Oscars 2016 – Original and Adapted Screenplay Race Competitive in Both Categories – Can Amy Schumer Break In?

The good news is that we could possibly see four screenplays written by women nominated in the writing categories. Phyllis Nagy for Carol, Emma Donaghue (who adapted her own novel) for Room, Meg LeFauve who co-wrote Inside Out, and Abi Morgan for Suffragette. Four scripts by women, about women.

There is potentially room for Amy Schumer to crack the Original Screenplay category for Trainwreck. While she’s probably out for acting, there is absolutely no reason she should not be campaigning right now to get a screenplay nomination for her brilliant and successful Trainwreck, which is now number 21 this year’s box office chart. I’m fairly certain that makes her the most successful female screenwriter of the year, after Inside Out.

The bad news is, the adapted screenplay race is so crowded that both women in that race could be shut out. Abi Morgan and Meg LeFauve will not have a problem in the original category. The adapted race is where the major best picture heat usually is. Because we don’t know which way that race is headed yet, we can’t say whether most of the Best Picture contenders will be in adapted or in original.

The screenplay race in both categories, like the directing race, is often driven by two major forces: best picture heat and celebrity status. Writers like Charlie Kaufman, Woody Allen, the Coen brothers are generally favored over no-name writers unless the writing is either exceptional or behind a strong Best Picture contender. This year, there are a few star names entering the race, including Joel and Ethan Coen (along with Matt Charman) for Bridge of Spies, Nick Hornby for Brooklyn, Charlie Kaufman for Anomalisa, David O. Russell for Joy, Alejandro G. Inarritu for The Revenant, Cary Fukunaga for Beasts of No Nation, and the Chairman of the Board, Aaron Sorkin – king of writers – for Steve Jobs. These writing stars, unless voters really hate their films, will take precedence over the less known writers unless those writers are attached to a strong Best Picture contender. Those writers, at least right now, would be moved to the top of the list, and those include Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer for Spotlight, and Drew Godard for The Martian, easily two of the best screenplays of the year.

Given that, let’s look at our list factoring in celebrity writers and Best Picture heat contenders.

Original Screenplay
1. David O. Russell, Joy (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
2. Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer, Spotlight (best picture heat)
3. Paolo Sorrentino, Youth (best picture heat maybe)
4. Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight
5. Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Pete Docter, Inside Out
6. Amy Schumer, Trainwreck (celebrity writer)

Adapted Screenplay
1. Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
2. Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
3. Nick Hornby, Brooklyn (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
4. The Coens, Matt Charman, Bridge of Spies (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
5. Drew Godard, The Martian (best picture heat)
6. Emma Donoghue, Room (best picture heat)
7. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
8. Phyllis Nagy, Carol (best picture heat)
9. Charlie Kaufman, Anomalisa (celebrity writer)

Other adapted screenplays coming up: Concussion and The Big Short.

So you can see that adapted is impossibly crowded. If we look at them without “best picture heat,” Anomalisa is out. But we know that it’s a beloved film already and that Kaufman is a rock star in the writing department. If he managed to crack the top five how might that go? He could possibly bump Bridge of Spies if that film’s Best Picture heat drops. It’s a crazy crap shoot in terms of who gets in and who doesn’t and I suspect, at the end of the day, it will come down to how much people like the films overall rather than the writers themselves.

For adapted, right now, the locks appear to be Steve Jobs, The Revenant and The Martian. We haven’t yet seen The Revenant so we can’t call a winner. But Inarritu just won last year so the chances of a back to back win could be an exceptional situation. With so many women in the race will voters want to reward a woman? In that instance, I would give the edge to Phyllis Nagy for her groundbreaking script for Carol.

I think that Brooklyn will be popular with voters all around, and that probably adds Hornby to the list of locks. So Best Adapted might look something like:

1. Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
2. Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
3. Nick Hornby, Brooklyn (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
4. Drew Godard, The Martian (best picture heat)

The fifth slot between:
5. The Coens, Matt Charman, Bridge of Spies (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
6. Phyllis Nagy, Carol (best picture heat)
7. Cary Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
8. Emma Donoghue, Room (best picture heat)
9. Charlie Kaufman, Anomalisa (celebrity writer)

That is a loose estimation of how it might go but is, by no means, a hard and fast list of how it WILL go.

Moving on to original screenplay, we have two rock stars with David O. Russell and Quentin Tarantino. We COULD have another rock star with Amy Schumer, if voters can think outside the box the way they did with Bridesmaids, which also got a nomination. The locks in the category are: Joy (presumably), Spotlight, Inside Out. We have three locks and two open slots that could include Quentin Tarantino, Paolo Sorrentino and Amy Schumer. One will get left out. Which one?  I’m looking at it right now like this:

Original Screenplay
1. David O. Russell for Joy (celebrity writer + best picture heat)
2. Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer, Spotlight (best picture heat)
3. Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Pete Docter, Inside Out
4. Quentin Tarantino, Hateful Eight
5. Amy Schumer, Trainwreck (celebrity writer)
5. Paolo Sorrentino, Youth (best picture heat maybe)

The Tarantino N Word problem

Tarantino’s success in the Oscar race is going to be tricky this year. He has an ace in the hole in that he’s popular with his fans, popular with audiences and popular with the Academy; his last two films have been nominated for Best Picture and he’s won Screenplay both of those times. This year is a little different. He’s about to step in a steamy pile of dog shit with his upcoming film because everyone uses the N word continually. White actors using it continually. This on the heels of a clickbaity article written by whiny Bret Easton Ellis who proudly plays the “victimized white male” narrative that so many have glommed onto after the press was dominated by Ava DuVernay and Selma last year. You keep hearing these whinging, whining white males bringing this up repeatedly. No one in such a dramatic, mewling way as Ellis in the New York Times:

We touch on this year’s Oscars and the supposed Oscar snubbing of Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King movie ‘‘Selma,’’ which caused a kind of national sentimental-narrative outrage, compounded by the events in Ferguson, and which branded the Academy voters as old and out-of-it racists — despite the fact that ‘‘12 Years a Slave’’ had won Best Picture the year before. Tarantino shrugs diplomatically: ‘‘She did a really good job on ‘Selma’ but ‘Selma’ deserved an Emmy.’’ ‘‘Django Unchained,’’ with its depictions of antebellum-era institutionalized racism and Mandingo fights and black self-hatred, is a much more shocking and forward-thinking movie than ‘‘Selma,’’ and audiences turned it into the biggest hit of Tarantino’s career. But it was also attacked for, among other things, being written and directed by a white man.

Such controversy is not new to Tarantino. ‘‘If you’ve made money being a critic in black culture in the last 20 years you have to deal with me,’’ he says. ‘‘You must have an opinion of me. You must deal with what I’m saying and deal with the consequences.’’ He pauses, considers. ‘‘If you sift through the criticism,’’ he says, ‘‘you’ll see it’s pretty evenly divided between pros and cons. But when the black critics came out with savage think pieces about ‘Django,’ I couldn’t have cared less. If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter. The bad taste that was left in my mouth had to do with this: It’s been a long time since the subject of a writer’s skin was mentioned as often as mine. You wouldn’t think the color of a writer’s skin should have any effect on the words themselves. In a lot of the more ugly pieces my motives were really brought to bear in the most negative way. It’s like I’m some supervillain coming up with this stuff.’’ But Tarantino is an optimist: ‘‘This is the best time to push buttons,’’ he says a few minutes later. ‘‘This is the best time to get out there because there actually is a genuine platform. Now it’s being talked about.’’

I personally don’t care if Tarantino wants to make movies like Jackie Brown or Django Unchained. He also is very opinionated about himself and other filmmakers. What he thinks of Ava DuVernay is of no consequence to me except in the way that it aligns with what many white directors think of her and Selma. What bothers me is the insular nature of it. That they seem to forget the cinema is for everyone, not just white nerds who think the world begins and ends with their anal gazing. It doesn’t. This is aimed more at Bret Easton Ellis’ inane and passive aggressive comments (his treatise on Django reads like a Jonathan Franzen interview — haughty and smug) than at Tarantino’s blithe dismissal of DuVernay. White men are in charge. They’ve been in charge for centuries. That’s the way it is. We can expect both their mewling self-pitying rants about the Selma controversy — which really was a lot of people saying “hey, white guys, what about this movie directed by a black woman that we all really like? Why do these awards always have to focus on white male anal gazing?” Because they define what defines “good movies.” They dominate the film critics, the industry and presumably (not in reality) the ticket buyers. To make them look in a different direction – on something that isn’t their own white guy asshole – one has to kick up a fuss. It bothers them? So what.

What does it take away from guys like Ellis that people defend and advocate for Ava DuVernay? What do they lose? Why does it scare them so much? No on is taking anything away from them. They don’t want to be thought of as racists, that’s what the defensiveness is all about and I can dig it. I don’t think they’re racists. Protesting the Selma shut out wasn’t necessarily about racism – but preferences are about identification. Voters identify with stories they can relate to – stories that make them feel good about themselves (usually). Those stories, at least for the last decade, have been almost exclusively white male narratives. Yes, 12 Years a Slave won in 2013 and The Hurt Locker won in 2009 but let’s face it. The default is white male and everyone knows this yet no one can really explain why.

Okay, that’s the end of my rant but it might not be the end of the Tarantino controversy once word gets out that his movie is wall-to-word N word, which is apparently used as freely as bullets are used and blood is spilled. I don’t know what people will make of it, or what impact that will have on the Oscar race but it’s worth paying attention to when considering this category of original screenplay.

Amy Schumer’s presence at the Oscars would make them kind of special, especially since her new BFF, Jennifer Lawrence will also be there. It will be kind of cute to see them together at the prom!

Aside from that, Schumer kind of deserves consideration for her funny, semi-revolutionary examination of life as a raunchy, boozy young female figuring out who she is and what she wants. Trainwreck is less about female empowerment than it is about Schumer’s gift for comedic writing (and directing).