Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 10:00AM Murtada here. Now that the Oscars are behind us (and our coverage concluded) our eyes turn to the future. Josh told you about new projects for four winners. But what of the "Best" losers? Let's start with the magnificent Carol ladies and move on to other actresses to see where they're headed next.
10+ future prospects after the jump...
Thursday, January 28, 2016 at 6:00PM
Manuel here. Much of the conversation following the nominations has deservedly been about the way this year’s nominees function in many ways as a litmus test for the larger pitfalls of the Academy and the industry at large. Take the screenplay categories. As Phyllis Nagy urged us, we should be celebrating the fact that four female screenwriters were nominated for four different films. It sounds like a cause worth celebrating until you realize a total of twenty screenwriters were cited overall. You have to admit, those are appalling (if yes, unsurprising) numbers. Actually, in the past ten years, only 17 out of 156 nominated screenwriters have been women. Three quick stats about this year's categories and how they may show we might be turning a corner.
01 The last time we had two female nominees in the Best Original Screenplay category was in 2011 when Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo earned a nomination for their Bridesmaids script. If you remember that was the first time a female duo had been nominated since Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen were cited for Silkwood back in 1983.
02 The last time two female nominees came from different films? 2007 when The Savages’s Tamara Jenkins and Lars and the Real Girl’s Nancy Oliver joined eventual winnerDiablo Cody (Juno). That was, coincidentally, the last time a female writer was on stage for a screenplay win.
03 On the Adapted Screenplay side, we have two female screenwriters coming from two different films (Room and Carol). That’s the first time its happened since 2003 when Shari Springer Berman (co-writer of American Splendor) joined eventual winner Fran Walsh (co-writer of Return of the King) in the nominee roster. And yes, you have to go back to 1995 to find a sole female screenwriter taking the gold (Emma Thompson for Sense and Sensibility), a year that also nominated Anna Pavignano for co-writing Il Postino.
Obviously, by the rule of statistical analysis -- which is foolproof and understands that subjective awards must follow mathematical calculations-- this means we're going to get a female writer up on stage this year, right?
Bets on whether Donoghue (Room), Nagy (Carol), Berloff (Straight Outta Compton) or LeFauve (Inside Out) will get to give a speech on February 28th?
Wednesday, January 6, 2016 at 1:00PM 
Phyllis Nagy in Palm Springs with Cate BlanchettMonday night through Tuesday evening was a special 24 hours in the lives of Team Experience. At the NYFCC awards gala, Alec Baldwin, presenting the Best Director prize to Todd Haynes (Carol), quoted a Film Comment piece by our dear friend and podcast mate Nick Davis. That same night Phyllis Nagy was honored for Best Screenplay by the Pulitzer winning playwright/screenwriter Tony Kushner (Angels in America, Lincoln) himself. Though I was not in attendance for the Carol-heavy NYFCC gala on Monday night where the film also took Best Cinematography and Best Film), I had the opportunity to congratulate Nagy the next evening on her fine work adapting the year's best film from the original 1952 Patricia Highsmith novel "The Price of Salt." The occassion was a cocktail event for the movie hosted by former and future Todd Haynes muse Julianne Moore (here are a few photos of that reunion.)
It was our second chat with the sharp and talented Phyllis Nagy, who up until Carol had been best known for her stage plays and the HBO film Mrs Harris (2006) which she wrote and directed.
Here's our original conversation which we hope you'll enjoy...
NATHANIEL: So Phyllis I started this as kind of a joke to myself but then decided to commit to it and have literally asked every person I interviewed from Carol ... How come you're such a genius?
PHYLLIS NAGY: Well, practice. [Laughs] In this case, yeah, practice, many years of it. Which ultimately aided it, it didn’t hurt it, it may have felt like that from time to time...
NATHANIEL: You mean the long gestation period?
PHYLLIS NAGY: Yeah, when no one wants to [make a film], it gives you the opportunity to obsessively go over it again and again on your own time, at least make it a document that you’re proud of. So, luckily...
[Patricia Highsmith's interiority, great actors, and tough rewrites after the jump...]
