OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2017)
The Nominees Were...
Emily V. Gordon & Kumail Nanjiani, The Big Sick
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor, The Shape of Water
Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
My Thoughts: If you look at the long history of the Academy Awards, you will find that few things are as consistent as the Oscars preferring adapted screenplays to original ones when it comes to the Best Picture lineup. Whether it is the gigantic literary adaptations of the 1930's or the stage adaptations of the 1950's or the modern era, where we frequently will see musicals & prestige bestsellers transformed for the big screen...Oscar goes in hard for adapted screenplays on the big screen. This makes a year like 2017 that much more unique, when almost all of the major contenders for Best Picture, including the winner, were original screenplays while adapted is almost completely absent.
We're going to start out with the movie that won Oscar's top prize (but not this one), The Shape of Water. I have been ambivalent to Shape of Water throughout the past few weeks as we've discussed it constantly (13 nominations, y'all), partially because that was my reaction to the movie. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, I thought it was beautiful & wanted to like it more than I did (in many ways, it was reminiscent of La La Land in that I was more disappointed that I didn't love a film that clearly I could've & others did, rather than outwardly disliking it). That being said, the screenplay is the movie's weakest element. The film has too many plotlines, taking us away from our central story of Eliza, and both Michael Stuhlberg & Michael Shannon's characters play as virtual cartoons, both as acted & as written. If there's a reason that Shape of Water didn't take off for me, it was the writing.
Conversely, Get Out's best asset might be its screenplay. Jordan Peele's well-constructed horror film got the genre rare inclusion with the Academy, and it's clear that he has a singular vision, well-executed, throughout the movie giving us strong allegories about racism in modern America. Peele's writing on occasion veers into the too-predictable (for a movie that is predicated on twists, it's easy to see pretty much every one of them coming a mile away, something that plagued his next film Us but that movie derived less of its strength from that twist, so it felt less consequential), but we're quibbling because this is in a very strong field-this is a sign of a talent worth watching, and as his next movie proved, a talent that delivered.
Another talent that would have a successful followup in 2019 is Greta Gerwig, who wrote Lady Bird. Unlike Get Out, Lady Bird isn't contingent on twists, though there are a few of them in the film, and instead is about trying to capture a specific kind of youth. I'll cop to a bit narcissism here, as this film is semi-autobiographical to Gerwig (who is roughly my age), and as a result the music & attitudes of an immediately post-9/11 high school experience is a story I can get into without too much imagination-stretching, but I loved Lady Bird. I thought the conversations in the movie, particularly those between Saoirse Ronan and both of her onscreen parents were so authentic to the self-centered youth experience, albeit with just a hint of nostalgia & envy from an adult Gerwig finally realizing "Lady Bird's" potential.
The Big Sick is also semi-autobiographical, and considering the main character sports writer Kumail Nanjiani's actual name, I honestly wonder if we can drop the "semi" part of that description. In an era where quality rom-com's have largely gone the way of the dodo, you almost look on The Big Sick in wonder. It helps that the film's least successful element (Zoe Kazan does not have as strong of chemistry with Nanjiani as either of her onscreen parents Ray Romano & Holly Hunter) is sidelined for much of the movie. This allows us to take a look at the strange reality of how when you fall in love with one person, you're thrown into their family regardless of whether you want to or not, and this feels realistically explored within the movie.
Our final nominee is Three Billboards. One of the conversations that I find most intriguing right now in film criticism is the one around whether characters are "problematic" or not. I think largely this is people not understanding the purpose of film (not every character is meant to be a "good guy" even the ones marketed as "good guys"), but I think I do agre that there's a responsibility born by the screenwriters to understand their characters aren't "good guys" when it comes to the collective film narrative. This is all to say that I don't think it's a problem that Sam Rockwell is a racist cop who also feels pretty affable within the confines of the movie (that feels like a realistic depiction, at least on paper, of an actual human being-not everyone is all good or all evil). But the ending leaves it so that this is forgiven and forgotten by the writers, which borders into condoning it as a "necessary evil" in the same way that McDormand's complicated relationship with her daughter is also forgivable...but they are not the same thing. This totally upends McDonagh's script and solid ability with dialogue.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, though original almost completely dominated there, getting a win for Three Billboards and nominations for Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, & The Post. The BAFTA's split their categories with a victorious Three Billboards besting Get Out, I Tonya, Lady Bird, & The Shape of Water, while the WGA went to Get Out against I Tonya, Lady Bird, The Big Sick, & The Shape of Water. While sixth place looks like I, Tonya from these nominations, its lack of a Best Picture nomination points the Big Sick's biggest competition as likely being The Post or Phantom Thread...considering Anderson's mixed bag in this category, I'm inclined to pick the former.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I get that this is brimming with Oscar favorites, and far be it from me to try & take away love to a movie as cute as The Big Sick, but I do wish that at least one more more atypical Oscar nominee (this category is known for embracing such contenders) like The Florida Project had gotten some love.
Oscar’s Choice: This was a close contest between Three Billboards and Get Out, and the latter felt a stronger fit for Oscar outside of the acting branches (Three Billboards also missed in Best Picture & couldn't even get nominated for Best Director), so it won.
My Choice: I'm going to go with Lady Bird, which I think is the best combination of dialogue, story structure, & using its genre in its writing. Behind that let's do The Big Sick, Get Out, Shape of Water, and Three Billboards.
Those are my thoughts-what about you? This is a tough one, but are you more with Oscar & the scary world of Jordan Peele, or are you inclined to join me in the sunnier universe provided by Greta Gerwig? How badly would this category have aged if McDonagh had won (which is totally plausible)? And was I Tonya, The Post, or Phantom Thread in sixth place? Share your thoughts below!
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