OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2015)
The Nominees Were...
Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, & Joel Coen, Bridge of Spies
Alex Garland, Ex Machina
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, & Ronnie del Carmen, Inside Out
Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge, & Alan Wenkus, Straight Outta Compton
Alex Garland, Ex Machina
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, & Ronnie del Carmen, Inside Out
Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge, & Alan Wenkus, Straight Outta Compton
My Thoughts: In the past few years, we've actually seen a more significant increase in the number of higher-profile Best Picture contenders in the Original Screenplay field. Long the category that had the edgier, independent fare while the adapted race housed all of the films competing for Best Picture, Original Screenplay is slowly becoming a more mixed bag of the biggest films of the year, the films going for the top prize, and then more random, independent fare. No year is a better indication of this than 2015, where two Best Picture nominees battled it out with three critically-acclaimed films that were on the outskirts of the big race.
Inside Out was a surprise return for Pixar to the big leagues. For a few years there, Pixar consistently would make it into fields like Original Screenplay, but then Cars 2 happened, and it felt like they needed to wander through the wilderness a bit. Inside Out is clever and the premise is ingenious, with some sparkling wordplay for some of the side characters (and pretty much everything Sadness says). However, I didn't love it the way that I've loved some past Pixar scripts, mostly because for a film brimming with ingenuity in its plot, the actual dialogue wasn't all that inventive and the parents are horribly underwritten (why are all of their emotions the same gender while Riley's aren't?), but overall this is a pretty solid return-to-form for the studio.
When I first saw it, I called Spotlight a writer's film, and as a result this is going to be its best showing in any of our OVP articles (unlike past year roundups, I've been pretty quiet on Spotlight throughout this series, mostly because it only won six nominations, all but one of which we have yet to profile because they were in the Big 6). The film is very methodical, which for its script works. While I could have done without the histrionic, expositional speeches from Mark Ruffalo's Michael Rezendes which nearly capsize the film, the intense look at journalists and their value is well-done, and a worthy nomination. We get the sense of the process of what it took to uncover a story of this magnitude, while never feeling like we're watching a movie that's just a carbon copy of a newspaper story.
The other Best Picture movie I was less-inclined to honor, in writing in particular. It's hard to imagine the Coen Brothers wrote Bridge of Spies, it's so staid and without passion for its characters. Bridge of Spies, like most Spielberg films, is not a movie that necessarily has a screenplay that is its finest attribute (Spielberg is the star in pretty much every one of his films, usually for the better), but the film drags in the center, and literally has nothing to say about the female characters in the picture, and usually relies upon Thomas Newman's score to make things more intriguing. The movie's best scene, with Austin Stowell in the plane, is not really a screenwriting centerpiece as it is an acting & editing marvel, and I can't point to a particularly compelling writing sequence in the picture, even though (thanks in part to Hanks & Rylance's natural acting ability), it doesn't feel too stilted.
The final two nominees are more representative of the Best Original Screenplay races of the past. Ex Machina is a tiny arthouse fare film that deals with heavy subjects and incredible twists. Its strength lies not only in the acting duet between the three leads, but also in knowing that it has to read as obvious upon rewatch, but also like we can't guess while we're watching initially, we're all too fascinated by the conversations of the picture. Think of the claustrophobia of the script (we only escape at the beginning and end), or the devastating way that we get casual drops about how ruthless some of the characters are (the scene where Domhnall Gleeson realizes that the experiment used his porn history to manipulate him comes to mind as particularly "wow," as well as other moments late in the film that I won't reveal for fear of spoilers). Garland's script is fascinating and tight.
The same cannot be said for the bloated Compton, which is overlong and frequently boring. The script doesn't stray from the beaten path of a musical biopic, telling the same story of rags-to-riches artists, brought down by the hubris of men who are given too much, too fast (as well as by the cruel men around them who exploit their talent for a buck, ignoring the mess left behind). The film handles its main characters as righteous-without-fault, the only mistakes they ever made being trusting the wrong people, and there's a serious lack of objectivity in the way the film (which was produced by several of the people being portrayed in the picture) doesn't have much honesty about the people onscreen. The back half hour, with a dying Eazy-E, doesn't even feel like a movie anymore, just a eulogy to a man that clearly the producers miss and obviously died too young.
Inside Out was a surprise return for Pixar to the big leagues. For a few years there, Pixar consistently would make it into fields like Original Screenplay, but then Cars 2 happened, and it felt like they needed to wander through the wilderness a bit. Inside Out is clever and the premise is ingenious, with some sparkling wordplay for some of the side characters (and pretty much everything Sadness says). However, I didn't love it the way that I've loved some past Pixar scripts, mostly because for a film brimming with ingenuity in its plot, the actual dialogue wasn't all that inventive and the parents are horribly underwritten (why are all of their emotions the same gender while Riley's aren't?), but overall this is a pretty solid return-to-form for the studio.
When I first saw it, I called Spotlight a writer's film, and as a result this is going to be its best showing in any of our OVP articles (unlike past year roundups, I've been pretty quiet on Spotlight throughout this series, mostly because it only won six nominations, all but one of which we have yet to profile because they were in the Big 6). The film is very methodical, which for its script works. While I could have done without the histrionic, expositional speeches from Mark Ruffalo's Michael Rezendes which nearly capsize the film, the intense look at journalists and their value is well-done, and a worthy nomination. We get the sense of the process of what it took to uncover a story of this magnitude, while never feeling like we're watching a movie that's just a carbon copy of a newspaper story.
The other Best Picture movie I was less-inclined to honor, in writing in particular. It's hard to imagine the Coen Brothers wrote Bridge of Spies, it's so staid and without passion for its characters. Bridge of Spies, like most Spielberg films, is not a movie that necessarily has a screenplay that is its finest attribute (Spielberg is the star in pretty much every one of his films, usually for the better), but the film drags in the center, and literally has nothing to say about the female characters in the picture, and usually relies upon Thomas Newman's score to make things more intriguing. The movie's best scene, with Austin Stowell in the plane, is not really a screenwriting centerpiece as it is an acting & editing marvel, and I can't point to a particularly compelling writing sequence in the picture, even though (thanks in part to Hanks & Rylance's natural acting ability), it doesn't feel too stilted.
The final two nominees are more representative of the Best Original Screenplay races of the past. Ex Machina is a tiny arthouse fare film that deals with heavy subjects and incredible twists. Its strength lies not only in the acting duet between the three leads, but also in knowing that it has to read as obvious upon rewatch, but also like we can't guess while we're watching initially, we're all too fascinated by the conversations of the picture. Think of the claustrophobia of the script (we only escape at the beginning and end), or the devastating way that we get casual drops about how ruthless some of the characters are (the scene where Domhnall Gleeson realizes that the experiment used his porn history to manipulate him comes to mind as particularly "wow," as well as other moments late in the film that I won't reveal for fear of spoilers). Garland's script is fascinating and tight.
The same cannot be said for the bloated Compton, which is overlong and frequently boring. The script doesn't stray from the beaten path of a musical biopic, telling the same story of rags-to-riches artists, brought down by the hubris of men who are given too much, too fast (as well as by the cruel men around them who exploit their talent for a buck, ignoring the mess left behind). The film handles its main characters as righteous-without-fault, the only mistakes they ever made being trusting the wrong people, and there's a serious lack of objectivity in the way the film (which was produced by several of the people being portrayed in the picture) doesn't have much honesty about the people onscreen. The back half hour, with a dying Eazy-E, doesn't even feel like a movie anymore, just a eulogy to a man that clearly the producers miss and obviously died too young.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and as a result we ended up with just two original screenplays competing: Spotlight and Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (the Academy thankfully spared me telling you what I thought of that particular screenplay today, so count your blessings). BAFTA does separate out their nominations, and picked Spotlight as its victor, with The Hateful Eight coming in to replace Compton. The WGA had a bit more ingenuity with their field, though they also went with Spotlight; here Ex Machina & Inside Out were tossed in favor of Sicario & Trainwreck (Amy Schumer coming relatively close to an Oscar nomination as a result). I wouldn't predict Schumer in sixth, though, as Tarantino had to be close here considering Oscar's love of him and his past successes in this field.
Films I Would Have Nominated: There's no way that I wouldn't have included Clouds of Sils Maria in this field given the opportunity. The script is inventive, smart, a calculated duet of dialogue & unspoken tension between the two leads, and the best script (original or otherwise) from 2015. Spy is Paul Feig's funniest, and in my opinion, best film and a movie that I have watched over-and-over, and occasionally you should just honor how difficult making a comedy this hilarious is with a nomination. Finally, I'd round out with the coming-of-a-certain-age drama I'll See You in My Dreams, which finds ways to talk about aging & finding love past fifty without ever feeling cliched or exploitive.
Oscar’s Choice: The Best Picture race was surely a battle royale, but this was an easy win for Spotlight. I honestly don't even know who was plausibly in second place.
My Choice: Ex Machina among these nominations is the best-it has the most compact story. I'd follow that with Spotlight, closer than I might have indicated above, with Inside Out, Bridge of Spies, and Compton bringing up the rear.
Those are my thoughts-what about you? Are you with pretty much every awards body that this was due to Spotlight, or does anyone want to join me over in Camp Ex Machina? Does anyone else struggle to remember that the Coen Brothers wrote Bridge of Spies? And why do you think that the Academy chose to skip over Tarantino's Hateful Eight (other than good taste)? Share your thoughts below!
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