Best Screenplay 1995

1927/28 through 1997

What were the best original and adapted screenplays of 1995?

Braveheart (Randall Wallace)
1
2%
Mighty Aphrodite (Woody Allen)
2
4%
Nixon (Stephen J. Revele, Christopher Wilkinson, Oliver Stone)
3
6%
Toy Story (Josh Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, ALex Sokolow, John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Joe Ranft)
12
23%
The Usual Suspects (Christopher McQuarrie)
9
17%
Apollo 13 (William Broyles, Jr., Al Reinert)
0
No votes
Babe (George Miller, Christ Noonan)
3
6%
Il Postino (Anna Pavignano, Michael Radford, Furio Scapelli, Giacomo Scapelli, Massimo Triosi)
0
No votes
Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis)
4
8%
Sense and Sensibility (Emma Thompson)
18
35%
 
Total votes: 52

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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by danfrank »

Sabin wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 11:08 am
mlrg wrote
Thankfully, after 27 years and many years of therapy, I’m able to talk openly about why this movie is so important to me.
That's very powerful. Thank you for sharing.
I also appreciate your courage in sharing that. It’s definitely true that films, by revealing some truth, can help us in our healing process,
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by Sabin »

mlrg wrote
Thankfully, after 27 years and many years of therapy, I’m able to talk openly about why this movie is so important to me.
That's very powerful. Thank you for sharing.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by mlrg »

Leaving Las Vegas had a huge influence in me when I first watched it in June 1996 at the age of seventeen.

My father was an alcoholic who drank himself to homelessness and consequently death just three years before I’ve seen the film so when Cage’s character says to Sera “you can never ask me to stop drinking” I knew exactly what that meant. The way the character is written is spot on.

In addition, at the time I was madly in love with a girl who was the spitting image of Elisabeth Shue so in a way I fell in love with Sera. I had no chance with this girl so my heart was broken for quite some time.

At the time I bought the soundtrack, that is partially written by Mike Figgis, and heard it hundreds of times. It helped me get through the very dark places I was at the time.

Thankfully, after 27 years and many years of therapy, I’m able to talk openly about why this movie is so important to me.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by Sabin »

Mister Tee wrote
Leaving Las Vegas was my favorite film of the year, and I think it’s got a solid, piercingly honest script –it’s the only alcoholic movie I’ve ever seen that doesn’t pretty anything up but manages to find some beauty anyway. But when I think back on the film, I think more of those two great performances, and Mike Figgis’s jazzy rhythms, than I do of any particular dialogue.
I rewatched Leaving Las Vegas a few days ago for the first time in ages. I have a lot of thoughts on it (it's still an excellent film) but this time I was able to appreciate the boldness of its screenplay. Siskel remarked on the show that the Hollywood system would demand so many changes: "Does he have to be drunk all the time... what about that ending?" Forget about those. We all remember the moment in Leaving Las Vegas where Ben and Sera essentially get married or spiritually bound. It's when Ben tells Sera that she can never ask him to stop drinking and in return, Ben can never judge Sera for his profession. Ben officially moves in and they embrace for the first time. Where does that moment happen in the script?

The midpoint. Halfway through the movie. They're only really "a couple" for the back half of the second act before it all goes to shit.

There is no note that I am more certain this film would get from the studios than "How do we get that by the end of the first act?" This is such a smart choice on Figgis' point for a few reasons. He understands that too much of this toxic relationship is going to be too much for audiences. Or it's just going to play as episodic. Who wants to watch one hour of a guy ruin things for himself (apparently that's how he believes he failed his previous film, Mr. Jones)? But a half hour after an hour of a convincing build? That's the far more satisfying choice as well as the far less common approach. We never see films where the characters decide to enter into whatever relationship is promised on the poster by the midpoint.

Even though Leaving Las Vegas is an adaptation of a book that I vaguely recall thumbing through twenty years ago, it didn't have to emerge in this form. Mike Figgis deserved all the praise he got as a director but I think he deserved a little more attention for his writing. It's an inspired script.
Last edited by Sabin on Mon Apr 03, 2023 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by FilmFan720 »

As is wont with this category, we get another year with some really great nominees, with some films getting recognition here where the rest of the Academy seemingly ignored them, along with some real dreck.

The biggest dreck this year is Braveheart, a stale movie with a flaccid (borderline hateful) screenplay. If Titanic didn't get a screenplay nomination, there was really no excuse for this to. I have a feeling like I am going to be defending a lot of Woody Allen nominations along the way, but even the biggest of Woody Allen fans has to admit that Mighty Aphrodite isn't exactly his best work. There are enough laughs, and the Greek chorus clever enough, that I won't begrudge too much this nomination on his trek to "most nominated screenwriter ever," but I can't even consider voting for it. I would have loved to see The American President or Before Sunrise take one or two of these slots.

The other three nominees, though, are pretty wonderful nominations. The Usual Suspects is a clever noir, and a win I was very happy to see. It makes every turn just right, creates some very memorable characters and doesn't really let its narrative drag too much. I won't vote for it here, as I think there are some choices that are a little meaningful and thematically whole, but this is the kind of well-made film we complain that the Academy doesn't honor enough. That it did that night was a welcome surprise.

Nixon is really the last great triumph of the amazing streak Oliver Stone had for a decade, and perhaps his most underrated work. The way that he is able to weave the complex life of RN into a graspable epic, in a way that seems fitting of his style but albeit a different beast than JFK, is worthy of nomination alone. Add to that the really lovely two-person scenes he crafts, particularly between the Nixons or between NIxon and Kissinger, and you get something a little more intimate than Stone's earlier American Epics, but just as powerful.

We have Toy Story here, though, and that has to get my vote. It doesn't help that, having a four-year-old in my house, I have now seen this movie umpteen times. Yet every time, it remains funny, clever, tense and gut-wrenching. so often I think that animated films can get into this category because they have an ingenious concept that has to be recognized, but here it ascends that premise at every turn. It is funnier than it ought to be, the characters far more complex than they ought to be and the movie earns every laugh and tear it gets out of the audience. It's a masterpiece of American cinema, goddamn cartoon or not, and an easy vote for me.

I have a lot less to say about the adapted slate, mostly because nothing in that slate excites me much one way or another. Mostly all of the nominees are good to great examples of their genres: Apollo 13 is an above-average Hollywood Summer prestige film, with some nice characterization and a lot of tension; Il Postino is an average European romantic comedy/drama; Leaving Las Vegas is a solid dark character study with some wonderful development. I find Babe to be a mediocre exercise in triteness, but there are those who love it. That leaves me with Sense and Sensibility. I'm not sure if it is able to really be more, at least on paper, than an exceptionally well-made literary adaptation, but the film is wittier and funnier than it should be, and Emma Thompson surely brings some depth to these characters that is sometimes missing from its Masterpiece Theatre counterparts. I'll endorse her win here.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by The Original BJ »

Oh, and I don't know how I forgot it, but Safe definitely should have been included in my Original Screenplay alts too.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

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The Original BJ wrote:Even with clearing my cache, this 403 debacle still won't go away.
I've concluded the 403 thing is utterly random and has nothing to do with anything any of us is doing. As much trouble as I had last week when I made the complaint, I was able to post the far longer Post-Festival thread without any issue. You rolls the dice and takes your chances.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

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Even with clearing my cache, this 403 debacle still won't go away.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by The Original BJ »

My Adapted alts would be Dead Man Walking, The Bridges of Madison County, and To Die For.

Il Postino is a sweet enough movie -- and the poignancy of the ending really plays -- but it's pretty lightweight stuff, evidence that the Miramax which had brought us Pulp Fiction, The Piano, and The Crying Game was starting to move into its late '90's phase of less aesthetically challenging art house fare. I don't think this is a bad script or anything, but it's hard for me to view it as anything major.

Apollo 13 was a pretty decent summer movie -- engaging, suspenseful, and not insulting to one's intelligence. But it also wasn't about very much more than the Apollo 13 mission. Placed side by side with The Right Stuff -- which has a similar milieu and subject matter, but resonates with far more cultural and social subtext -- the writing in Apollo 13 just seems even more limited.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by The Original BJ »

Babe, too, was another charming movie, and one I fully enjoyed as a kid. But when I reviewed it as an adult some years back, my impression of it definitely dipped. I still found it to be a very warm and kind fantasy, but I didn't think it was such an inventive delight in the writing department that it should have contended for major awards.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

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Was it the fact that it was the rare summer special effects-driven movie with a heart that caused critics to flip so much?
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by The Original BJ »

My vote comes down to the remaining two films, and it's very close in this category. I figured Sense and Sensibility would be the runaway choice here, as with Oscar, and Emma Thompson is by no means an unworthy winner. I remember hearing an interview with producer Lindsay Doran discussing the moment she knew Ang Lee was the right choice to direct the movie -- because he came into their meeting and immediately talked about how funny the material was, when none of the other directing candidates had done so. And while Lee certainly deserves credit for playing up Austen's humor, a large amount of praise in that department must go to Thompson, for crafting an adaptation that bursts with life and energy when so many other costume films get stuck in a staid Masterpiece Theater-style approach. Of the nominees in this category, it's definitely the one that feels most shaped by its writer, from the delightful dialogue to the elegant handling of the narrative.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by The Original BJ »

I cast my vote before I read the other responses, but I'm a bit surprised so many have quickly gone to "not a writer's movie" when discussing Leaving Las Vegas. When the film in question is a far greater visual achievement, I understand that reaction, and I've made it myself in reference to numerous nominees in this game so far. But for me, Leaving Las Vegas seems to be very much in the tradition of the impressively scripted independent character drama, in which the relationship between two exceedingly well-drawn individuals plays out to both beautiful and heartbreaking ends. No, the dialogue isn't as obviously clever as in Sense and Sensibility, but it shouldn't be, and the movie is full of exchanges between Cage and Shue that are full of raw, painfully realistic language that cuts to the bone emotionally in very powerful ways. I guess my ultimate feeling is that Thompson's script, while very enjoyably crafted, still doesn't feel like anything all that bold to me, whereas the uncompromising edge of Figgis's work (script absolutely included) contributes to a far more bracing moviegoing experience. It's a close call, but I'm sticking up for my vote of Leaving Las Vegas.
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

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Greg wrote:Could someone refresh my memory as to which Toy Story movie has Buzz Lightyear speaking Spanish?
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Re: Best Screenplay 1995

Post by Greg »

Could someone refresh my memory as to which Toy Story movie has Buzz Lightyear speaking Spanish?
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