Oscar Volley: Is There Room for Surprise in Best Original Screenplay?
Saturday, December 23, 2023 at 12:00PM Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Eric Blume and Nick Taylor to talk Best Original Screenplay...
Portrait of Nick and Eric discussing the Best Original Screenplay race
ERIC: Hi Nick, we have some great options in the Original Screenplay category this year. It feels like there's two guarantees for a nomination: Greta Gerwig's Barbie (unless it changes categories and is nominated for Adapted instead) and David Hemingson's The Holdovers. I like both of those pictures enormously, and both films succeed largely on the words and structure of their screenplays. The Holdovers is essentially out of a Screenwriting 101 class, in the best way possible, in that it has all the classic elements (inciting incident, minute 30 turn, minute 60 turn, etc.) that scripts are built upon, but Hemingson executes everything very artfully so it feels satisfying rather than him hitting points...
Gerwig is a tricky case: it's absolutely because of her overall conception of the Barbie world that the entire thing works, and of course because she was able as director to be the person to bring that conception off the page and onto the screen, it's easy to underestimate how strong the script is. It's got so many jokes and pithy corners. Hot take that’s perhaps not that hot: I will say that I think America Ferrera's big monologue is a bit overrated, not really full of any new ideas, but yes, distilled dramatically into a very fun, intelligent run. But we’ve seen all of that before, certainly.
What is your take on what are our two arguably lead candidates here?
NICK: Hello Eric! It's so nice to be doing another Volley with you.
I like a lot of the films hovering in contention for Original Screenplay, though I would not call The Holdovers a pet favorite. Payne's direction is absolutely part of the problem here - he makes the Screenwriting 101 plot beats and character arcs feel even more mechanical, and he doesn't coax out enough creativity or lived experience in the world or the cast to goose the script with any kind of organic feeling. But even on its own terms, I didn't buy the directions Hemingson took with these well-worn archetypes, let alone enjoy them. In particular, Mary Lamb's status as a supporting character feels entirely rooted in Hemingson not knowing her well enough to delve into her history the way we're continuously handed incidents that show us more and more about the stranded, petulant student and the smug, petulant teacher she's stuck with. Enough folks love this movie for me to recognize I'm in the minority on this, but I'm gonna be very annoyed if The Holdovers becomes the de facto frontrunner in this category.
Nick and Eric like Barbie's script a lot! Look at us singing its praises!
Barbie, now there's a movie! I agree that Gerwig's direction is arguably even more successful as a realization of this world than her writing is at conceiving. I love how many ideas it has about gender and personhood and finding out who you can possibly be amidst some of the most rigid standards for identity imaginable, enveloped as they are by an incredible number of jokes and slightly more musical numbers and ghost inventors than I was expecting. Not every supporting role or narrative pile-up feels as neatly explored as it could've been, but the cumulative build of zany, human mess and creative play is really impressive. To me, putting it as an Original Screenplay rather than Adapted like most films based on pre-existing properties reads mostly as a strategic choice from Warner Bros so Barbenheimer can clean up both screenplay categories. I'm not against its categorization, but right now I have it in my Adapted lineup.
Outside of those two, the rest of the field has a pretty eclectic set of options. There's a lot of odd ducks poised to either receive several key nominations or miss entirely. Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives, May December, Saltburn, The Iron Claw, Asteroid City - which films stand out to you of this group, for better or worse?
ERIC: Nick, sounds like you're gonna have a rough winter, since The Holdovers is indeed winning a lot of the early screenplay awards! I feel your pain...I'm still not over CODA (arguably a bad screenplay, or a good afterschool special at best) won the Oscar over four far superior scripts.
Your list of other candidates feels like the most likely for nominations. There's one I'd love to discuss with you at length: May December. This film is incredibly divisive, people who I think will love it can't stand it and vice versa. I'm in the love camp, and while I think what truly makes the film special is Hayne's purposefully multi-tonal direction, Hayes is of course a writer himself and is really just leaning into the text. One of the things that I love about the script is how Samy Burch slowly (very slowly) reveals information to us. We hear Gracie's lawyer talk about how she had no concept of going to prison, then of course we find out via Gracie's letter to Joe that she fully understood what was going on, of course, and the entire conception of the Gracie character as a calculating monster is so carefully constructed. Even the way we find out about Elizabeth Berry's TV show. We get the byte about "operating on an elephant" and then we hear the hilarious title of the show...NORAH'S ARK. It's the kind of promo you see on CBS, where it's a woman named Norah...who is a veterinarian...please god no, it won't be called NORAH'S ARK...and then IT IS. Even the comedy comes in slowly-revealed moments. This script could have fallen apart without a director as adept and brilliant as Haynes, but since he highlights Burch's writing in such bold and provocative ways, you see all its strengths. I just kind of love Haynes for "getting" Burch's script in a way possibly nobody else might have.
Where are you in the May December camp, before we get to other potential nominees?
Oh goodness, we put on the same outfits to write this volley. Nobody mention it. We know
NICK: I was gonna start with some schaudenfraude about The Holdovers missing Best Screenplay at the Globes, but it took me a little longer to realize May December is hunkering down abandoned with it in boarding school. In truth, I don’t love May December the way I do a lot of Haynes’ other films, even as your description makes me believe I’d get more out of it on rewatch. It’s in a Power of the Dog place for me, where I’ll be tremendously happy for all the laurels this’ll get folks to throw at a wildly inventive auteur I’ve worshipped for years even if it’s absolutely not my favorite of their filmography.
I love the slow reveal of information you describe, and the fairly successful way it juxtaposes a lot of almost hilariously mundane interactions and dynamics with the inherent perversity of Gracie and Joe’s life. Yes, it’s profoundly weird that your husband looks more like an older sibling than the father of his actual children, but that still leaves room for you to body-shame your daughters and have very strong opinions about how to bake a pie. Being able to quietly transmit key details about a tangled life is as impressive as its more bold-faced notes of luridness and comedy, yet the script never feels like it’s complicit in the rubbernecking or sin tourism or mile-a-minute excuse-making we see others participate in. Sometimes it feels like the movie is telling you a bit too overtly how to watch it with scenes like Portman’s trip to the high school, and I don’t think it finds exactly the right balance of time spent on its three leads and their different arcs. Even so, Burch’s script is ambitious and funny, and it’s a damn good debut. I’m excited to see what she does next.
One script that did get nominated at the Globes is Past Lives, which registers as something of a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t sure if it would be too indie for their radar, but it showed up pretty goddamn well. I already did a whole piece about what I find elegant and underfed about Song’s film and her script, but what do you think about it, Eric?
We were so excited for PAST LIVES making a splash with the Globes that we threw up on the merry-go-round!
ERIC: Past Lives is one of those films that could go either way with Oscar...scoring big with multiple nominations, or falling short. But it won't fail in this category...the writers who nominate here will fully understand Celine Song's accomplishment with this script, building characters not only devoid of cliche but filled with depth and intelligence, where the writing is so specific that it sets herself up as a director to be elusive in the most powerful way. The scene between Greta Lee and John Magaro is as beautifully written as any onscreen moment this year, capturing the exact feel of how couples sound when they lie in bed together and slowly let down their guard. Song's script is grounded by lyrical, and it doesn't strain for profundity: she lets the layers of meaning accumulate gradually and honestly. The category makes zero sense if this screenplay is excluded.
I'm feeling Anatomy of a Fall scoring here too. Justine Triet and Arthur Harari would deserve it even if they had just delivered it as a crackerjack court movie. The writing in the court scenes is incredibly compelling on mainstream movie terms. But of course the script is so much more, and it truly does "put marriage on trial" as they've said somewhere in interviews. There's no way any married human watches that movie without feeling the dread, stress, and pain of having their own marriage under that sort of microscope, and the writing is unrelenting in its mercilessness. Just when you think they can't hammer away at Sandra Huller's character any further, these writers keep going. The beauty of the script is that while our main character is "stripped bare" in some ways, she remains cagey and unknowable, questioning the human capacity for performance and cover, and the infallibility of truth. If tackling all that doesn't merit a nomination, I don't know what does.
What are your thoughts on Anatomy? What else do you feel sticks out as our strongest candidates?
Nick and Eric face the French tundras to learn if Anatomy of a Fall can pull out the win
NICK: Anatomy of a Fall is my favorite of the contenders by a pretty solid margin. It's a great dissection of marital, judicial, and familial discourses, flaying open the contradictory or inexplicable actions of its characters while laying bare so much unhappiness and smothering compromise. For my money, it does the best job of any of these scripts at being "about" what it says it'll be about, while also offering equally rich stories outside of the opening logline. It's an incredibly tricky film about language and compromise, where the more boldfaced ideas about couplehood and public/private skewering are emboldened and underlined by the less foregrounded but equally essential notions surrounding them, There's a whole, riveting story thread on Sandra's half-blind son Daniel that a lesser film would reduce to a deus ex witness or enfeebled victim/reactor, where his testimony becomes so painfully important to whether his mother will be exonerated or imprisoned for his father's fate. Just as Sandra is so fully exposed without making her reveal her actions, Daniel is forced to either report damning information about his parent's lives or lie to make sure the court ultimately makes his desired outcome. The script shows what a terribly painful situation he's in while allowing him some privacy about his exact motivations. I would love for Triet and Harari to win the Oscar, and the high probability of them making the nomination list is so exciting.
Beyond these five films, I'm not sure how much more I have to say about the likely contenders for Original Screenplay. As of this dialogue I haven't seen Maestro, though it doesn't seem like Cooper's script is being singled out for praise on the same level as his acting and directing. Air is an entirely vapid proposition, and I think Saltburn's big "reveal" ending scatters whatever alternately potent and embarrassing goodwill it earned from me til then. I wonder about Asteroid City or The Iron Claw sneaking into the field, as well-received projects which might have a hard time getting into crowded fields, but that might also mean they'll have a hard time getting in here. Are there any other films you'd want to shout out as unlikely possibilities, or do we want to go straight to naming faves and predicting Oscar's choices?
Nick and Eric assume the position to deliver their predictions
ERIC: Just a quick meniton for both Maestro and Saltburn. There are wonderful things about both pictures, but their scripts aren't one of them. Maestro is not specific on a lot of details that are crucial in understanding the central relationship...Bernstein's at-best-bisexuality, and how that works within the marriage, is given painfully short shrift, a disappointment since the relationship is so inherently interesting. But the script is awfully vague about the details. Saltburn starts off so strong, but around the midway point, Emerald Fennell stops developing her ideas. When they arrive at Saltburn, it becomes a thriller mostly about class issues, when she's set up so many fascinating ideas in the first half of the picture.
My predictions for nominations, in likelihood of landing a nod, are:
BARBIE
THE HOLDOVERS
PAST LIVES
ANATOMY OF A FALL
MAY DECEMBER
How about you?
NICK: I’m going to be incredibly risky here and completely agree with your predictions. I wouldn’t have them in the same order, but saying Barbie and Anatomy of a Fall are locks while Past Lives, The Holdovers, and May December are very likely without feeling absolutely ironclad is splitting the thinnest of hairs. If one of those miss or Barbie is deemed an Adapted Screenplay, I’ll peg The Iron Claw as the next slot, because why not.
As far as personal champions with not a single chance of being nominated, Saeed Roustaee’s Law of Tehran (originally released as Just 6.5) is maybe my favorite script of the year. A 2019 festival circuit player that finally got distribution this year, Roustaee’s script follows a police officer trying to hunt down a notorious drug kingpin, threatening and interrogating a daisy-chain of dealers, enforcers, and associates until he can get his hands on this shadowy figure who’s plagued Tehran for years. The script surveys a pretty extraordinary scope of corruption and morality across national, generic, and character-specific registers without turning anyone into a flat stand-in for Iran’s turmoils. Every role emerges as a layered, complicated personality, every conflict and relationship fraught with years of baggage despite every character moving and plotting through life on a moment-to-moment basis. This is as much a credit to Roustaee’s directing and collaboration with his actors, but the script is a doozy on its own terms.
What about you, Eric? Which original screenplay would you recommend to me and the folks reading this? Oh, and since we’re closing shop on this conversation soon, lemme take a second to say THANK YOU for being such a fun conversation partner, and for setting up these Oscar Volleys in the first place.
ERIC: I think our dive was deep! I’m not rooting for anything more strongly than the films we discussed. I’m sure someone will yell at us for something in the comments! Thanks for being such a smart sparring partner!
Nick, Eric, and Iranian superstar Peyman Mooadi wait in grizzled terror to see what will unfold in the comments
RELATED READING:
- Other Oscar Volleys – Makeup, Editing, Production Design, Costumes, Adapted Screenplay, Original Song, International Film, Supporting Actress & Actress
- Nathaniel’s Oscar Charts
- Team Experience Predictions – From Picture to Screenplay
Reader Comments (9)
Past Lives,Saltburn,Barbie,The Holdovers and Anatomy of a Fall are my predictions with May December 6th.
Nice shout-out to Saeed Roustaee ("Tehran's Law"). Sadly he's been sentenced to six months in prison for showing his latest film "Leila's Brothers" in Cannes this year.
https://variety.com/2023/film/global/leilas-brothers-director-saeed-roustaee-prison-iran-1235697739/
This was such a good conversation it made me miss podcasting! I think we're in a pretty good spot for this category where all of the likely players and the 'alternates' are good scripts. Love particularly what you had to say about MAY DECEMBER (which I both loved and was disappointed in, often simultaneously... so i'm still working through my reaction) and agree that though the script is strong it surely is aided by how tonally adroit and intellgvent and daring Todd Haynes tends to be as a director. I'ts interesting that he hasn't been writing all his own movies anymore (though I guess he will write his own again very soon)
My favourites so far are “Past Lives” and “Barbie”. Great movies with the foundation of an excellent script.
I was glad I saw “Anatomy of a Fall” in the theatre, because if I had streamed it, I would have turned it off when the prosecuting lawyer was doing his umpteenth harassment, and maybe not have gone back.
I’m dragging my feet on “The Holdovers”, because I have no desire to go back to the assumptions of the 1970s. The sad stories of rich white boys, the cliches that smart people are “intellectuals” who are bitter, unliked, and physically unappealing, and that black women only show up as service people.
Although not in the awards conversation, two movies with writing that I found appealing are writer/ director Nida Manzoor’s “Polite Society” and writer/ director Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me”. Both films looked at the admonishment “You have to stay within your genre. If you have this, you can’t have that. You have to have a consistent tone” and responded “Nah”.
Oh the fun of putting in all the things you like. There’s a little jolt of inner freedom as the thing that happens next in the movie is the thing you actually want to see.
I think the script is the weakest element of Barbie - I too think the The Big Speech is kind of an over-stuffed cold retread, but my bigger issue with it is that I think the last 20 minutes or so are basically a mess (a lot of hastily created bows to tie around like 4 different things to wrap everything up). Also, some of the "real world" parts just sort of sit there.
But that said - if May December and Past Lives and Anatomy of a Fall all make the final 5, it'll be an impressive line-up regardless. Any of the 3 would make an excellent winner.
@ScottC - The screenplay is absolutely the weakest element about Barbie. Gerwig just isn't much of a screenwriter. She has a terrible habit of allowing agendas to steer her narratives. It was true in Little Women, and it's true in Barbie. Where the former is concerned, she had no faith in her source material. Alcott's novel is already a feminist text; it doesn't need to be made into one. (And don't get me started on the structural issues in Little Women. If you've written and directed a film of Little Women in which the death of Beth doesn't bring viewers to tears, you've done something very, very wrong.) Barbie sets up an inspired premise -- how might an act of nostalgia (playing with one's old toys) reveal longing, disappointment and possibility in people? -- and abandons it entirely in favor of taking broad swipes at a cartoonish patriarchy. The screenplay fails to understand what Don't Look Up failed to understand; there is almost no humor to be had in lampooning that which is already ridiculous. So, while the first half of Barbie felt visionary and interesting, the second half felt lazy. Where the love for its screenplay is coming from I have no idea.
After Lady Bird, which feels pretty perfect, and Little Women, which succeeds while being very ambitious, I wouldn't dare say Gerwig isn't much of a screenwriter. Yet the Barbie script for me is a mess. It feels all over the place for such a short movie, with confusing internal logic and rules, an unclear goal for the protagonist and way too much exposition, and those are just some of the basic screenwriting no-nos.
She'll probably win for this, and it'll be nice to see her win alongside Noah Baumbach. She deserves her moment. We love her. We will all clap. But then we can stop pretending Barbie is all that.
Scott C and Jason Cooper,
The screenplay is absolutely the weakest element about Barbie.
It's so bad I can't understand who can praise that piece of garbage. The only nomination this screenplay deserves is to Razzies!
Great convo! Like you guys I'm rooting hard for ANATOMY OF A FALL, though I fear it's on the bubble even for a nomination. I guess I fall in the middle on THE HOLDOVERS, a movie I really liked but not *principally* because of the screenplay. It gets the job done; it also has a few contrivances and ultimately goes where we all expect it to, at least at an emotional level. It works primarily because the actors are so good.
BARBIE's script was a bit of a mess, IMO, and I'm in the thumbs-down camp for America Ferrara's big speech because it's just too on the nose. But the concept is clever and a lot of the writing is LOL funny, even though the ultimate message is pretty muddled. I won't begrudge its nomination, but I don't think it deserves to win.
And as for PAST LIVES, I have some issues with the setup, but the third act is just about perfect so I'd be happy to see it become this year's little movie that could.