The Voice

2.21.2006

Countdown to Oscar 2006
"You should ask Tom: How come he's so good, at killing people?"
-Carl Fogarty (A History of Violence)
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Set design for this years academy awards (released today)

With just 12 days ‘till Oscar remaining, today, I will begin my countdown to the show. Each new post, in the coming days, will tackle a different category; I will include my preliminary predictions for each prospective category, as well as a list of films or people I would have nominated in that category.

I begin today by examining the race for Best Adapted Screenplay. And the nominees are:
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Brokeback Mountain – Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana (screenwriters)
Capote – Dan Futterman (screenwriter)
The Constant Gardener – Jeffrey Caine (screenwriter)
A History of Violence – Josh Olson (screenwriter)
Munich – Tony Kushner, Eric Roth (screenwriters)

To begin the narrowing down process, lets start with a few, simple facts: Brokeback Mountain won the WGA (Writers Guild of America) award and the Golden Globe award for best-adapted screenplay. In a surprise victory, Capote snagged the Scripter award (which honors adapted work—both the writer of the source material and the screenwriter. The films are nominated and voted on by a committee of WGA members, past Oscar winners and nominees, and other industry execs). Most of the critics associations went for Crash, but they do not separate into original and adapted work. So, based on past winners alone, this is a race purely between Brokeback Mountain and Capote. Now, let's take this one step further.

It is always helpful to look at past Oscar winners in a category, in an attempt to develop a pattern or precedent. Here is a list of the past ten Oscar winners for Best Adapted Screenplay.

1994 – Forrest Gump – Eric Roth
1995 – Sense and Sensibility – Emma Thompson
1996 – Sling Blade – Billy Bob Thornton
1997 – L.A. Confidential – Brian Helgeland, Curtis Hanson
1998 – Gods and Monsters – Bill Condon
1999 – The Cider House Rules – John Irving
2000 – Traffic – Stephen Gaghan
2001 – A Beautiful Mind – Akiva Goldsman
2002 – The Pianist – Ronald Harwood
2003 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Fran Walsh, Philipa Boyens, Peter Jackson
2004 – Sideways – Alexander Payne, Him Taylor

8 of 10 of these films were nominated for best picture (Sling Blade and Gods and Monsters were not). Therefore, we can pretty safely eliminate The Constant Gardener and A History of Violence from this years running, as they are the only films nominated for adapted screenplay that are not best picture nominees. Also, they have not won any of the precursor awards. So, now it is down to Brokeback Mountain (the favorite), Capote (the indie), and Munich (the darkhorse).

Now, lets examine the total nominations for each of these films. Brokeback Mountain—the frontrunner—leads the nominations with 8 total. Capote and Munich each grabbed 5 nominations. Let's look at the last few winners for best-adapted screenplay vs. their fellow nominees. Sideways had five nominations, only winning Best Adapted Screenplay. It overtook Million Dollar Baby and Finding Neverland (each with 7 nominations) to win the award—M$B won almost all of the other major awards it was up for. The Lord of the Rings won with by far the most wins and the most nominations the previous year. The Pianist won, however, with the 3rd most nominations in 2003's awards. A Beautiful Mind had the second most nominations in 2002 and captured this award. The other consideration—assuming Capote will not win Best Picture—is that this category gives the Academy a chance to tip its hat to the film. All of these facts just sort of add confusion to the fact that Brokeback Mountain remains the frontrunner. At the end of the day, it’s hard to predict anything other than Brokeback, but it certainly would not be too surprising if either of the other two films, Capote or Munich, steals the award.

Prediction: Brokeback Mountain
Darkhorse: Capote
What Should Win: The Constant Gardener


If I Picked the Nominees:

And now for a little extra fun: The five films that should have been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (the "should-be-winner" in red):
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Capote - Dan Futterman (screenwriter)
The Constant Gardener - Jeffrey Caine (screenwriter)
A History of Violence - Josh Olson (screenwriter)
Munich - Tony Kushner, Eric Roth (screenwriters)
Pride & Prejudice - Deborah Moggach (screenwriter)

This group happens to be not much unlike the nominees for the Oscars. Other categories will have much more glaring differences. Certainly, the craze over Brokeback Mountain has been slightly lost on me, thus its exclusion and Pride & Prejudice’s inclusion.

If you missed my top films of the year, here is the link:
Top 20 Films of 2005

Next: a look at the race for Best Original Screenplay, and my picks for the best original work of the year. Until then,

Good night, and good luck…

posted by Dane at 6:08 PM

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