Best Screenplay 1987

[Greg]

Was it [The Princess Bride] ever taken quite seriously for a screenplay nomination? It's boring song was nominated.

I remember that year Siskel and Ebert did their annual what-should-win-the-Oscar show. They both bemoaned the entire Best Song category. Siskel picked on the lyrics "My love is as real as the feelings I feel" in The Princess Bride song and asked "Did somebody actually get paid for writing that?" I have similar sentiments for "Love is when I loved you" from Titanic's "My Heart Will Go On," even though I like the rest of that song.

[Big Magilla]

I was aware of the film at the time of its release but had no interest in running out to see it even though Siskel and/or Ebert and others gave it rave reviews. I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, and the SF Chronicle critic was not a fan.

I have watched it several times since then, but my assessment of it is in line with Tee's - decent, pleasant, modest, a three star film. It must be a generational thing. It is no Wizard of Oz which built up its base audience through numerous theatrical revivals before it became a TV staple in the mid-1950s and has proven equally beloved by succeeding generations.

I suspect that Goldman's WGA nomination was due to a combination of his personal popularity (he had won their lifetime achievement award three years earlier) and the fact that he tried to have his screenplay filmed for some years before it was finally picked up by Reiner.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
Imagine my surprise when, a decade or more later, I found people had essentially memorized the script (putting certain lines into the common language), were now speaking of it as a timeless classic, and, eventually, snapped up Making of The Princess Bride books as holiday gifts. Maybe it was the VCR made it happen -- parents thought it a safe title to have their kids watch at home, and kids appreciated the goofy humor. However it happened, it gained enormous after-the-fact popularity with younger generations (much like The Wizard of Oz had, with their parents), putting The Princess Bride in a class with The Big Lebowski -- Films That Seemed Like Nothing At the Time, But Became Beloved in History.

I think it's the home video thing. At least for older Millennials like myself, I can say my parents had a palpable anxiety about inappropriate content. In 1994, my parents sat me down to discuss the death by suicide of Kurt Cobain to see if I might be so inclined to follow the pattern to which I responded "Who's Kurt Cobain?" I watched it on a family vacation to Flagstaff at a hotel. I would be curious to know whether the choice was deliberate on my father's part to show us that movie or if it was process of elimination.

So, it's safe to say that William Goldman got the WGA nomination largely by virtue of hanging around long enough for the room to get a little less crowded.

[Mister Tee]

This is another instance where I have to invoke the Historical Revisionism card. The Princess Bride was not any kind of big deal when it opened in Fall 1987. Reviews were middling, and the film, while not a complete box-office bust, fell far short of Reiner's breakthrough Stand by Me from the year prior. I swear to you, my wife and I are the only people I knew who saw it during this initial go-round. It had no discernible impact on the culture. My memory of that now-34-year-old viewing is that the film was getting pretty much what it rated: it was decent, pleasant, modest entertainment -- never all that funny, but not unfunny, either.

Imagine my surprise when, a decade or more later, I found people had essentially memorized the script (putting certain lines into the common language), were now speaking of it as a timeless classic, and, eventually, snapped up Making of The Princess Bride books as holiday gifts. Maybe it was the VCR made it happen -- parents thought it a safe title to have their kids watch at home, and kids appreciated the goofy humor. However it happened, it gained enormous after-the-fact popularity with younger generations (much like The Wizard of Oz had, with their parents), putting The Princess Bride in a class with The Big Lebowski -- Films That Seemed Like Nothing At the Time, But Became Beloved in History.

Such films, of course, don't win prizes in real time, and I don't recall any move to nominate the film's script, even in a year where the adapted screenplay slate went far afield from the best picture race.

[Sabin]

As I go down the list of films on WGA's 101 Best Screenplays and finally I've arrived on The Princess Bride, a film I've seen several times in my childhood but I'm not sure as an adult. It's not a very serious film but it's quite fun. When I was a child, I thought it was dead serious. Nothing funny about it. Screaming eels? Terrifying. But now that I'm an adult, I think I understand why. Nobody in this movie is acting like anything they're saying is remotely funny. This is achieved through a combination of very funny people and some real hams. It's such an odd balance of comedy. Prince Humperdinck says he can't watch a torture sessions because of a list of horrible things he has to do that leave him swamped, and then his no. 2 tells him "Get some rest. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything." I'm not sure what the film is saying. That all these stories are the same and quite silly but we love them, or if it's just Goldman fucking around, but the end result is very winning.

Was it ever taken quite seriously for a screenplay nomination? It's boring song was nominated. I see that it picked up a WGA nomination along with Fatal Attraction and Full Metal Jacket as well as fellow non-nominees Roxanne (winner) and The Untouchables but were replaced by The Last Emperor, The Dead, and My Life as a Dog which I'm guessing were non-WGA eligible. This may not be as robust an eventual lineup as Best Original Screenplay. Was The Princess Bride given any consideration? It might have been nice for Goldman to get one more nomination for the road. I'm a bit surprised he only received two nominations (his two wins) for his whole career but as I look back over his career, maybe it's not that surprising. I don't quite know which other film should have gotten it for him.

[Uri]

Hmm... I don’t think there are any Finnish rom coms.

I guess I should rest my case at this point.

[Heksagon]

Hmm... I don’t think there are any Finnish rom coms.

[Uri]

Indeed I am, and there isn’t much I can do to change that.

And, I must admit, it don’t see the relevance here.

I was just kidding around with cultural cliches, as if Moonstruck is being a stereotypical broad "Italian" comedy seemingly not aimed at brooding Nords.

Preferring Finish rom coms is just fine.

[Heksagon]

Indeed I am, and there isn’t much I can do to change that.

And, I must admit, it don’t see the relevance here.

[Uri]

I have no idea what people saw in the dreary and unfunny Moonstruck.

?

Let me think. Ahm, you are Scandinavian, aren't you? Well....

[Heksagon]

I thought I had already posted here, but apparently not.

This year is curious, because for me, it contains the worst screenplay winner of the decade in Moonstruck, and from those films that I have seen, also the worst nominee of the decade in Fatal Attraction. But oddly, the remaining eight nominees are all quite deserving.

In the adapted category, Full Metal Jacket is easily my favorite. Besides the terrible Fatal Attraction, the three other nominees are good.

In the original category, Broadcast News is one of the best romantic comedies ever, and gets my vote here. But Au revoir les enfants is a splendid film also, and I’d happily for it against weaker competition. Hope and Glory and Radio Days are both respectable films. I have no idea what people saw in the dreary and unfunny Moonstruck.

[The Original BJ]

The Original slate is better overall -- none of the nominees are undeserving, though I definitely would have to find room for Law of Desire, one of Pedro's very best. (On the Adapted side, I'd also pitch Roxanne as a very worthy alternate, though the Academy has always seemed to have a curious aversion to Steve Martin.)

Not at all sure the order I would rank most of the nominees, but, as usual, it's easy to pass on Woody Allen simply based on better opportunities down the line (in this case, RIGHT down the line, actually.) But I still find Radio Days a totally winning movie, episodic but full of amusing vignettes that congeal to create a very full portrait of a bygone era. And, as others have said, it feels warmly nostalgic without seeming gooey -- there are plenty of good, snarky Woody Allen lines throughout that spike the punch. Not a major Allen work, but not one that feels disposable either.

Of course, Moonstruck isn't a bold or hugely innovative romantic comedy, but it was a perfectly solid entry in the genre, with a lot of memorable dialogue (with "Snap out of it!" becoming an oft-quoted catchphrase), a pretty decent laugh ratio, and a big heart. I wouldn't want to overrate the movie by claiming it's anything more than perfectly pleasant, but these days, we don't see too many mainstream efforts in this genre that are as smart and sensitive as this one was. As a result, I don't have much objection to John Patrick Shanley winning recognition for a charmer, but an obviously well-executed one.

Au Revoir Les Enfants is a detailed portrait of war-time as seen through the eyes of children, and it builds to a moving finale. And yet...I find myself a little bit more let down by the last reel than those of you who have voted for this script. I just think the ending is really linear -- it's fairly obvious that the kids in hiding are eventually going to run into trouble, and as soon as the event occurred that propelled the narrative in this direction, it seemed clear to me what would happen...and then the way it happened went about as I expected it would. This is not to dismiss the compelling nature of much of the movie, or its ultimate power, but I had hoped for a bit more imagination in the conclusion. As a result, I won't be joining the half of you who have chosen Malle here.

On the whole, I find Hope and Glory to be the more inventive of the two WWII films, and though it's more lightweight overall, I find the way that it imbues so much humor into the film without trivializing the very serious events surrounding the characters to be pretty impressive. And thematically, the movie uses the coming-of-age stories to highlight the absurdity of war, by showing how ridiculous it all seems from a child's point of view. It's a lovely movie, with a far more surprising tone than I'd anticipated, and I think its portrait of the homefront during the war era is scripted with a fairly singular sense of life and tenderness.

Though I'm not sure which order I'd rank the previous four nominees, I feel quite confident that Broadcast News would be my number one. This was James Brooks's finest hour, the best example of the kind of smart, human comedies he has specialized in throughout his career. It's so many different movies all seamlessly woven together -- a splendid romantic comedy (in which I honestly had no idea which guy Holly Hunter would end up with at the end, if either), a lived-in workplace drama, an exploration of the ethics of tv journalism. It's a script in which broad physical comedy (like Joan Cusack racing to get the video tape into the machine) can coexist perfectly alongside wonderful dialogue ("I certainly hope you'll die soon" is the most laugh-out-loud famous line, but lines like "If anything happens to me, you'll tell every woman I ever went out with I was talking about her at the end" and "I would give anything if you were two people so I could call up the one that's my friend and tell her about the one I like so much" are full of humor and poignancy). In nearly every area -- dialogue, depth of character, plot structure -- I think Broadcast News trounces its competition, and though I think a decent enough competitor won the prize, this would have been an even more superior choice.

[Big Magilla]

I guess it's time I see Full Metal Jacket again. I don't think I've seen it since it came out. I recall liking it well enough in 1987, but for the life of me I can't recall a thing about the second half. I did think that the first half was excellent, although I kept thinking Ermey's lines were not only ad-libbed but things he had probably said for years as a drill instructor in real life.

[The Original BJ]

Among Adapted nominees, I rate the Best Picture nominees the weakest. Fatal Attraction has real narrative verve, and dialogue that's sort of bluntly effective (Close's "I will not be ignored...DAN" is a line that many I know have quoted in jest). The movie has kick to it, for sure, but it's truly a trashy thing, and by the end, the script goes ridiculously over-the-top. The original noir-ish ending -- paralleling the Madame Butterfly motif -- would have been far more interesting than the silliness we actually got. I don't feel any movie that concludes with the Not Dead Yet cliche merits any consideration as a writing option.

The Last Emperor is the opposite of trash -- it's an obviously classy project, full of rich historical detail, and it's certainly more artfully strung together than lumbering epics like Gandhi or Braveheart. But unfortunately, I don't find the material all that engaging. There are moments that have resonance -- the reveal of the cricket at the end of the movie has a genuine poignancy to it, as the viewer processes the time that has passed over the course of the movie -- but it feels like it takes such a long time to get to them. And there isn't really much writerly invention along the way -- you'd have hoped that even as part of a Best Picture sweep, voters would have gone for something more script-based here, but alas, that's not the way it worked then.

My Life as Dog definitely isn't a bold Swedish effort -- Lasse Hallström obviously wasn't Ingmar Bergman -- but I find the movie far more compelling than the director's later Miramax pictures. I think it's a sweetly poignant coming of age drama, but it doesn't dip into the level of saccharine sentimentality that would plague the filmmaker in some of his American efforts. Part of this is due to the quirky sense of humor injected throughout, that made the movie feel more singular and a bit less square. Not a hugely special script, but well-written enough, and I don't think there's anything objectionable about its nomination here.

Despite hugely renowned source material (or, better put, BECAUSE of it), I was fairly skeptical that The Dead could even work as a movie. It just seemed like, at a base narrative level, there wasn't enough plot in the short story to even sustain a full movie. I was surprised and perfectly happy to be proven wrong. It's not that the younger Huston suddenly invented a whole bunch more incident, but he found ways to bring Joyce's sensibility to the screen with a good bit of life kept intact, at least throughout much of the early portions of the movie. And then, as in the story, the movie really hits its stride at the end, with a series of scenes (Anjelica Huston stopped on the stairway, and her later "he died because of me" confession) that are just expertly handled in the adaptation. I'm not sure I'd go so far as Italiano to say this film is masterpiece-level -- it never feels like any bold invention for me -- though I'm happy to salute it simply for the fact that the Huston clan pulled it off at all.

But I picked Full Metal Jacket with some ease. I enjoy the first portion of the movie best, with the fabulous tete-a-tete between D'Onofrio's incompetent soldier and Ermey's tyrannical drill sergeant (who gets to spout all of the movie's most memorable lines, whether ad libbed or not). But the battle sequence in the second half is pretty strongly conceived and executed as well, with Kubrick and company taking the bleak cynicism and irony of movies like The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now and taking it to even more blackly comic ends. (I really like that the movie feels so different in sensibility from those earlier Vietnam films -- and toss in Platoon as well.) There are numerous good places to vote for Kubrick in this game, and I will be doing so again, but I don't hesitate to choose him here, for such a grand vision carried out in a horrific (yet still often hilarious), and always one-of-a-kind manner.

[Mister Tee]

1987 was a pretty dreary movie year to live through, but simply looking over these lists, it probably doesn’t seem so bad.

Adaptation is obviously where the writers went fishing a bit far (i.e., past the best picture pool), so there isn’t that much left as substitute. But I’d advocate for Bill Forsyth’s lyrical version of Housekeeping – oddly, the only film yet made from the fairly prolific Marilynne Robinson.

On the original side, I’d echo Magilla’s choice of The Big Easy, and also mention Barry Levinson’s rather forgotten Tin Men.

The worst of the adapted crew is clearly Fatal Attraction, or, anyway, the last reel’s worth of writing – prior to that it was a decent enough thriller. But the “Kill the bitch!” finale made the film ludicrous (if insanely successful), and I was disappointed the writers (and directors) went along with its enshrinement.

My Life as a Dog was another of those easy-listening foreign efforts that American audiences sometimes swooned for, and the Academy very often followed suit. Granted it’s a lot of years since I saw it, but I recall very little about it, so it can’t have been too memorable.

The Last Emperor was more literate than your average epic of the era, but what I remember most about it are the visuals (especially the sets and costumes).

The Dead was a very fine piece of work, a worthy coda to John Huston’s long career, and a great credit for his son. Joyce is, to put it mildly, not a natural for screen adaptation, but the two Hustons’ affinity for the Irish sensibility really carried the day. I gave consideration to voting for it.

But Full Metal Jacket was my second favorite film of the year, and a very well-written one – not in the sense of being dialogue-centered, but of being conceived on a grand scale and carried out with conviction and precision. This is probably my favorite Kubrick film post-Clockwork Orange, and I’m happy to offer the great man one last Oscar salute.

The original group indeed has the distinction of including no stinkers or even really mediocrities. That said, I have to rate Radio Days the least of the group. It was perfectly pleasant work, nostalgia a la Woody (which is to say, nostalgia with a bite: in few other artists’ remembrance pieces would the girl in the well die). But it displayed a certain slackness in writing that I thought began to overtake Woody in this era – it’s a throwaway bit, but I remember an argument between two characters, over whether the Atlantic or Pacific was the bigger ocean, that ended with Woody in voiceover asking, “I mean, who argues about oceans?"…a deflatingly flat line the earlier Woody would never have let survive final cut.

Hope and Glory is a wartime remembrance with a unique approach: the idea that for a good many kids, the whole thing might seem a giant lark. Taking this path enabled Boorman to make not just another 40s nostalgia piece, but a film that’s surprisingly – and refreshingly – funny (the Globes categorizing it under comedy/musical was apt). I’m not voting for the film, but I remember it with great fondness.

I’d seen one John Patrick Shanley play, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, a few years earlier, and pretty much loathed it, so Moonstruck came as a huge surprise to me. (It was that to nearly everybody: there’d been barely a word about the film a week before its opening) It’s not exactly a film for the ages, but it’s a funny and heartfelt romance, with some delicately moving moments along the way. I wouldn’t have voted for it, but I can see why people did.

Au Revoir Les Enfants stands out on this list for a fairly rare reason: being the only non-comedic nominee. It’s from the other side of World War II, the one where horrible, heartbreaking things happen. It’s a more familiar sort of story, but an undeniably moving one, as well. I see it’s getting a lot of votes here, and again I can understand why.

But Broadcast News is my favorite film of 1987, and one of the best original screenplays of the entire misbegotten decade, and I can’t vote for anything else. James Brooks creates three strong, evenly-matched characters, and sets them together inside a compelling depiction of the life surrounding a newsroom (back when that was still a respectable profession). The film has so much great dialogue it’s almost impossible to pinpoint the high points – it seems to be jumping from one such point to another. “Well…I certainly hope you die soon” is a legendary line, but I think my favorite is the exchange “What do you do when your life exceeds your wildest dreams?” ”Keep it to yourself”. In a year where comedies dominated the category, this is the best comedy, and it deserves my vote.