BY THE BOOK
Adapted or original screenplay — how to decide what’s what when Oscar rules are so vague?
One of the Oscar underdogs this year is Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, going into the big night with five nominations: best picture (a long shot), J.K. Simmons for best supporting actor (a lock), editing, sound mixing and best adapted screenplay.
This last category should give one pause. Whiplash, starring Miles Teller as a genius drummer and Simmons as his sadistic mentor, is a highly original story, the likes of which audiences have never seen. So why is it classified as an adapted screenplay?
The film’s road to the Oscars began at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 when Chazelle, unable to secure funding for a featurelength movie, debuted a 17-minute short he wrote and directed, also called Whiplash and also featuring Simmons.
Jason Reitman, whose own first short, Operation, played at Sundance in 1998, helped Chazelle, not least by persuading Simmons to join the cast. Reitman had been smitten by the screenplay, calling it “Shine meets Full Metal Jacket.” On the strength of said short, Chazelle was able to “adapt” Whiplash into a full-length version, which opened at Sundance the following year.
It’s hardly the first time a filmmaker has remade an earlier work into something bigger, but it calls into question the often artificial divide between original and adapted screenplays. Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 Oscar-nominated District 9 was based on his 2006 short Alive in Joburg. Similarly, his new film Chappie, which opens March 6, has its roots in an even earlier short by the filmmaker, 2004’s Tetra Vaal.
Wes Anderson’s debut feature, 1996’s Bottle Rocket, didn’t grab the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — his newest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, has nine nominations including best original screenplay — but it was an extended version of his 1994 short of the same name.
Whiplash’s co-nominees are all more traditional adaptations. American Sniper and The Theory of Everything are based on memoirs; Inherent Vice is Paul Thomas Anderson’s take on a Thomas Pynchon novel; and The Imitation Game is based on Andrew Hodges’ Alan Turing: The Enigma. But almost every year contains an oddity. Last year, Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight was nominated for best adapted screenplay since it was adapted from the characters in Before Sunset and Before Sunrise. Similarly, Toy Story 3’s screenplay in 2010 was considered an adaptation of the earlier films in that series.
Over in the original screenplay category this year is Foxcatcher, about the tragic meeting of John E. du Pont and Olympic gold medallists Dave and Mark Schultz. It’s a true story and doubtless required much research from its writers, but it’s not technically adapted from any one source. Such was also the case with last year’s Dallas Buyers Club, Zero Dark Thirty from the year before and 2010 original screenplay winner The King’s Speech.
Oddballs and outliers abound in the nominees. Mike Leigh has five nominations for best original screenplay, in spite of the fact that his movies don’t actually have screenplays: He starts with an outline, workshops with the actors and arrives at the dialogue through improvisation. His latest collaboration, Mr. Turner, was mysteriously passed over this year.
And there are many shades of adaptation. In 2008, best adapted screenplay nominee Doubt was the work of John Patrick Shanley, who minimally reworked his own play for the screen. It competed alongside The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, loosely based on a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, though having much more in common with the 1994 film Forrest Gump. (No surprise, Button screenwriter Eric Roth also wrote that film, based on the novel by Winston Groom. Roth won a best adapted screenplay Oscar that year.)
The Academy has long maintained two kinds of screenwriting awards. At the 1928 Oscars there were prizes for best adaptation and best story, which meant original by default. The original screenplay category was introduced in 1940, and the best story prize lingered until 1957 before being discontinued.
But to avoid future confusion, all the Academy needs to do is borrow a page from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which awards but a single screenwriting prize. (For 18 of the past 20 years the Golden Globe winner has gone on to win one of the Academy’s two screenwriting Oscars.)
This year the Golden Globe nominees included three Oscarnominated original screenplays — Birdman, Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel — as well as one adapted nominee (The Imitation Game) and one that wasn’t Oscarnominated but would have fallen into that category: Gone Girl.
To avoid cutting back on worthy nominees, the Oscars could expand the pool to 10, as they did a few years back with best picture. There’s more than enough good writing to go around, and no need to split hairs over how original it is.
What’s also clear is how important good writing — adapted or original — is to the finished product. Since 1957, all but two best picture winners have had at least a nomination in one of the screenwriting categories — 35 adapted screenplays and 19 original works. The leftovers were 1965’s The Sound of Music, which soared on its score, and 1997’s Titanic, which won 11 Oscars amid 14 nominations — not one of them for James Cameron’s writing. Go figure.
The Academy has long maintained two kinds of screenwriting awards. At the 1928 Oscars there were prizes for best adaptation and best story, which meant original by default.