Adapted Screenplay was a much better field overall, though I also think The Ice Storm definitely should have been there, and its total shut-out seems a real mystery to me in such a so-so year. I would also advocate for Jackie Brown, probably Quentin's most deeply felt script.
Wag the Dog is clearly the one to go first, and the only nominee I really think shouldn't be there. I think the premise is pretty great, and I think it has some smart dialogue and laughs along the way. But I thought the execution was all just too facetious to be taken seriously, and there came a point when I stopped laughing just because it got too silly. Paradoxically, I think the movie might have been better if it had been even MORE ridiculous, at which point it might have become the truly outrageous satire it clearly wanted to be. Maybe seeing it post-Lewinsky didn't help things, but it seemed to me the tone of the movie was somewhere between a grounded political comedy (like Primary Colors) and a madcap insane one (like Dr. Strangelove) and the middle ground made for awkward territory.
None of the other nominees are undeserving. Donnie Brasco is an intelligent and efficient undercover cop thriller, with two very well-drawn characters at its center. (Interesting to think now...this movie represented a bit of a return to form for Pacino after a period of hamminess, as well as the reverse for Depp, one of the last times he played an actual human before his career as a cartoon character began). I can't say I found the movie a tremendously innovative spin on a familiar genre -- elements like the Depp/Heche marriage breakdown feel pretty routine for this type of story -- but its narrative is consistently engaging, full of snappy dialogue, and possessing an air of sadness that gave the movie a sense of maturity beyond many policiers. It doesn't get my vote, but I agree it was one of the year's solid efforts.
I cosign what Mister Tee wrote about The Wings of the Dove, that it somehow managed to capture the spirit of both Henry James's class-conscious stories of social climbers as well as the dark and cynical worlds of modern noirs. I remember settling in to watch the movie and expecting Masterpiece Theatre, and what I got was a film that was far more gripping and thematically biting than I'd expected. I wouldn't say it's quite the top-flight effort that, say, Scorsese's take on The Age of Innocence is -- that was an adaptation that allowed me to think about a first-rate novel in a completely new way. But, simply for avoiding the embalmed feeling of so many classic lit adaptations, Wings of the Dove deserves praise nonetheless.
My two favorite movies of the year are L.A. Confidential and The Sweet Hereafter, so my choice obviously comes down to those two screenplays. I think Sweet Hereafter is so good, in fact, that I'd have picked this script over any Adapted Screenplay I've voted for in this game up to this point. I have read Russell Banks's novel, and I think Atom Egoyan's adaptation is really superb, taking the incidents from the novel but fashioning a completely new structure. (The book is told in several first-person accounts from the points of view of various characters). And I think one of Egoyan's biggest coups is placing the actual depiction of the bus accident where he does -- it would have seemed more obvious to slot it at the beginning of the movie (as catalyst for the action), or at the end (as a final objective reveal after we've been teased with various accounts of that day). But in the middle of the film, it pops up with startling shock and and almost mundane chilliness, an apex in the tragic lives of the film's characters, but neither the beginning nor end of their suffering. And the way Egoyan weaves in all of the flashbacks, as well as Ian Holm's parallel narrative with his own doomed child, is graceful and assured. The Sweet Hereafter is a beautiful movie -- devastating, morally thorny, and gripping on a sheer plot level -- and it would have been a stellar choice here.
But I went with Egoyan under Director as recognition for his singular vision. L.A. Confidential, in contrast, seems more the work of old-fashioned Hollywood craft...but what craft it is! From the opening voiceover, Hanson and Helgeland establish a tantalizingly exciting world, full of glamor, intrigue, and danger, and fill it with Ellroy's collection of fascinating and grotesque characters. The dialogue is full of fabulous exchanges ("A hooker cut to look like Lana Turner is still a hooker." / "That IS Lana Turner."), the sense of moral decay that rots the city gives the film a deliciously bitter edge, and the skill at which the writers juggle their plot lines and keep momentum whirling is a marvel. I've said this before on this board, but I will never forget the moment I was watching the movie, and saw the film's two seemingly disparate plot lines suddenly connect in a manner that basically felt like the reveal of an astounding but effortless magic trick. I know people nitpick about the comparative sunniness of the ending, which is far less fatalistic than a lot of the story we'd seen up to that point. But that's never bothered me -- it's not like suddenly everyone alive gets the perfect life, as even the characters who have survived have endured (and will continue to slog through) plenty of misery. Count me as one of L.A. Confidential's huge supporters, and despite a superlative competitor, I go with the actual winner in this category.
Best Screenplay 1997
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
My favorite line in the film is the Burt Reynolds character saying, "We are about to make film history. . . on videotape."The Original BJ wrote:But Boogie Nights is by far the best original script of the year. . . from the intercut parking lot fight/limousine porn shoot gone wrong. . .
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Mister Tee
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Re: Best Screenplay 1997
The adapted slate is pretty clearly solid, but 17 years on I still can’t believe my beloved writers’ branch could leave out The Ice Storm – an exquisite movie, my favorite on the year, and the one that would get my vote without hesitation had I only the opportunity.
None of the actual nominees falls short of decent, but Wag the Dog is the weakest of the bunch. I was lucky enough to see the film during the brief window between its Christmas debut and mid-January, when it became a pundit reference point for the exploding Lewinsky scandal – after which I think it would have been too disheartening to watch. Even seeing it under beneficial circumstances, though, I just didn’t think the film was all that funny, which had been its critical reputation -- and, since it was clearly satire, a shortage of the truly-funny was somewhat deadening. It was strictly “okay”, not a contender for my vote. (And, side issue: calling it an adaptation is a huge stretch. I’d read Larry Beinhart’s American Hero, and, apart from the bare premise “film director stages a fake war to help a president’s re-election”, it bore no resemblance to the script Mamet turned out)
I hadn’t read Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter (though I’ve read and admired several of his other books), so I have no way of knowing how good an adaptation Egoyan’s film offers. The film certainly does a beautiful job capturing the feel of chilly climes, both urban and rural, and it’s absorbing enough to watch. But, as I said in the film/director thread, I thought Sarah Polley’s climactic action was too one-dimensional to serve as a satisfying way to resolve all the conflicts set in motion. I like the film, but in a 10th-through-20th best of the year way. So, it won’t get my vote.
The Wings of the Dove is simultaneously a solid translation of the Henry James sensibility to the screen and a tauter, more directly engaging drama that has echoes of James M. Cain’s noirs. Few costume dramas have held me in as tight a grip. The film was good enough that I expected considerably more from collaborators Softley and Amini; their lackluster subsequent credits make this easily the strongest lifetime achievement for each. The film doesn’t get my vote, but it does have my great respect.
LA Confidential is another book I’d read prior to seeing the film, and that fact – plus the outlandish praise the film received, from Cannes onward – probably set me up to be a tad disappointed. Ellroy’s novel – third of a four-volume 40s/50s LA chronicle – was sprawling and teeming with plots, several of which clearly had to be jettisoned…but it happened my favorite (centered around a Disney-like mogul) was one of the ones that went. The climax was the part of the novel I’d found weakest, and Hanson/Helgeland were smart enough to change it, but what they came up with wasn’t all that much better. (Plus they softened the outcome: for those who always felt Bud White couldn’t have survived that wash of bullets – in the book, he didn’t; and Dudley Smith DID survive on the page – a walking symbol of ineradicable corruption) I didn’t dislike the movie or anything; even with my complaints, I rated it one of the four or five best films of the year. But I was unable to join in the general jubilation the film provoked, and, as one inclined to boost Ellroy to begin with, I found that a letdown.
But, you know what: maybe I needed to look at the film without such expectations. The other night, it was running on Sundance, and I watched all the way through, liking it a lot more. I still found the ending didn’t work (both the “happy couple drives off” aspect, and the fact that all the plot machinations, in the end, just led to a heroin racket -- that seemed small potatoes). But the smoothness of the film, the way the filmmakers effortlessly juggled so many personalities and story lines, hit me as far more impressive than my memory’d suggested. I’m now thinking maybe it was the deserving winner, after all.
But I voted for this a week ago, before this re-watch, and at the time I chose Donnie Brasco, which I’m not averse to sticking with. For those who weren’t following 1997 in real time, Donnie Brasco had the great advantage of being a February release – that greatest of rarities, a good movie for grown-ups in early year. One tends to be exceedingly grateful for such films. But Brasco has virtues to recommend it beyond timing. It’s one of the few nonfiction films I can think of that, despite sticking to the factual, manages to suggest a writer’s governing intelligence – there are rich themes threading through the script: doing a nice, delicate job of illustrating the similarly servile positions Pacino’s Lefty and Depp’s Donnie both occupy, and making us feel for both of them in the story’s denouement. The script also has a nice chunk of the Attanasio wit – the “fuggedaboudit” discussion the high point, but there’s lots more throughout. Attanasio was, for a while, one of the best at crafting screen stories for intelligent adults. I don’t think I’m going to be able to vote for him in his other nomination, so I’ve given him the nod here.
The original slate is weaker – not so much that the films are bad (they’re all at least solidly constructed), but that they mostly don’t aspire very high. I can’t come up with anything egregiously omitted that would have met that standard, either – though I would, like Sabin, acknowledge the great cleverness of Grosse Point Blank, and, this one time only, acknowledge Kevin Smith, whose Chasing Amy, in among the raunch, struck some interesting human chords.
The history of Hollywood is full of instances of directors rewriting scripts, but I don’t know there’s ever been a case where the fact was so obvious as it is in As Good As It Gets. The bare-bones story (the Mark Andrus contribution) is borderline piece-of-shit, but individual scenes (especially between Nicholson and Hunt) glisten with Brooksian tender wit – my favorite: HE: You make me want to be a better man. SHE: That’s maybe the best compliment I ever got. HE: Then I overshot; I was just looking to keep you from walking out. The overall effect was enough to make the film into a solid hit, but definitely not enough to get me to vote it a writing prize.
The Full Monty is probably one of those films you had to be around for to understand its extravagant Academy showing. Though it had been well reviewed at Sundance, it was not seen as any kind of commercial hotshot (in fact, Searchlight spent much of the year begging the creators to change that WTF title). But it opened surprisingly big in late summer, and just played and played through the Fall – the kind of sleeper we rarely see anymore. All this, unsurprisingly, led to the film being over-inflated in Hollywood circles, and the crowd that always seems to rally around a sweet, inoffensive crowd-pleaser pushed it into all the major Oscar categories. I do think original screenplay is a place it would have landed regardless – indie hits have always scored well with the writers. But it’s way too conventional to merit consideration.
Good Will Hunting is a movie where I like most everything about it except the central idea. It’s got a lot of strong dialogue, and an attitude that prevents it from sinking into a morass of sweetness. But that sweetness is constantly lurking just beneath the surface: this is really a Hollywood crowd-pleaser in indie garb (hearing William Goldman played a significant at-least-advisory role came as no surprise). So, while I salute the craft involved, I can’t vote for the film.
As far as I’m concerned, Woody Allen’s golden age ended with Husbands and Wives in 1992. Though I trooped faithfully each year after that to his latest releases, I became progressively more discouraged by how thin the films were compared to most everything in the 70s and 80s (and, yes, I include Bullets over Broadway in that judgment). Deconstructing Harry was, in that context, a startling return to form: a sharp-edged, quite funny comedy with bitter and incisive human observation – very much of a piece with his earlier triumphs, if not their full equal. As it turned out, the film didn’t mark the start of a new golden period – Woody’s next half-dozen films included some of his very weakest, and even the better of his more recent movies are lesser creatures than we once expected from him. But, in this one instance, he showed some glimmers of his best self, and I considered voting for it.
But Boogie Nights is the best film of this bunch by far, and, though I view it as far more a directorial achievement than a screenwriting one (it’s one of the great essentially-debut directing jobs in movie history), it’s a solid enough piece of writing/storytelling to rate the vote. The film takes us inside an entire community we’d likely never encounter otherwise, and lets us get to know a myriad of characters. It takes us through the rush of excitement (and also the silliness) that was the porn world (and, to some extent, America at large) in the liberated 70s, then brings it down to a nasty crash in the 80s…only to emerge, battered but still ambulatory, on the other side. As I’ve said of Anderson in the past: no other contemporary American director has such a sense of ambition; creates such a giddy high simply from how far he deigns to reach in his films. Boogie Nights remains one of his great achievements, and takes the prize from this less-than-stellar field.
None of the actual nominees falls short of decent, but Wag the Dog is the weakest of the bunch. I was lucky enough to see the film during the brief window between its Christmas debut and mid-January, when it became a pundit reference point for the exploding Lewinsky scandal – after which I think it would have been too disheartening to watch. Even seeing it under beneficial circumstances, though, I just didn’t think the film was all that funny, which had been its critical reputation -- and, since it was clearly satire, a shortage of the truly-funny was somewhat deadening. It was strictly “okay”, not a contender for my vote. (And, side issue: calling it an adaptation is a huge stretch. I’d read Larry Beinhart’s American Hero, and, apart from the bare premise “film director stages a fake war to help a president’s re-election”, it bore no resemblance to the script Mamet turned out)
I hadn’t read Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter (though I’ve read and admired several of his other books), so I have no way of knowing how good an adaptation Egoyan’s film offers. The film certainly does a beautiful job capturing the feel of chilly climes, both urban and rural, and it’s absorbing enough to watch. But, as I said in the film/director thread, I thought Sarah Polley’s climactic action was too one-dimensional to serve as a satisfying way to resolve all the conflicts set in motion. I like the film, but in a 10th-through-20th best of the year way. So, it won’t get my vote.
The Wings of the Dove is simultaneously a solid translation of the Henry James sensibility to the screen and a tauter, more directly engaging drama that has echoes of James M. Cain’s noirs. Few costume dramas have held me in as tight a grip. The film was good enough that I expected considerably more from collaborators Softley and Amini; their lackluster subsequent credits make this easily the strongest lifetime achievement for each. The film doesn’t get my vote, but it does have my great respect.
LA Confidential is another book I’d read prior to seeing the film, and that fact – plus the outlandish praise the film received, from Cannes onward – probably set me up to be a tad disappointed. Ellroy’s novel – third of a four-volume 40s/50s LA chronicle – was sprawling and teeming with plots, several of which clearly had to be jettisoned…but it happened my favorite (centered around a Disney-like mogul) was one of the ones that went. The climax was the part of the novel I’d found weakest, and Hanson/Helgeland were smart enough to change it, but what they came up with wasn’t all that much better. (Plus they softened the outcome: for those who always felt Bud White couldn’t have survived that wash of bullets – in the book, he didn’t; and Dudley Smith DID survive on the page – a walking symbol of ineradicable corruption) I didn’t dislike the movie or anything; even with my complaints, I rated it one of the four or five best films of the year. But I was unable to join in the general jubilation the film provoked, and, as one inclined to boost Ellroy to begin with, I found that a letdown.
But, you know what: maybe I needed to look at the film without such expectations. The other night, it was running on Sundance, and I watched all the way through, liking it a lot more. I still found the ending didn’t work (both the “happy couple drives off” aspect, and the fact that all the plot machinations, in the end, just led to a heroin racket -- that seemed small potatoes). But the smoothness of the film, the way the filmmakers effortlessly juggled so many personalities and story lines, hit me as far more impressive than my memory’d suggested. I’m now thinking maybe it was the deserving winner, after all.
But I voted for this a week ago, before this re-watch, and at the time I chose Donnie Brasco, which I’m not averse to sticking with. For those who weren’t following 1997 in real time, Donnie Brasco had the great advantage of being a February release – that greatest of rarities, a good movie for grown-ups in early year. One tends to be exceedingly grateful for such films. But Brasco has virtues to recommend it beyond timing. It’s one of the few nonfiction films I can think of that, despite sticking to the factual, manages to suggest a writer’s governing intelligence – there are rich themes threading through the script: doing a nice, delicate job of illustrating the similarly servile positions Pacino’s Lefty and Depp’s Donnie both occupy, and making us feel for both of them in the story’s denouement. The script also has a nice chunk of the Attanasio wit – the “fuggedaboudit” discussion the high point, but there’s lots more throughout. Attanasio was, for a while, one of the best at crafting screen stories for intelligent adults. I don’t think I’m going to be able to vote for him in his other nomination, so I’ve given him the nod here.
The original slate is weaker – not so much that the films are bad (they’re all at least solidly constructed), but that they mostly don’t aspire very high. I can’t come up with anything egregiously omitted that would have met that standard, either – though I would, like Sabin, acknowledge the great cleverness of Grosse Point Blank, and, this one time only, acknowledge Kevin Smith, whose Chasing Amy, in among the raunch, struck some interesting human chords.
The history of Hollywood is full of instances of directors rewriting scripts, but I don’t know there’s ever been a case where the fact was so obvious as it is in As Good As It Gets. The bare-bones story (the Mark Andrus contribution) is borderline piece-of-shit, but individual scenes (especially between Nicholson and Hunt) glisten with Brooksian tender wit – my favorite: HE: You make me want to be a better man. SHE: That’s maybe the best compliment I ever got. HE: Then I overshot; I was just looking to keep you from walking out. The overall effect was enough to make the film into a solid hit, but definitely not enough to get me to vote it a writing prize.
The Full Monty is probably one of those films you had to be around for to understand its extravagant Academy showing. Though it had been well reviewed at Sundance, it was not seen as any kind of commercial hotshot (in fact, Searchlight spent much of the year begging the creators to change that WTF title). But it opened surprisingly big in late summer, and just played and played through the Fall – the kind of sleeper we rarely see anymore. All this, unsurprisingly, led to the film being over-inflated in Hollywood circles, and the crowd that always seems to rally around a sweet, inoffensive crowd-pleaser pushed it into all the major Oscar categories. I do think original screenplay is a place it would have landed regardless – indie hits have always scored well with the writers. But it’s way too conventional to merit consideration.
Good Will Hunting is a movie where I like most everything about it except the central idea. It’s got a lot of strong dialogue, and an attitude that prevents it from sinking into a morass of sweetness. But that sweetness is constantly lurking just beneath the surface: this is really a Hollywood crowd-pleaser in indie garb (hearing William Goldman played a significant at-least-advisory role came as no surprise). So, while I salute the craft involved, I can’t vote for the film.
As far as I’m concerned, Woody Allen’s golden age ended with Husbands and Wives in 1992. Though I trooped faithfully each year after that to his latest releases, I became progressively more discouraged by how thin the films were compared to most everything in the 70s and 80s (and, yes, I include Bullets over Broadway in that judgment). Deconstructing Harry was, in that context, a startling return to form: a sharp-edged, quite funny comedy with bitter and incisive human observation – very much of a piece with his earlier triumphs, if not their full equal. As it turned out, the film didn’t mark the start of a new golden period – Woody’s next half-dozen films included some of his very weakest, and even the better of his more recent movies are lesser creatures than we once expected from him. But, in this one instance, he showed some glimmers of his best self, and I considered voting for it.
But Boogie Nights is the best film of this bunch by far, and, though I view it as far more a directorial achievement than a screenwriting one (it’s one of the great essentially-debut directing jobs in movie history), it’s a solid enough piece of writing/storytelling to rate the vote. The film takes us inside an entire community we’d likely never encounter otherwise, and lets us get to know a myriad of characters. It takes us through the rush of excitement (and also the silliness) that was the porn world (and, to some extent, America at large) in the liberated 70s, then brings it down to a nasty crash in the 80s…only to emerge, battered but still ambulatory, on the other side. As I’ve said of Anderson in the past: no other contemporary American director has such a sense of ambition; creates such a giddy high simply from how far he deigns to reach in his films. Boogie Nights remains one of his great achievements, and takes the prize from this less-than-stellar field.
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The Original BJ
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Re: Best Screenplay 1997
On the Original side, there just weren't that many options. There's only one nominee I'm really enthusiastic about, and yet, I'd have slotted most of the same movies the Academy did. I guess for an alternate I'd offer up Gattaca?
The Full Monty is probably the easiest to dispose of, though I didn't hate the movie or anything. I found it perfectly engaging, with some decent laughs along the way (I think the scene with the guys in line secretly doing their dance moves to "Hot Stuff" is a hoot). But as an awards vehicle, I think it's just way out of its weight limit.
The Deconstructing Harry nomination is proof that, even in a bum year, the writers can still pick out something a little hipper in the script department instead of just defaulting to the obvious Oscar bait (in this case, Titanic and Amistad). This isn't to say I think Deconstructing Harry is anything close to Woody Allen's peak -- the almost sketch-comedy structure of vignettes doesn't really let the movie go much of anywhere, at least not in any narrative sense. But I think a lot of the sequences are clever, and it's funny throughout, so I'm happy with the nomination, even if it's too much of a trifle to get my vote.
I have almost the same reaction to the scripts for both As Good As It Gets and Good Will Hunting, as I think both movies have fairly noticeable deficiencies in the premise/story department. As Good As It Gets often feels like a bunch of characters and plotlines all Frankensteined into the same movie, with awkward plot devices like a road trip making sure they get from story point A to point B. And I don't think it's at all clear what Melvin's problem actually is, or why the other characters cut him so much slack -- the ending, when Carol is just about done with him for good, and then he says something sweet to her, and then they walk romantically to the bakery, left me confused over what exactly I was supposed to feel about this relationship. Good Will Hunting is less messy, but starts with a pretty generic premise (smart but underachieving guy sees a therapist...and teaches the therapist a little bit too!) as well as some way-too-obvious plot points (when Affleck's character says he's looking forward to the day when he shows at Damon's house and he's left town, you're just counting the minutes until that scene shows up). But...in both cases, I think the scripts still pulled off a lot of solid writing from scene to scene, so that the relationships between Nicholson/Hunt and Damon/Williams felt far more nuanced and less cliched than some of the plot points these characters were being shuttled through. In the end, I view both scripts as somewhat more compelling versions of stories that could have been REALLY mundane. That's not enough to get my vote, but I think both movies do enough things right to be acceptable enough middlebrow fare.
But Boogie Nights is by far the best original script of the year. As in Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson weaves so many fascinating characters and storylines through his movie, in this case creating a dazzling tapestry of an era and culture, from its heyday to its demise. One of the things that makes him so special as a filmmaker is his ability to understand the power of set pieces, which his detractors would criticize as simply excessively showy style for style's sake, but for me always feel grounded in his stories. From the "Best of My Love" opening which swiftly and economically introduces the major cast of characters, to the New Year's party turned tragedy (which wonderfully ushers the movie from the wild frivolity of the '70's to the more depressing '80's), from the intercut parking lot fight/limousine porn shoot gone wrong, to the botched drug deal (only heightened in nerve-wracking intensity by the firecrackers being thrown around), the writer crafts a film overflowing with great cinematic moments. And, of course, Anderson understands the importance of last scenes as well, granting us the money shot he'd been teasing all film in a manner that's alternately a laugh (given Dirk's ridiculous admiration of his goods) and a beat of pathetic poignancy (as even he realizes this is pretty much his only life "skill," and can only do the best he can with it.) Boogie Nights is clearly the most ambitious and fully successful screenplay of the bunch, and it gets my vote without a second thought.
The Full Monty is probably the easiest to dispose of, though I didn't hate the movie or anything. I found it perfectly engaging, with some decent laughs along the way (I think the scene with the guys in line secretly doing their dance moves to "Hot Stuff" is a hoot). But as an awards vehicle, I think it's just way out of its weight limit.
The Deconstructing Harry nomination is proof that, even in a bum year, the writers can still pick out something a little hipper in the script department instead of just defaulting to the obvious Oscar bait (in this case, Titanic and Amistad). This isn't to say I think Deconstructing Harry is anything close to Woody Allen's peak -- the almost sketch-comedy structure of vignettes doesn't really let the movie go much of anywhere, at least not in any narrative sense. But I think a lot of the sequences are clever, and it's funny throughout, so I'm happy with the nomination, even if it's too much of a trifle to get my vote.
I have almost the same reaction to the scripts for both As Good As It Gets and Good Will Hunting, as I think both movies have fairly noticeable deficiencies in the premise/story department. As Good As It Gets often feels like a bunch of characters and plotlines all Frankensteined into the same movie, with awkward plot devices like a road trip making sure they get from story point A to point B. And I don't think it's at all clear what Melvin's problem actually is, or why the other characters cut him so much slack -- the ending, when Carol is just about done with him for good, and then he says something sweet to her, and then they walk romantically to the bakery, left me confused over what exactly I was supposed to feel about this relationship. Good Will Hunting is less messy, but starts with a pretty generic premise (smart but underachieving guy sees a therapist...and teaches the therapist a little bit too!) as well as some way-too-obvious plot points (when Affleck's character says he's looking forward to the day when he shows at Damon's house and he's left town, you're just counting the minutes until that scene shows up). But...in both cases, I think the scripts still pulled off a lot of solid writing from scene to scene, so that the relationships between Nicholson/Hunt and Damon/Williams felt far more nuanced and less cliched than some of the plot points these characters were being shuttled through. In the end, I view both scripts as somewhat more compelling versions of stories that could have been REALLY mundane. That's not enough to get my vote, but I think both movies do enough things right to be acceptable enough middlebrow fare.
But Boogie Nights is by far the best original script of the year. As in Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson weaves so many fascinating characters and storylines through his movie, in this case creating a dazzling tapestry of an era and culture, from its heyday to its demise. One of the things that makes him so special as a filmmaker is his ability to understand the power of set pieces, which his detractors would criticize as simply excessively showy style for style's sake, but for me always feel grounded in his stories. From the "Best of My Love" opening which swiftly and economically introduces the major cast of characters, to the New Year's party turned tragedy (which wonderfully ushers the movie from the wild frivolity of the '70's to the more depressing '80's), from the intercut parking lot fight/limousine porn shoot gone wrong, to the botched drug deal (only heightened in nerve-wracking intensity by the firecrackers being thrown around), the writer crafts a film overflowing with great cinematic moments. And, of course, Anderson understands the importance of last scenes as well, granting us the money shot he'd been teasing all film in a manner that's alternately a laugh (given Dirk's ridiculous admiration of his goods) and a beat of pathetic poignancy (as even he realizes this is pretty much his only life "skill," and can only do the best he can with it.) Boogie Nights is clearly the most ambitious and fully successful screenplay of the bunch, and it gets my vote without a second thought.
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
So basically you have a problem with Forrest Gump's premise? That this idiot found a way to bumble through every American milestone of the baby boomer era? I don't love Forrest Gump but I wouldn't call any of those plot twists because they have very little bearing on the plot. Nothing happens to Forrest because of Watergate or coming up with the "Shit Happens" T-Shirt. Even when Lt. Dan buys him Apple stock making him a millionaire overnight, that doesn't really have much impact on his life or the story of the film. If anything, they're just punchlines. The two complaints about Forrest Gump that I'll lend some validity to (if I don't necessarily agree with) is that it's politically repugnant and also kinda boring and repetitive.
"How's the despair?"
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
It just struck me that it went way too far with Gump falling into all the coincidences; his witnessing Watergate, his buying IBM stock; "shit happens;" etc.Sabin wrote: What lazy plot twists are in Forrest Gump?
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
Considering that Contact intends to be adult science-fiction and to be taken very seriously while Forrest Gump is intended to be a satire, I don't understand how a comparison can really be made. Contact is a film about minutiae and what would really happen in this scenario. Forrest Gump is intended to be a joke. What lazy plot twists are in Forrest Gump?
"How's the despair?"
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
For me, as to lazy plot twists, I found Contact to be a vast improvement over Zemeckis' film of three years prior, Forrest Gump, which strikes me as the all-time-mother load of lazy plot twists.
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
Paul Thomas Anderson seems to finally win an Oscar - ours. And while Boogie Nights is maybe "rougher"- even as a script - than some of the same director's later efforts, I think it does deserve to win here. Because it IS an original script, it deals with an interesting environment and group of characters, and it recreates a place and period - America in the 70s - which has been nostalgically featured often even in recent movies, but rarely as realistically. It's possible that the screemplay isn't always very cohesive - I should watch the movie again - but that happens someimes when you have much to give to your audience, and you aren't that experienced still. And the result is, I'd say, generally very good. As for the others, there IS intelligence in sight (Deconstructing Harry, while hated by so many, IS an often brilliant script, especially by late-Woody-Allen standards) and definitely technique (in As Good As It Gets and The Full Monty especially). The actual winner, Good Will Hunting, is too naive for my tastes, but I guess that was what made the movie so successful back then, and what led to its win in this category.
The technique of writing a screenplay is certainly evident in L.A. Confidential, but for once I'm not using the term in a dismissive way. The way the movie follows so many story lines, yet never becomes confusing or obscure - there's a cleanliness about it, maybe even too much cleanliness - must certainly be appreciated. Of course, this isn't the kind of movie where you look for depth or psychologically complex characters - it's more about storytelling, and the storytelling here is involving, intelligently constructed (and you kind of feel the time they must have spent on it, and the many drafts they must have written). Still, unsurprisingly, my vote goes to The Sweet Hereafter, which is in the end a more relevant effort. It's true that back then Atom Egoyan seemed to be a more promising writer-director than he actually turned out to be, but this movie has a mood, an atmosphere - and some heartbreaking scenes and monologues - that surely are the result of a deeply-felt screenplay. The other three nominees aren't too bad either, I must admit, and for example The Wings of the Dove is a rather successful attempt to "simplify" a complex, multi-layered classic without making it banal.
The technique of writing a screenplay is certainly evident in L.A. Confidential, but for once I'm not using the term in a dismissive way. The way the movie follows so many story lines, yet never becomes confusing or obscure - there's a cleanliness about it, maybe even too much cleanliness - must certainly be appreciated. Of course, this isn't the kind of movie where you look for depth or psychologically complex characters - it's more about storytelling, and the storytelling here is involving, intelligently constructed (and you kind of feel the time they must have spent on it, and the many drafts they must have written). Still, unsurprisingly, my vote goes to The Sweet Hereafter, which is in the end a more relevant effort. It's true that back then Atom Egoyan seemed to be a more promising writer-director than he actually turned out to be, but this movie has a mood, an atmosphere - and some heartbreaking scenes and monologues - that surely are the result of a deeply-felt screenplay. The other three nominees aren't too bad either, I must admit, and for example The Wings of the Dove is a rather successful attempt to "simplify" a complex, multi-layered classic without making it banal.
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
It's fucking stupid. Network primetime dramas from 1997 didn't stoop that low.
I understand that Kim Basinger's motivations are a little vague, but her relationship with Russell Crowe is engrossing enough and her past is checkered enough that I could roll with it -- especially considering the world it takes place in. Lord knows, everything that follows up until the admittedly boring epilogue is damn entertaining. But Contact is different. There's almost a Passion of the Christ quality to it. As an audience member, you go into worship at the alter of Sagan. I say this as somebody who loved it in 1997, still thinks there's a lot to like in the film, and would still go mostly positive on it.
I understand that Kim Basinger's motivations are a little vague, but her relationship with Russell Crowe is engrossing enough and her past is checkered enough that I could roll with it -- especially considering the world it takes place in. Lord knows, everything that follows up until the admittedly boring epilogue is damn entertaining. But Contact is different. There's almost a Passion of the Christ quality to it. As an audience member, you go into worship at the alter of Sagan. I say this as somebody who loved it in 1997, still thinks there's a lot to like in the film, and would still go mostly positive on it.
"How's the despair?"
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
This has to be one the laziest plot twists I have ever seen in a supposedly serious dramatic film.Sabin wrote:the John Hurt character having built a second Contact machine
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
While I respectfully disagree with your assessment of Kim Basinger's character, I will say that some decade and a half-plus years since its release that the only rational for the esteem Contact continues to hold can only be attributed to a combination of nostalgia, developing minds, and the desire for the film to do justice to Carl Sagan. Going into Contact, I was primed for an event and indeed that is Robert Zemekis' greatest achievement which owes nothing to screenwriting. He stages techie minutiae in a riveting fashion that has since been adopted by Paul Greengrass and the like as basis for narrative tension. But if it's not rock solid dumb, it comes perilously close. Ellie encountering her father at the end has long been accepted as cliché, but the entire film feels like a first draft with myriad ridiculous contrivances designed to branch exceptional moments together: the John Hurt character having built a second Contact machine, the needless fake-out of Tom Skerritt not going into space, everything involving Matthew McConaughey's character, etc. I will concede happily that the filmmakers doubtlessly want to grapple with ideas but in truth (which has been proven by the director's subsequent career) Robert Zemekis is only interesting in staging a ride, something mind-blowing in form, not substance. #teammeninblack
"How's the despair?"
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
Sabin, don't drink anything while you read this. L. A. Confidential, and its script, completely fell apart for me at the end. I just could not believe that Kim Basinger's character would subject herself, or at least potentially subject herself, to what she did. Based on what I saw that year, I would have given the adapted screenplay award to Contact and have nominated it over L. A. Confidential.
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
I doubt many think back to 1997 as a year of abundance in the field of Original Screenplay contenders because so much of the year felt rather locked in, which was by-product of the whole shebang feeling very like a very Golden Era-ish night. As Good As It Gets and Good Will Hunting were locks, Boogie Nights and The Full Monty were very likely, and the only question was whether or not James Cameron’s maligned dialogue for Titanic (if not overall story-writing) was going to grab the fifth slot. Instead, the Academy honored Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, a late-90s minor triumph of Philip Roth Mia-a-clef that felt like an assemblage of short story bits and mostly inspired ones. I liked the film quite a bit but watching it today, it takes rather forever for anything resembling a plot to take off. The Academy so easily though could have honored Robert Duvall’s The Apostle, Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men, Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, Kasi Lemmon’s Eve’s Bayou, or Victor Nunez’s Ulee’s Gold and it wouldn’t have surprised me. To be fair to probably the most obscure Woody Allen nomination aside from Alice, whatever boredom resulted from his name being read again was hardly more offensive than hearing James Cameron again.
I go with Boogie Nights fairly easily. Gripes about the formulaic second act have thankfully fallen away in the past decade and a half. What remains is appreciation for the incredible character work Paul Thomas Anderson built up and praise for his three hour playground for them to bounce around. So many films since have tried to capture “the realism” of the porn industry like an answer to Boogie Nights, and they’ve all failed spectacularly in coming close to the visceral joy PTA captured in the Carter years coming to an explosive and the Reagan years starting up and leaving these misfits behind. Paul Thomas Anderson may be a great director, but first and foremost he’s a man who falls in love with what he writes on the page and he’s never written more delicious scenes than these.
As Good As It Gets has its share of MVPs: 1) Hans Zimmer’s most underrated score, 2) a terrific dog, 3) Greg Kinnear, 4) some (emphasis some) wonderful lines. So does Good Will Hunting, but both feel like triumphs of pulling the unruly damn thing off in the first place. I fall pretty positively on both though they’re as easy to pull apart as a chicken wing and containing just as much nourishment. I haven’t seen The Full Monty since it first came out and I found it enjoyable/ly cast.
Best Adapted Screenplay goes to L.A. Confidential. Whatever debate I have regarding the rightful owner of a Directing Oscar in a field with both Curtis Hanson and Atom Egoyan does not apply to this category. The amount of condensing done by Hanson and Helgeland has been talked to death. What’s less discussed is how the Nite Owl killing is tantamount to the end of the first act, which happens almost an hour into the film – and the damn thing is still riveting! The Sweet Hereafter is a close second. Beautiful film. I’m not as enthusiastic about Donnie Brasco, Wag the Dog, or The Wings of the Dove as I am Jackie Brown or The Ice Storm, but they’re all very fine nominees.
The Best Screenplays of 1997 in my opnion:
1. Curtis Hanson & Brian Helgeland, L.A. Confidential
2. Atom Egoyan, The Sweet Hereafter
3. Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights
4. Quentin Tarantino, Jackie Brown
5. Ron Bass, My Best Friend's Wedding OR Tom Jankiewicz [story/screenplay] and D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink & John Cusack, Gross Pointe Blank OR John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris, The Game
I go with Boogie Nights fairly easily. Gripes about the formulaic second act have thankfully fallen away in the past decade and a half. What remains is appreciation for the incredible character work Paul Thomas Anderson built up and praise for his three hour playground for them to bounce around. So many films since have tried to capture “the realism” of the porn industry like an answer to Boogie Nights, and they’ve all failed spectacularly in coming close to the visceral joy PTA captured in the Carter years coming to an explosive and the Reagan years starting up and leaving these misfits behind. Paul Thomas Anderson may be a great director, but first and foremost he’s a man who falls in love with what he writes on the page and he’s never written more delicious scenes than these.
As Good As It Gets has its share of MVPs: 1) Hans Zimmer’s most underrated score, 2) a terrific dog, 3) Greg Kinnear, 4) some (emphasis some) wonderful lines. So does Good Will Hunting, but both feel like triumphs of pulling the unruly damn thing off in the first place. I fall pretty positively on both though they’re as easy to pull apart as a chicken wing and containing just as much nourishment. I haven’t seen The Full Monty since it first came out and I found it enjoyable/ly cast.
Best Adapted Screenplay goes to L.A. Confidential. Whatever debate I have regarding the rightful owner of a Directing Oscar in a field with both Curtis Hanson and Atom Egoyan does not apply to this category. The amount of condensing done by Hanson and Helgeland has been talked to death. What’s less discussed is how the Nite Owl killing is tantamount to the end of the first act, which happens almost an hour into the film – and the damn thing is still riveting! The Sweet Hereafter is a close second. Beautiful film. I’m not as enthusiastic about Donnie Brasco, Wag the Dog, or The Wings of the Dove as I am Jackie Brown or The Ice Storm, but they’re all very fine nominees.
The Best Screenplays of 1997 in my opnion:
1. Curtis Hanson & Brian Helgeland, L.A. Confidential
2. Atom Egoyan, The Sweet Hereafter
3. Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights
4. Quentin Tarantino, Jackie Brown
5. Ron Bass, My Best Friend's Wedding OR Tom Jankiewicz [story/screenplay] and D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink & John Cusack, Gross Pointe Blank OR John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris, The Game
"How's the despair?"
Re: Best Screenplay 1997
voted for Good Will Hunting and L.A. Confidential