehud Yonay)
- Women Talking — Sarah Polley, Miriam Toews (based on the novel “Women Talking” by Miriam Toews)
Pinocchio and Living are the two that needed this the most though it comes after Oscar nomination balloting has closed. Still, it shows people were thinking of those two films so it could signify Oscar fortune.
All the nominees are English language films so rather than berate them for not selecting, say, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Quiet Girl, or Happening (stronger pieces of writing than one or two of these options!) it's wiser to accept that most US based groups have that bias and focus on English language titles they didn't love as much as these to determine if you approve. So you should either thank them or curse them (depending on your love or hate for these films) for not recognizing The Whale, Bones and All, The Good Nurse, Catherine Called Birdy, White Noise , The Wonder, or A Man Called Otto. Movies that are only "adapted" in terms of Oscar's weird definition -- i.e. any sequel -- are not eligible for this prize unless the film being sequelized was itself based on something other than a movie. In other words, Glass Onion and Avatar The Way of Water were not eligible for this prize whereas Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Top Gun Maverick were!
TELEVISION
- The Crown, episode "Couple 31" - Peter Morgan — based on his stage play “The Audience”
- Fleishman Is in Trouble, episode "The Liver" Taffy Brodesser-Akner — based on her book of the same name
- Slow Horses, episode "Failure's Contagious" - Will Smith — based on the novel by Mick Herron
- Tokyo Vice, episode "Yoshino" -J. T. Rogers based on the memoir “Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan” by Jake Adelstein
- Under the Banner of Heaven, episode "When God Was Love" - Dustin Lance Black — based on the nonfiction work by Jon Krakauer
Slow Horses and Tokyo Vice were not honored at any major awards shows like The Emmys, Globes, SAG, or Critics Choice Awards though they premiered in time so the US Scripters are thinking for themselves on those fronts. If you've seen either of those shows do you think they chose well?