Best Screenplay 1969

[Heksagon]

I have to admit, I'm really surprised at seeing Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice at five votes. I thought it would lucky to get even a single pity vote.

[Greg]

Easy Rider was one of my first experiences with a film that was of clear importance to film history that, from a qualitative standpoint, felt so obviously bad to me I had no idea if I was just missing something, or if the movie just didn't hold up over time, or if I needed to be watching it while on drugs, or any similar excuse for why I didn't connect with it. Screenplay especially seems like a ludicrous place to cite it -- it barely even qualifies as a plot, the dialogue feels like the improvised ramblings of men under the influence, and while it obviously tapped into the times, it didn't have anything interesting to say about them as far as I could see. Pass.

It has been quite awhile since I have seen Easy Rider, but, I do remember that I noticed the script delved into the idea of some of those who cheer America as "the land of the free" turning around and attacking others who exercised their freedoms, although it did it crudely.

[The Original BJ]

The Original lineup is a pretty motley crew -- I'd vote for any of my top three candidates under Adapted easily over any of these nominees. I, too, would have wanted nominations for Medium Cool, and Take the Money and Run, though it's not like those would be win-level either.

Easy Rider was one of my first experiences with a film that was of clear importance to film history that, from a qualitative standpoint, felt so obviously bad to me I had no idea if I was just missing something, or if the movie just didn't hold up over time, or if I needed to be watching it while on drugs, or any similar excuse for why I didn't connect with it. Screenplay especially seems like a ludicrous place to cite it -- it barely even qualifies as a plot, the dialogue feels like the improvised ramblings of men under the influence, and while it obviously tapped into the times, it didn't have anything interesting to say about them as far as I could see. Pass.

Speaking of movies I didn't get...I'm not sure I've ever been so flummoxed by a collective vote in one of these polls as I am that The Damned is the clear victor of the race on this board. I've been enthusiastic about other Visconti films I've seen, but I couldn't begin to see the levels of depth that some have found in this one. The actions of the characters strike me as no more psychologically complex than your average soap opera -- I got pretty uninterested in all of the familial back-stabbing and power struggles early on, and by the end of the movie, I didn't remotely care who was in charge of this family's company and who they had to destroy in order to get there. And it just goes on and on, repeating the same (shallow) point over and over again -- that the decay in families like the von Essenbecks allowed the Nazi rot to fester during the Third Reich. Sorry, but even though the movie might be daring -- and I won't deny that it IS often shocking and evocative in ways that could only be the result of a talented filmmaker taking risks -- I just don't see what makes any of this especially profound.

A lot of writers I know speak of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as an all-time great piece of screenwriting, and though I enjoy the movie, I wish I saw what they all did. It's a very sturdy entertainment -- the plot moves along at a pretty engaging speed, Redford and Newman have some fun snappy dialogue, and it's got a surprising amount of laughs for a western adventure. But the movie is pretty tame in terms of its content -- there's not much depth to the material, and maybe that could have been offset by a storyline with really original kick, but I didn't think the plot provided that level of invention either. For me, it's a solid enough example of writing craftsmanship, but not something truly special.

I found The Wild Bunch a far more bracing experience overall. Of course, its aims are far different than Butch and Sundance, but I'll take the startling gravity of the violence in Peckinpah's film to the way more facetious action of Goldman's. It's a strong piece of filmmaking, and I considered voting for it here. But...aren't its triumphs stronger in other areas -- direction, photography, editing? I couldn't really argue that the characters have much singular depth, or that the dialogue has any special sparkle, or even that the narrative has any great plot surprise. I'm not saying the movie is one of style over substance, but what's impressive is more the way the filmic elements are orchestrated to create such a powerful punch rather than a great screenplay.

So I'm going with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Certainly the script is episodic, but when I read the movie described here (and elsewhere) as a series of sketches, I was prepared for something far broader, closer to the hijincks of something like California Suite. But I think the conversations in this movie are pretty interesting -- often funny, but also insightful about the way human relationships actually operate (i.e. a lot less perfect than anyone imagines they will when they get into them), and specifically, how men and women were both trying to navigate the changing nature of marriage and romance in this era. And the ambiguous ending is pretty perfectly handled, in the way it allows the characters to process the various contradictory feelings they have about the leap they all just took together. I didn't vote for any of Paul Mazursky's other nominations, despite finding all of them very humane pieces of writing, so I'll take my last chance to finally make him a winner in our game.

[The Original BJ]

I feel like I could use a whole day just to catch up on posting here, but little by little, I'll get there...

Among Adapted alternates, it's also worth citing Army of Shadows, despite the fact that it didn't reach the U.S. until decades later.

Anne of the Thousand Days is the obvious turkey of the bunch. I first saw the movie in my tenth grade history class, and that's pretty much what it feels like -- homework for history class. You can feel a writer's hand in something like A Man for All Seasons -- that movie clearly had a TAKE on historical events. But Anne is just a boring costume parade, with virtually nothing impressive about the writing.

Goodbye, Columbus is obviously a minor movie, but I found it quite likable. At its foundation, it's got pretty solid romantic comedy credentials -- it's both funny and heartfelt, with a well-drawn central relationship and a lot of engaging conversation. But the script also touches upon some deeper issues involving class, religion, and gender roles in a changing society. I assume a lot of this was right there in Roth's source material, but I have to give credit to the screenwriter for bringing out such grace notes anyway. Given the competition, it's way outclassed, but it's one of those movies that I'd literally heard nothing about until I saw it a couple weeks ago and feel glad to have discovered it.

The remaining three scripts are all pretty exceptional. I look ahead to some years we'll be doing (like '66 and '65), and conclude that any one of these films would have had my vote with ease in those fields.

I'll second what Mister Tee wrote about plot propulsion in Z. Obviously we should evaluate cinema on more than just a "what's going to happen next?" factor, but for sheer viewer engagement, it's pretty difficult to deny that Z's script is an amazingly constructed piece of suspense. Luckily, in this case, there was also a lot beneath the surface, as the movie's complicated and angry account of the hopelessness people can feel when faced with an oppressive political regime makes the movie way more than a simple police thriller. And so many of the little environmental details feel spot-on -- not like I would know, but the movie really feels like it captures the way daily human lives have to operate when encompassed by a state of political turmoil. I wouldn't begrudge anyone who voted for this.

I have read Horace McCoy's book They Shoot Horses Don't They?, and though I think it's quite enjoyable hardboiled fare, I think movie's screenplay took the material to a completely different level. There are entire characters and plot elements invented for the film that feel so integral to story (Susannah York's desperate actress, Red Buttons's doomed sailor, the emcee's reveal to Gloria about how much the dance competition winners will actually earn and why), that they make the novel feel almost like a great pulpy set-up that only reached its full potential once the movie version expanded it into an overwhelming tragedy. I imagine the book must have felt bracing in the '30's; the movie must have seemed similarly edgy in the '60's; and, watched today, in the era of 24-hour news cycles and reality tv, it packs no less a punch. It's a real personal favorite for me, and I really hate voting against it...

...but Midnight Cowboy is on the ballot, and it's the best script of the year. Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo are two dynamite creations -- both fully sympathetic, both riddled with flaws and contradictions, both hugely singular and fascinating individuals. The push-pull bond between them, as they repel and rely upon one another, makes for a fascinating narrative, made even more exciting by those quick flashbacks that deepen our understanding of where these characters are coming from. In watching a lot of '60's & '70's movies for this poll series lately, it's struck me that the difference between a time capsule piece that feels relevant today, and one that just feels dated, is very hard for me to quantify. Needless to say, Midnight Cowboy manages to tap into a New York of its era that is very different from one I have ever experienced, while at the same time telling a story that completely engrossed, and indeed, devastated me, watching it decades later. How it pulled this off when so many other films surrounding it do not is anybody's guess -- but I'll say a pretty miraculously crafted screenplay is a great start. Best Adapted Screenplay of '69.

[Big Magilla]

Done.

[The Original BJ]

Magilla, can you enable re-voting on this one? I already voted in one category, and would like to cast a vote in the other. Thanks!

[ITALIANO]

Mister Tee's reaction to The Damned is kind-of understandable. It would probably be more understandable today - back then, I'd say, cinema, especially European cinema (and the theatre too, by the way) could be quite tough. It's definitely a movie of its time - it'd be unthinkable in 2015. And - needless to say - it started a trend, and led to a sub-genre, the nazisploitation, which reached truly infamous levels of bad taste. There's no bad taste in The Damned - Visconti was a sophisticated intellectual - but the psychosexual approach is very late 60s-early 70s, and can seem excessive by today's less morbid (but also more puritanical, more politically-correct) standards. Visconti's nazis arent, say, Spielberg's nazis; yet unlike Spielberg, Visconti had really known them, had lived through that period. This doesn't make HIS Nazis more realistic, of course (distance actually often helps), but what's real, and sometimes unconfortably so, it's the director-screenwriter's painful, emotional, ambiguous, and yes, sexual approach to that complex time. And while it is obviously true that sexuality isn't the main point about the Nazi movement - it still IS a point, and not a forgettable one. Visconti may have projected some of his personal torments into that (which is what artists are allowed to do) - but there truly was a sexual aspect there. The Damned is an imperfect movie and an imperfect script. I wouldn't vote for it if it were up against, I don't know, The Godfather Part II or The Graduate. But honestly - except maybe for some scenes in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (the ones with Dyan Cannon especially, I seem to remember) - the competition here is quite weak, and like it or not The Damned is an example of daring cinema - cinema with a scope, cinema which can provoke, cinema which will make you react and think, or even leave your seat in disgust, but also cinema which unlike too many contemporary movies won't leave you indifferent. It's a clear choice in this field.

It's less easy in Adapted. This is a case where having read the original material would certainly help: I dont know, for example, how much of the (brilliant, affecting) screenpley for They Shoot Horses, Don't They directly comes from the supposedly brilliant and affecting novel it is based on. It would be a winner in most years - all those sharply drawn characters, the way they interact... But THIS year there's also Z, one of the best, most complex political movies ever made (and this was a period of important political movies - but Z still stands out). And there's the one I voted for, Midnight Cowboy. To be completely honest, I picked it because I didn't want to choose a foreign nominee again - I mean, American movies CAN be very well-written, too. And this is a case of very well-written American movie: intelligent, uncompromising, which works both as a portrayal of a relationship and of the society this relationship takes place in.

[Mister Tee]

1969 was a truly exciting year to be going to the movies, but, looking over this list, even allowing for my favored substitutions, I conclude it was more thrilling for the doors being opened than for the completely fulfilled works of art it produced. Many of the entries here seem pretty ragged, especially in the distance of time.

The original side seems especially thin, and I couldn’t do much to alleviate that. My favorite original work of the year was Medium Cool, but I don’t think of it as the work of a writer – it had a lot of flash and invention, but it wasn’t exactly a carefully developed story (possibly because Wexler conceived it, after the fact, around footage he’d earlier shot at the Chicago convention). Beyond that, I’d offer my earliest plug for Woody Allen, for his Take the Money and Run, but even I’ll admit that’s part nostalgia – the movie was a decent first effort, but not close to even his early 70s comedies. And I liked If…, though it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen it.

Easy Rider was probably the worst of the original nominees, in that it barely seemed written at all. What effective moments there were – mostly anything to do with Jack Nicholson’s character – seemed half-improvised. And while the film had right here/right now subject matter in its “rednecks take on the freaks” story, it was such a simplistic treatment that even my 18 year old self knew it was bogus. This nomination is more tribute to the film’s unexpected box office success than to its quality.

BJ correctly remembers my feeling about The Damned. I saw it at a college film society – raced over after a rehearsal; just barely made the screening, highly motivated, because a friend had recommended it. And I just loathed it. I found the subject matter incredibly shallow: two and a half hours of “the Nazis were all a bunch of perverts.” The film laid on the kink really heavy, in that phony “we disapprove of all this – oh: look closer!” way. I didn’t think the film had anything faintly interesting to say, and it didn’t say it at excruciating length -- without one comic moment I can recall (the film might have been more tolerable if it had played at a camp level, rather than with this dreary solemnity). My lasting memory of that evening is practically running from the auditorium afterward – it felt like a prison escape. I’ve admired several Visconti films (The Leopard above all), but this one was a nightmare for me.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was one of several films of the era (The Producers and MASH were others) semi-spoiled for me by friends who insisted on telling me “just one part”. (I soon made it policy to shut such people up on the spot) In the case of Butch Cassidy, spoiling the gags is doing real damage to the film, because it’s not like there was a lot of substance behind them. The film moved along in sprightly enough fashion, and had that surprise doomy ending (which made my cousin called it a poor man’s Bonnie and Clyde), but mostly it was Newman and Redford trading quips and batting their blue eyes at one another. With all that, it’s easy to see why the picture was a hit, and why Oscar voters opted for it here – it was the easy listening choice. And I don’t hate it. It’d just never get my vote.

I’d actually expected The Wild Bunch to dominate voting here, given the way its critical reputation has, if anything, grown with the years. I like Peckinpah’s film, but as a film, not as a screenplay. What’s exciting about it are the visuals – especially that frozen-in-time moment of the bridge about to collapse. The dialogue is perfunctory at best, and sometimes well below that – some of the crowd banter has the cringe-making feel of an amateur Shakespeare production. So, while I like the film, I couldn’t in conscience vote for its script.

Which leaves me with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice – the NY Critics’ choice, I might remind people. I recognize, from a re-watch not long ago, that the movie is more like a batch of sketches strung together than any coherent whole. Some of those sketches, though -- especially those between Gould and Cannon -- are pretty funny, and the film did have one over-arching idea that was fresh for the time: that aging hipsters would want to partake of the brave new world the youthful 60s had ushered in, but would be hopelessly hamstrung by their conventional upbringings, and thus pathetically unable to commit to it. I grant it’s not that much, but, given what I think of the other nominees, it’s the place I park my vote. I dislike it less than all the others.

Alice’s Restaurant is in one small way like Adaptation – while it creates a much larger, and original, world, it also contains a complete dramatization of an existing work (in this case, Guthrie’s famous talking-blues record). Thus, it’s technically an adaptation, and would be one of my substitutes -- as would Last Summer, though that’s mostly on the basis of the affection I had for it as a 18 year old college freshman.

The best to be said for Anne of a Thousand Days is, in the group of Universal movies that got 10 undeserved nominations, it’s not as awful as Airport. It was also, of course, nowhere in the class of A Man for All seasons, which had covered some of the same ground just a few years earlier. A waste of a nomination.

Goodbye, Columbus is another of those movies I never hear anyone speak of today, and about which I’d love to hear opinion. It was a bit of a fluke even in its day: a genuine popular hit based on a literary novella (can you imagine a Philip Roth work being a major studio release today?). Schulman’s adaptation was a bit cruder than the source material – changing the family divide from Newark/Short Hills to Bronx/Westchester made the class point over-obvious – but characters like the jock brother were surprisingly well-drawn. And I recall the film being funny in ways that were fresh at the time: the big audience laugh (“What have you been doing this summer?” “Growing a penis”) was essentially reprised last year with Naomi Watts’ “We share a vagina” in Birdman. The film’s not up to the level of the other three nominees, but it’s not bad for a mainstream effort.

I’ve never read the McCoy novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, but the film fashioned from it felt both authentically 30s and also bracingly contemporary in 1969. The concept is a vivid one; the dialogue crackles (“Did anyone ever tell you -- ?” “Yeah; they did”); a host of characters are vividly drawn. The film of course has its drawbacks as well: the Sarazin character is woefully weak (some of which can be credited to a bad actor, but not all), and the title line is redundantly illustrated, to numbing effect. But the pros widely outweigh the cons, and the nomination here is much deserved. Only the fact the other two nominees are exceptional keep this out of the running for my vote.

I looked at about half of Z within the last month or two, when it turned up on TCM. Put better: I dropped in on it at mid-point, and found myself unable to tear myself away till the finish. At heart, the film is a police procedural (albeit with a political angle), and it has the plot propulsion of the best of the genre. A number of critics at the time, while enjoying the film, were queasy about its using the techniques of the thriller to sell a political point – raising the obvious question, how would you feel about a film this exciting that made a progressive regime look sinister? I acknowledge that limitation, but still pretty much love the film.

But Midnight Cowboy is a personal heirloom – a film for me so much a part of my dawning love for movies that, whether it truly lives up to what I thought of it in 1969 (or the two other times I saw it over the next year or two), I can’t keep myself from voting for it. The two characters at the center are vividly drawn – and, at the time, galactically far from my personal experience. It’s a miracle the story manages to make us care for them much. Care, hell: at the end, I was devastated by what happened to the characters; I don’t know that any movie I’ve ever seen broke my heart quite so fully. Oh, and the dialogue was often funny (“I bet you’ve never even been laid” “That’s a subject I save for confession” “And when’s the last time you went to confession?” “That’s between me and my confessor”), when it wasn’t crushing (“Don’t get sore, but I don’t think I can walk anymore”). A vote for great memories: Waldo Salt for Midnight Cowboy.

[Heksagon]

I'm positively surprised to notice that the Original category here offers me another chance to participate after such a long break.

Only Bob & Carol strikes me a sub-par nominee here. Weak to begin with, but hopelessly dated by now. The rest of the nominees are good films, although for Easy Rider, screenplay is probably the weakest part of the movie, so it's easy to discard it in this line-up.

The remaining three are all solid nominees, and it's a tough choice between these. I'm going with The Wild Bunch.

[Kellens101]

My big omission would be Once Upon a Time in the West. Even though it's not primarily a writer's movie, I would still nominate it here and for other nominations. I would gladly nominate it for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Henry Fonda, Best Editing and Best Sound. I would also give it wins for the glorious operatic score, the beautiful widescreen cinematography and the meticulous production design.

[dws1982]

I've had a DVD of The Damned sitting here for years so I might watch it for this poll, although even then I might should refrain from voting because I haven't seen Bob and Carol..., in many many years and don't recall much about it.

Haven't seen Goodbye Columbus to vote in Adapted although I think Z is the best of the other four. They Shoot Horses Don't They? is a great screenplay (and one of Pollack's two or three best films), as is Midnight Cowboy, although if I'm being honest I think the film as a whole is pretty seriously undone by Schlesinger's gimmicky, attention-seeking visuals.

[The Original BJ]

I'm now very curious to watch The Damned coming up -- it's winning its category with enthusiastic votes from Magilla and Precious Doll, while at the same time, Mister Tee has said he thought he would die watching it. That level of polarization is fairly rare around here.

[Precious Doll]

Original

The Damned is an easy choice here.

Adapted

I echo Magilla. Midnight Cowboy but in most other years Z or They Shoot Horses Don't They?

Disappointing omissions of The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie & If given the rest of the nominees.

[Big Magilla]

1969 was a watershed year for movies, though not necessarily for screenplays.

Original

William Goldman's screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which won the Oscar was a safe bet. It was an ingratiating middle of the road script that was neither too simple nor too edgy, something the majority of Academy members could vote for without embarrassment. The film itself had been most people's predicted winner for Best Picture so its win here was neither surprising nor upsetting. Luchino Visconti and co-writers Nicola Baddaluco and Enrico Medioli's script for The Damned, however, was more complex and interesting and should have won.

Sam Peckinpah and company's script for The Wild Bunch was strong, but Peckinpah's direction and the acting of a veteran cast, not the script, is what we remember most about it.

Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is a film I saw once when it came out and found a one-joke bore. It was titillation without a payoff, a very silly movie as I recall. Easy Rider is best remembered for its look at the hippie and drug cultures of the day and for Jack Nicholson's breakthrough performance. Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern's script, though, is amateurish at best, man.

I'd replace Easy Rider and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice with Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool and David Sherwin's If....

Adapted

Lots to choose from here, so, why, oh why, did they have to nominate the second-rate script for Anne of the Thousand Days? The script which incredulously won the Golden Globe, or maybe not so incredulously given the dinner the producers threw the voters, was based on a 1946 Broadway play and made completely irrelevant by Robert Bolt's script for A Man for All Seasons three years earlier.

Goodbye, Columbus was a slickly written contemporary comedy, but the non-nominated True Grit, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Gaily, Gaily and The Reivers were better written IMO. The best adaptations, however, were those of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Z and Midnight Cowboy, all of which were nominated.

In any other year either Horses or Z would be a good choice, but this was the year of the groundbreaking Midnight Cowboy so my vote goes easily to Waldo Salt for the only X-rated movie ever to win an Oscar for Best Screenplay as well as Best Picture and Director.

[Kellens101]

What were the best screenplays of 1969?