Blueprints: FYC, Adapted Screenplays

In this week's Blueprints, Jorge Molina looks into five adapted scripts that should be featured n the awards conversation. If you missed the Original Screenplay FYCs, they're here. 

While Original Screenplays tends to be where usually the Academy rewards more unconventional stories, the adapted screenplay category carries with it an air of respectability and prestige. Maybe it’s because it usually involves translation from a literary medium, respected novels or award winning plays. Maybe it’s because adaptations carry a built-in audience, something Hollywood values. Adapted screenplays have the advantage of arriving with an already fully formed and sometimes familiar story. But translating that into a cinematic medium is one of the hardest tasks for a writer: making the verbal into visual, compressing dozens of chapters into a two-hour story, learning what to leave in, what to take out, what to add or change.

Here are five screenplays that each took a previously published piece and turned it into an engaging, engrossing and cinematic experience....

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Blueprints: William Goldman In Memoriam

This week, Jorge's screenplay column celebrates the work of one of the most versatile and distinguished screenwriters in cinema, who passed away on November 16^th.

Most artists can only hope to leave at most one iconic piece of legacy behind after they pass way. One great novel, one fantastic painting, one life-changing movie. There are few who can produce more than one. I think we can count with one hang those whose body of work can be considered unequivocally influential and unironically iconic.

William Goldman was one of those artists. Winner of two Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (one original, and one adapted), he left behind an oeuvre that spans across decades, genres, and mediums that most writers can only dream of. Let’s take a look at his most well-remembered screenplays, most of which will be embedded in the collective cinematic culture for generations to come... 

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Months of Meryl: Into the Woods (2014)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.  

#48 —The Witch, a witch.

JOHN: In his reserved review of the original 1987 Broadway production of Into the Woods, Frank Rich summed up the plot of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s beloved musical as such: “Cinderella and company travel into a dark, enchanted wilderness to discover who they are and how they might grow up and overcome the eternal, terrifying plight of being alone.” Rich noted that, “in remaking Grimm stories, Mr. Sondheim's lyrics and Mr. Lapine's book tap into the psychological mother lode from which so much of life and literature spring.” Sondheim and Lapine’s dextrous, intertwined reimagining of classic Grimm fairy tales, from Little Red Riding Hood to Cinderella, offers a subversively adult version of these hallowed childhood fables and an artistic vision that seems fundamentally at odds with family-friendly Disney, the machine behind Rob Marshall’s 2014 screen translation.

When unhappy fans pressed Sondheim upon the film’s release to defend what felt like a compromised adaptation, he admitted that concessions were in fact happily made to secure a PG rating...

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Months of Meryl: The Giver (2014)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#47 —The Chief Elder, leader of a dystopian society.

MATTHEW: In Lois Lowry’s 1993 young adult novel The Giver, a society recovering from near-ruination divides its people into communities and, in the process, mistakes sameness for equality. In the 2014 film adaptation of Lowry’s Newbery Medal-winning classic, a production team looking to make a quick buck on the under-18 set mistakes glossy superficiality for storytelling simplicity and basic filmmaking competency. Despite its undeniable following and long-held status as a formative literary staple for American adolescents, The Giver was somehow omitted from my middle school reading list. I’m positive Lowry’s tale has its merits, but whatever those may be, they are almost entirely undetectable in this version from journeyman director Phillip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American).

Noyce’s iteration centers around Jonas (Australian twink Brenton Thwaites), a 16-year-old who we are told possesses uncommon brilliance and “a capacity to see beyond,” assets that earn him the title of his community’s Receiver of Memory...

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Podcast: El Angel, The Front Runner, Oscar's Screenplay Race

Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl talk new films and the Oscar race

Index (58 minutes)
00:01 The story of Gary Hart in The Front Runner starring Hugh Jackman
16:25 El Angel starring Lorenzo Ferro and Chino Darín which is Argentina's Oscar submission
27:22 Sidebar: My Fair Lady on Broadway
34:24 Best Adapted Screenplay: Bradley Cooper, Barry Jenkins, Gillian Flynn, Nicole Holofcener, Spike Lee, Armando Iannucci, Paul Dano & Zoe Kazan could all compete here but which of them will?
45:23 Best Original Screenplay: Roma, The Favourite and Green Book and...?
54:40 Beck claims he's recording a score for Roma... which has no score.

 References / Further Reading
• The horror of Beck's Tweet about Roma
• Chris's review of The Front Runner
• Foreign Language Film Submission Chart 
• Screenplays Oscar Chart

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

El Angel and The Front Runner