Jeremy Beck

Are original screenplays back in business? I invariably lament that studios these days are afraid to take risks on truly original films, preferring instead to nestle within the cozy security blanket of the built-in audience. (That I make such lamentations while skipping happily on my way to the next corporate blockbuster is no concern of yours.) After all, there’s no safer bet in Hollywood than a sequel, except perhaps a low-budget horror movie, or maybe a romance or thriller based on a thriving young-adult literary franchise. But this year’s slate of Best Original Screenplay nominees suggests that some movies can feature innovative, challenging premises while dodging the stigma of box-office poison. One nominee has already crossed $150 million, two others will likely end their run with at least $90 MM in the bank, and a fourth nearly tripled its $16 MM budget at domestic theatres alone. So let’s not start writing the obituary on original screenplays that manage to stimulate both the mind and the cash registers just yet.

NOMINEES
Amour – Michael Haneke
Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino
Flight – John Gatins
Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal Read More

Why group these three categories together? Because they all award craftsmen whose job is to make their movies look prettier? Or because I just randomly decided to lump three categories into a single post? As Yoda would say, it matters not. Let’s get to it.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

NOMINEES
The Avengers
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Life of Pi
Prometheus
Snow White and the Huntsman Read More

It may be the Oscar obsessive in me, but I’ve always envisioned the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay categories as rival gangs similar to the East and West Baltimore clans in “The Wire”. The Adapted Screenplay category, with its strong literary pedigree and snobbish sense of entitlement, would clearly hail from East Baltimore, where Prop Joe systematically uses his network to maintain a stranglehold on imported drugs. The Original Screenplay field, with its more inventive and daring scripts, is emblematic of the ingenuity and fearlessness with which West-siders Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell attempt to increase their market share. Continuing with my anthropomorphized, possibly delusion vision, the screenplay categories typically run in their own circles and protect their own turf, but they’re also ruthlessly competitive, with each side sneering at the other that its respective quintet of nominees exhibits the superior writing. And perhaps the two categories, in their thirst to establish their dominance, would officially decide the matter in some sort of sporting contest akin to the riveting basketball game between East and West B-more that takes place in the first season of “The Wire”.

In fact, the Academy should strongly consider instituting a single Best Screenplay award that mirrors that very basketball game. The Oscars are all about supremacy, so shouldn’t there be one screenplay to rule them all? And here’s my point: If the Academy were so inclined to take the Manifesto’s advice, the 2012 Best Adapted Screenplay field would absolutely annihilate its Original Screenplay counterparts. The East Side is simply unstoppable this year. These nominees look awfully impressive, and in the immortal words of Prop Joe, “Look the part, be the part, motherfucker”.

NOMINEES
Argo – Chris Terrio
Beasts of the Southern Wild – Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin
Life of Pi – David Magee
Lincoln – Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook – David O. Russell Read More

NOMINEES
Amy Adams – The Master
Sally Field – Lincoln
Anne Hathaway – Les Misérables
Helen Hunt – The Sessions
Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook Read More