“Talking Women” won the USC Libraries Scripter Award for Adapted Screenplay at a ceremony on the USC campus in Los Angeles on Saturday night.
The Scripter Award is given to both the writer of an adapted screenplay and the author of the original material on which the script was based, meaning the award went to writer-director Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews, whose novel by 2018 formed the foundation. for Polley’s film.
In the Scripters’ 34-year history, the winner has matched the Oscar winner 14 times, most in an eight-year streak between 2010 and 2017.
Other finalists included screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro for “Living,” based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (via Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese film “Ikiru,” which was not mentioned in Scripter’s quote). ; screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz and journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for “ella She Said”; and Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” based on the 19th-century fairy tale by Carlos Caridi. “Pinocchio” was the first animated feature nominated for a screenwriter.
The fifth finalist was a strange case. Originally, Scripter’s organizers announced that “Top Gun: Maverick” was a finalist and had used characters from a 1983 magazine article by Ehud Yonay that more directly inspired the original 1986 “Top Gun.” Before the nominations were announced, a member of Scripter’s selection committee revealed that the film did not appear on the final ballot and had been withdrawn at the request of Paramount.
Representatives for the film and the Scripter Prize declined to comment, but the likely reason is that Paramount is currently in a court battle with the Yonay estate over “Top Gun: Maverick.” In a motion to dismiss, the studio held that “Maverick” bears no similarities to the original 1983 article, but a judge ruled against that motion in November. Scripter’s ceremony was held with no official mention of “Top Gun” or his original status as a finalist.
In the television category, which was added in 2015, the winner was “Slow Horses,” with the award going to novelist Mick Herron and screenwriter Will Smith. (He is a British screenwriter, and yes, there were plenty of jokes about the other Will Smith at another awards show.)
The ceremony took place at the USC Edward R. Doheny Memorial Library and was a fundraiser for USC Libraries. It was the first in-person Scripter ceremony since the start of the pandemic.
FILM FINALISTS
Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” based on the fairy tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi
Kazuo Ishiguro for “Living” based on the novel “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy
Rebecca Lenkiewicz for “She Said” based on the nonfiction book “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement” by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Screenwriter Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews for “Women Talking” *WINNER
WITHDRAWN NOMINATION: Peter Craig, Ehren Kruger, Justin Marks, Christopher McQuarrie and Eric Warren for “Top Gun: Maverick,” based on characters from the 1983 “California” magazine article “Top Guns” by Ehud Yonay
TELEVISION FINALISTS
Peter Morgan, for the episode “Couple 31”, of “The Crown”, based on his play “The Audience”
Taffy Brodesser-Akner for the “Fleishman Is in Trouble” episode “The Liver,” based on her book of the same name
Will Smith for the “Failure’s Contagious” episode of “Slow Horses,” based on the novel by Mick Herron *WINNER
JT Rogers for the “Tokyo Vice” episode “Yoshino”, based on the memoir “Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan” by Jake Adelstein
Dustin Lance Black for the “Under the Banner of Heaven” episode “When God Was Love,” based on the nonfiction work of Jon Krakauer
