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Best Adapted Screenplay: Does 500 Million Friends Guarantee an Oscar?

By Jim Rohner · February 10, 2011

Directors get all the credit in Hollywood, but every screenwriter knows that no matter the director, they cannot and will not be able to make a great film without a great screenplay first. People are quick to applaud the original screenplays – those that are spawned entirely from the writer's imagination – but are more hesitant to shower praise upon the screenplays based on previous material. Let me assure you that just because a book, or a memoir or a previous screenplay already exists does not mean that the adaptation process is easy. There are just many opportunities for an adapted screenplay to fail as an original screenplay because film is a medium all its own. Keeping this in mind, this is why I believe the five films nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at this year's Academy Awards are worthy of the honor.

#5 – True Grit

Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

These days, aside from maybe Burn After Reading, it seems that everything the Coens touch turns to Oscar gold. We all remember No Country for Old Men. A Serious Man was included in the first crop of 10 Best Picture nominees, and now True Grit received 10 nominations. With more than 20 Oscar nominations between the two, it's clear that the Academy members are huge fans of the Coen brothers, and it's nice to see that that love is not bound by the remake of a classic film.

I've not seen the original True Grit, which won John Wayne his Oscar, nor have I read the book upon which it's based, written by Charles Portis. None of that matters though, because this version of True Grit is a Coen Brothers film through and through. I think many critics were caught off guard by the fact that the Coens were not re-inventing the wheel with this film like they'd done previously (Fargo, The Big Lebowski) and were largely just making a solid Western in the classic style of when the genre was in its heyday. But if you look hard enough, you'll still see some of that signature subverting of expectations. The most obvious, of course, is the fact that the focus of the story is a 12-year old girl, but more than that is the revelation that her main antagonist, Tom Chaney, is not only quite the simpleton, but is also not actually the film's primary bad guy. That distinction falls to Lucky Ned Pepper and even upon meeting him, we see that he can be quite the gentleman. 

Beyond that, there isn't much in the screenplay that we haven't seen before, but it's at least refreshing to see that really competently written screenplays will be recognized even if they're not breaking new ground. There's something to be said about a script that does its job and does it well.

#4 – 127 Hours

Screenplay by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy

127 Hours is intense, uplifting, exhausting, claustrophobic, tense and inspirational, which is quite remarkable considering that 80% of the film unfolds inside a canyon crevice with only one character. The screenplay, written by the Oscar-winning pair of Boyle and Beaufoy, is only 80 pages long and Aron Ralston gets trapped in the canyon on page 19. That leaves an awful lot of pages for a man to reflect on his life before he decides to cut off his arm and crawl his way out. With 60 pages of a guy trapped in a hole, 127 Hours is the kind of screenplay that few will and should attempt and that fewer will be able to pull off effectively. Take the wrong approach to the material and the film becomes slow, plodding and entirely uninteresting, yet Boyle and Beaufoy succeed where others would fail because of their stylistic approach and decision to mix up the film's chronology. 

Reading the screenplay of 127 Hours is similar to reading a novel. Boyle and Beaufoy take the time to describe the environment surrounding Ralston in a simple yet significant way, making it seem as though every physical element around Ralston has suddenly taken on the greatest significance, which seems an apt way of describing the mentality of someone surrounded by the same enclosed landscape for six days. The pair also make sure to keep scenes short and succinct, avoiding dragging down the screenplay with long stretches of black text that would superficially extend the page count and making sure there is a quick pace that keeps the film moving and evolving. A recurring visual element of Aron's wristwatch switching from minute to minute serve as a reminder of the ticking clock and the incorporation of flashbacks from his life and flashes ahead to his potential future ensure that we get a clear sense of who Aron is as a person and who he wishes to be. This turns out to be a remarkably effective way of providing Aron with a character arc without subjecting the screenplay to expository voiceover or some other cheap trick that would just ring false.

#3 – Toy Story 3

Screenplay by Michael Ardnt. Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich

Pixar continues to amaze. Fifteen years after the first Toy Story blew audiences away, the animation studio from northern California is still racking up Oscar nominations and fighting to prove to everyone that animation is not a medium reserved exclusively for kids. Toy Story 3 should greatly help their cause, not just because it's a great film but because it's the capstone in a film trilogy that has injected freshness and maturity into each installment, emphatically obliterating the dreaded “Rule of Three.”

Toy Story 3's nomination is helped, I think, by the fact that it is the third installment of a trilogy. That's not to say I disliked the film – by no means; I thought it exceptional – but by the time a completely original film series gets to a third installment, the creators have to ask themselves, as those at Pixar did, "how do we make this interesting?" Unkrich has said that they originally intended to end the series after Toy Story 2, so after the decision to make a third was made, the minds at Pixar had to then decide what angle they could take and how they could make audiences care a decade and a half after Woody and the gang first appeared on the scene. They answered both of those concerns by not ignoring the passage of time.  Andy has grown up and is moving away to college, and therefore, the toys must grapple with the idea that times have changed and they no longer serve the same purpose for their owner that they used to. The themes of growth, abandonment and change are timeless, and it was a brilliant stroke by the writers that ensured the Toy Story series, like Andy, has grown and matured like those of us who first were exposed to it as kids.

#2 – Winter's Bone

Adapted for the screen by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini

In the tradition of many Sundance titles that came before it, Winter's Bone is a fantastic indie film that depicts a slice of largely unexplored American life in which Hollywood has no interest. Set in the Ozarks and based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone snatched up both the Grand Jury and Waldo Salt Screenwriting prizes at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival before the Academy agreed that it was one of the 10 best films to be released last year. 

What makes the screenplay for Winter's Bone great is how it does so much with so little. Only 73 pages, Granik and Rosellini still manage to weave a seedy, tangled web of crime, intrigue and family that is entirely accessible and relatable to any audience despite the fairly backwater setting. Some of the greatest films are not those set within our daily lives, but those set outside of our daily lives while still being resonant to them. Despite the fact that Ree Dolly and the rest of the population of Winter's Bone speak in a dialetc and tone not entirely familiar to us, we still get a completely clear picture of who the characters are and what they want as well as just enough hints of the scope and expanse of a underground crime family to understand what is at risk for our main character. What unfolds is almost Coen Brothers-esque – a modern day film-noir in a geographical and socio-economic setting that filmmakers don't usually like to explore.

Winter's Bone is also an exceptional exercise in minimalism. Characters avoid speeches and in depth conversations – are any of them educated enough to do so anyway? – for the sake of brief but weighty declarations. They don't mince words, and they don't elaborate on what they say, but the fact that we still feel the gravity of those words is a testament to how well Granik and Rosellini understand their characters.

#1 – The Social Network

Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin

The only nominated screenplay with one credited screenwriter is also the one that has been sweeping up accolades at practically every awards function on God's green earth. I wouldn't be surprised to see Sorkin win a Grammy for this screenplay. The favorite to win this category, The Social Network was touted by Peter Travers as "an American landmark" and by many other film critics as one of those rare films that defines a generation. Most sound bites thrown out by critics are complete bullshit (remember when The Fifth Element was called the Star Wars of its generation?), but for once, everything said about The Social Network is entirely true – it really is the kind of film that upon seeing, you know you've seen something special.

The Social Network, like its screenwriter, is also possibly the most ambitious and ballsy screenplay to be written this year. Coming in at 164 pages long, the screenplay boldly opens up with a 9-page conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and Erica Alrbight in which they do nothing but talk. Who does that?!? Only Sorkin. In a way, it's a genius decision because it immediately sets up the tone, pacing and themes for what will come in the other 155 pages. It's almost as though Sorkin is declaring, "if you're on board with this, then you'll love the rest of the movie and if not, fuck you." I, for one, was completely on board.

But we all know Sorkin can write snappy dialogue – sometimes to his credit, sometimes to his detriment – so that's not necessarily something by which we should be amazed. What should amaze us is the mastery Sorkin shows in understanding his characters and crafting a story that both creatively and structurally updates a timeless tale of betrayal. Sure, the screenplay is "about" Facebook to some degree or another, but more than that the screenplay is about a very specific set of characters and circumstances that would catalyze the creation of Facebook while also being about what Facebook has catalyzed. I've read the book upon which the screenplay is based, "The Accidental Billionaires," and it's sufficient in relaying events, but the way that Sorkin interjects the deposition scenes throughout the film in order to further establish character relationships and mix up the pacing of the script was a stroke of inspiration all his own.

 

So which screenplay should win?

In my mind, it's no contest – The Social Network deserves to bring home the Oscar. It's not just the fact that the script is so excellent on a structural level, but it's also the fact that Sorkin has written a screenplay that will forever serve as the definition of the era it depicts. Since its inception, Facebook has revolutionized the way people communicate and how they present themselves to others and, though done in a bit of a black and white style, the screenplay tells an engaging story of the factors that would and have contributed to the creation and proliferation of such a game changer. Sure, much of what happens in the story may be fictionalized and altered, but aren't the best films in history those of fiction that can still find truth in our own lives?

 

And now, check out our "should be" Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay.