Best Screenplay 1982

[Heksagon]

Finally another year where I can vote in both categories.

E.T. is an easy choice in the Original category. Tootsie is a funny film but not a real challenger. Diner has a lot of good moments, good dialogue and well-written characters, but it all doesn't come together as well as it could.

An Officer and a Gentleman is not terrible, but it still shouldn't be anywhere near a screenwriting Oscar. And while Gandhi has splendid visuals, and a great performance by Ben Kingsley, the screenplay is surprisingly weak - except for the very beginning. But after the first ten minutes, it's all downhill.

The Adapted category is a lot tougher, in part because I haven't seen many of the films in such a long time. It's a choice between Das Boot, Missing and Victor/Victoria, none of which I have seen in the last fifteen years. Had I made this pick back then, I would have surely gone for Das Boot, but my taste has changed since then and I'm fairly confident in saying that I wouldn't rate its screenplay so highly now as I did as a teenager.

It comes down to Missing and Victor/Victoria and I'm going with the latter, although I could very well regret that if I refresh on them. The problem I had with Missing is that I maybe expected it to be more of a suspense film than what it was, so there's a good chance I'd like it more on second viewing.

On the other hand, I have seen Sophie's Choice and The Verdict more recently, and I'm not particularly happy seeing either of them nominated here.

[Kellens101]

BJ, have you now seen all the nominees for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress of 1982?

[The Original BJ]

Over on the Adapted side, I too have trouble singling out a choice, as none immediately jump out at me as the obvious winner.

I think the Holocaust segments of Sophie's Choice are very powerful, culminating in that wrenching scene that depicts the film's central situation with a horrifying bluntness. But I concur that there's some clunky melodrama in the main thread. And Peter MacNicol's character is pretty thinly developed -- much of Sophie's story almost seems to exist to teach this overly naive young man some big lessons, and structurally this didn't feel like the right choice for me, because I found him such an uninteresting character compared to Streep's Sophie. (At least on film -- I haven't read Styron's novel).

I enjoy The Verdict as a legal drama, and find the plot reasonably compelling -- it takes some narrative turns I didn't expect, and deals with its moral medical issues in a thoughtful enough way. Newman also has some strong, well-written speeches in the courtroom. But there isn't that much more to the story that gives the movie any real depth, and in fact, the one attempt to do so (Newman's alcoholism) doesn't feel like anything other than a cursory attempt to goose the drama.

Das Boot has a terrific sense of atmosphere, and I do think you have to credit Wolfgang Petersen the writer for so many details that paint such a seemingly realistic portrait of wartime submarine life. And there are strong plot elements as well -- I was completely caught off-guard, and quite moved, by the unexpected finale. But the movie's bigger triumph seems to be for Petersen the director, and as with E.T., I'm inclined to pass on honoring it here for movies with greater scripted strengths.

I could have gone for either of the remaining two movies, and I can't say I have a tremendously strong preference. There's a lot of very good stuff in Missing -- I think the movie does a pretty bang-up job of depicting what it might actually feel like to be living in the midst of a political coup (particularly as a foreigner), and I felt both Spacek and Lemmon's characters were quite well-rounded. The film also explores a relationship -- between father and daughter-in-law, with her husband out of the picture -- that doesn't get examined too often, and this gives the movie a strong human core to balance the political backdrop. But, as I wrote in the Picture/Director thread, the film does have one significant issue for me, exacerbated by the fact that I saw it around 30 years after its release, and that's that the movie's big reveal -- that the U.S. was involved in overthrowing Latin American rulers -- struck me as a gigantic DUH. This doesn't negate all of the film's good qualities -- and there are many -- but it still made me feel like, at the end of the movie, I hadn't really learned anything I didn't already know.

Victor/Victoria is obviously much lighter than Missing -- it's an entertainment, not an attempt at a larger global statement. But, just as I wouldn't want to dismiss Tootsie's writing achievement because it's a cross-dressing comedy, nor do I want to write off Victor/Victoria's. And I have to disagree with the statement that the movie feels dated -- in fact, I was surprised by the time I got to it at how modern its take on gender and sexuality felt. (Or, let me put it this way: when was the last time Hollywood turned out a big commercial comedy that addressed these subjects in as smart a manner as this one does?) I also have to admit that I found it quite funny, with a lot of very clever dialogue. (The movie's most quintessential line -- "A woman...pretending to be a man...pretending to be a woman" -- is a loopy mobius strip that sets off a rather wittily constructed farcical plot with cheerful aplomb.) It's a close call -- on a more serious-minded day I could have picked Missing -- but I'll salute Blake Edwards on his one nomination for all the laughs he gave us here and throughout his career.

[Sabin]

Well, that's pretty much it for my favorite category from here on out. Too many blindspots so I'm incapable of weighing in on the Diner vs. Tootsie debate. Were I to vote, I think I'd have no choice but vote for Diner. It's just operating on a different level of human understanding than Tootsie. It's the difference between a movie that feels birthed from experience and a movie wrangled into brilliance in defiance of all odds, the best example of throwing enough writers against the wall until it works that I can think of. Tootsie is a model screenplay, most especially because every character serves a distinct, specific function. And at almost two hours, it takes its time, occasionally like a funny drama. It's the movie of Judd Apatow's dreams.

Diner is different, and ultimately it's the difference between the work of a Hollywood committee trying to please everybody (and one very demanding star) and a smaller committee requesting the trust of the audience to get what they're doing. It succeeds in being both a time capsule film and amazingly contemporary. Tootsie was and still is a product of it time. It's a flip of a coin between two movies doing my two favorite things in film about as well as you can but were I to vote, I'd vote for Diner.

[Kellens101]

No it's ok. Sorry

[The Original BJ]

BJ, how about Se7en and Zodiac, two David Fincher movies you haven't discussed?

I'm very flattered you're so interested in all of my personal opinions, but unfortunately, I just don't have the time to respond to every inquiry about my individual thoughts on any given film. Sorry!

[Kellens101]

BJ, how about Se7en and Zodiac, two David Fincher movies you haven't discussed?

[Kellens101]

Oh, I highly recommend The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America. All three of them are masterpieces.

[The Original BJ]

This is off-topic, but BJ, what is your opinion of Sergio Leone and his great filmography?

I'm not that big an expert on Sergio Leone.

[Kellens101]

This is off-topic, but BJ, what is your opinion of Sergio Leone and his great filmography?

[The Original BJ]

BJ, what was your opinion of the two Fassbinder masterpieces? I noticed you cited them both here and in the Picture/Director threads.

I think that the BRD trilogy is the peak of Fassbinder's career -- the films are wonderfully stylish visually, full of emotional power, offer great vehicles for the actresses at their centers, and above all provide great insight into the country Germany was in the decades following WWII. These were some of the last films he made before his untimely death, but what a way to go.

[Kellens101]

BJ, what was your opinion of the two Fassbinder masterpieces? I noticed you cited them both here and in the Picture/Director threads.

[Big Magilla]

First off, just flagging that we should enable re-voting in this poll (so, heads-up to either Kellens or a board moderator to do this.)

Done.

[The Original BJ]

First off, just flagging that we should enable re-voting in this poll (so, heads-up to either Kellens or a board moderator to do this.)

In terms of discussing Original Screenplay, I'm essentially going to be co-signing everything Mister Tee wrote. In terms of alternates, if we're looking at off-Oscar options, Fassbinder's Lola/Veronika Voss double-punch is worth noting. Looking at more realistic possibles, both Shoot the Moon and My Favorite Year are better than some actual nominees.

Gandhi is indeed a gigantic snooze. And of all the dispiriting trophies it won on Oscar night, this is probably the worst of them all. I think it's completely impersonal history -- in terms of narrative, it barely even feels shaped by a writer at all -- and just goes on and on, with barely any interesting dialogue or insight along the way. The worst of the nominees.

Aside from its huge grosses, and not all that many options, I don't really know why An Officer and a Gentleman would be cited here. There are some halfway interesting elements (Lou Gossett Jr. has some memorable dialogue, Debra Winger's role is pretty sensitively realized, and the movie's depiction of sexuality in the Gere-Winger relationship felt relatively mature), but on the whole I found much of the narrative sudsy, and its ideology nothing more than vanilla.

As others have said, it's pretty easy to love E.T. and not vote for it here simply because its most memorable moments -- like Elliott's first encounter with E.T., the heartfelt goodbye between them, and of course, that thrilling bike ride across the moon -- are more visual and musical triumphs, rather than verbal ones. But also, I wouldn't want to underrate the movie in the writing department either. A lot of films have told the story of a boy and his pet (and E.T. is essentially a fantasy spin on that template), but so few have done it in a manner that provokes such wondrous awe, breathless tension, and emotional impact, and the film's screenwriter deserves a lot of credit for that along with its world-famous director.

In a handful of years this decade, Diner would have had my vote, for its memorable collection of characters, spouting wonderfully realized dialogue, throughout a series of vignettes that are both delightfully comic (like the girl who has to pass the football test before she gets married!) and deeply poignant (Kevin Bacon's alcoholism). I voted for Barry Levinson already for Avalon, but Diner might be his peak screenwriting achievement, the time his fondness for nostalgic, Baltimore-set stories inspired by his own upbringing felt most fully alive on both the comedic and dramatic levels, despite the absence of any real over-arching plot.

But Tootsie is on the ballot, and despite solid competition from E.T. and Diner, it's my easy vote in this category. So many years of drag comedy imitators have made it easy to equate the subject matter with films that wouldn't necessarily be worthy of writing awards. But that's not Tootsie's fault, and in fact, it's quite remarkable that such an insightful comedy about human relationships could stem from such a seemingly silly premise. However, thanks to the writers, every moment feels fully grounded, so that a line like "I was a better man with you as a woman, than I ever was with any woman as a man" is both funny in its outrageousness and still utterly heart-melting at the same time. And in addition to gobs of great dialogue, the screenplay is impeccably structured, balancing the Garr/Murray/Pollock subplots with the central Hoffman/Lange romance, and bringing all of the threads together in the hilarious live soap filming when Hoffman goes off book. It all feels so effortlessly set up, but of course, such carefully constructed writing is the opposite of effortless, so much so that I feel it clearly merits this award.

[Mister Tee]

The adapted side seems the weaker this year – at least in the sense I don’t find any film on the list a clear choice for winner. There weren’t any grievous omissions, either. Steve Tesich’s stab at The World According to Garp achieved respectability, but couldn’t measure up to the ambitious novel. I found Tex a stronger, more genuine variation on S.E. Hinton than Coppola’s later The Outsiders, but it was a wee thing.

Of the nominees: The Verdict may seem less disappointing today, when legal potboilers are an established genre. At the time, I found its cheesiness a huge letdown: pre-release promotion suggested a halfway-serious effort, but I found it strictly an airport book-level thriller, not worthy of its solid cast.

The things Italiano says about Victor/Victoria are things I felt about it back in 1982. I never cared for Blake Edwards’ reliance on slapstick comedy – even a better movie (like 10) suffered from its lapses into silly pratfalls. I just never found this movie terribly funny and, at over two hours, it failed at pacing, as well. I know the film’s many fans will continue to adore it, but I just never took to it.

Das Boot is a strong cinematic experience, but owes very little of its impact to its script. It’s not as if the script is a handicap, but mostly it’s the visceral sense Wolfgang Petersen creates of being inside a sub that gives the film its kick.

It’s funny that Italiano has flipped on Sophie’s Choice and Missing from earlier evaluation, because I’m tempted to do the same, only in the opposite direction. My notebooks from 1982 have Sophie’s Choice marked down as the selection, but I’d always felt queasy about that. The film (like Styron’s way-too-verbose novel) has a powerful central anecdote in its flashback, but the surrounding present-day story verges on soap opera. And much of the film has a stilted quality to it – though it’s hard to know whether writer Pakula or director Pakula bears more responsibility for this. In any case, I always had issues with the film, and my choosing it back in ’82 wasn’t any easy call. And, I must confess, I haven’t seen it since.

I’d been disappointed in Missing at the time. It had opened to extravagantly strong reviews, but, when I saw it, I had much the reaction Magilla has mentioned: the movie was exactly what it appeared to be from the outside, with no surprises to bump it to the level the reviews had suggested. This still left it a decent enough film – a less obvious version of the Jane Fonda “conservative taught the truth by liberals” template – but still a disappointment. However…in preparation for this round, I watched the movie again a short while ago, and admired it more. It’s still nothing earthshaking (and never was, to those of us who’d always thought the worst of the Nixon/Reagan foreign policy teams), but it’s a nicely detailed piece, with memorable moments (like Spacek’s stranded-past-curfew sequence) and a delicate touch even when it’s pushing its politics. This is not, as I indicated above, a battle of the giants. But at this moment I’m inclined to vote for Missing.

The two omissions I’d most note under original would be Shoot the Moon – a better Bo Goldman script than his earlier winner, and Alan Parker’s best film – and Bill Forsyth’s deceptively simple, charming Gregory’s Girl.

The problem isn’t that Gandhi is a history movie, the sort that almost never gets cited by the writers but somehow did, here. It’s that it’s a particularly undistinguished, even clunky version of same, so it was a particular outrage to see it noted. Apart from the Mahatma himself, there isn’t a memorable character in the entire three hours, and, while the events the film recounts are momentous, the film’s treatment of them is utterly flat.

An Officer and a Gentleman is no better. I’ve probably noted it here before, but I found this one of the most depressingly retro films of that dreary decade. Was it seriously pulling out that old Tyrone Power “send the spoiled young guy through boot camp and build his character” formula? Post-Vietnam, it seemed ludicrous anyone would get away with that. But get away with it they did: the film was a surprise late summer hit (and really made Richard Gere’s career – it was the first film that had managed to make him halfway likable). I fell halfway in love with Debra Winger, which was the only redemptive aspect of the film, for me. The last thing I’d honor about it would be its script.

E.T. is probably too easy to underrate on the script level. Even at the time, I saw it as a directorial feat – I chose Spielberg as the year’s best director, but the screenplay never figured in consideration. And I’m not going to vote for it here, either: not with two films in contention that are truly among the finest examples of dialogue-and-character –centered scripts in any era. But we should take notice that, while MANY screenwriters have attempted fantasy on the level of this film, virtually none have evoked the intensity of audience euphoria Melisa Matheson’s story provides. This may be the strongest third-place finisher in any year we’re covering.

Barry Levinson’s Diner was a wonderful script – full of wry observation, packed with quotable one-liners, shambling along with a set of terrific, freshly-conceived characters. In most years, this script would have swept the critics’ prizes, anyway. I really loved it.

But it was the film’s misfortune to come along in the same year as one of the funniest, most inventive and most observant comedies of the last half-century. We’ve recounted it here before: Tootsie during its shoot was the subject of reams of bad publicity: writers hired and fired, costly overruns, the usual complaints about Hoffman’s perfectionism. That the film turned out so breathtakingly good – so clearly a movie both audiences and critics would love – seemed an absolute miracle (especially in the context of the godawful 80s). However many writers were involved, the film’s structure is just about perfect– as BJ pointed out in the best film thread, when we get to the on-air climax, we realize it was all carefully set up, but we’d never noticed. Yet, at the same time, the film breathes enough to allow multiple subplots, and, in the end, a genuine, tender romance that enriches the film. I disagree that the film is merely farce (though, as Seinfeldians would say, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”). A line like Teri Garr’s “I don’t take that kind of crap from friends; only from lovers” bespeaks an intelligence about modern relationships – an intelligence that runs through the whole film. (This was one of the few movies I saw in the 80s that seemed about life as I and my friends were living it) And, on top of all that, the movie is just so damn funny – Pollack’s “I begged you to get therapy” or Murray’s “You slut” still make me helpless with laughter every time I run across them on TV. Tootsie should have been the slam-dunk winner for best original screenplay of the decade. It’s to the Academy’s everlasting same that they passed it up; I’ll not repeat their error.