Update: the Big Short has won the USC Scripter for both novel and screenplay.
Earlier: USC will be handing out their Scripter awards tonight. They have a hit-and-miss record with the Oscars, although you have to go back to Up in the Air in 2009 to find a year when their winner didn’t match with the Oscar Adapted Screenplay winner. There might be a surprise or two afoot here, or not. It’s always hard to parse what people really think from what we assume they think and what publicists are telling us they think. For me, their awards really jumped the shark when they awarded Argo over Lincoln. They were supposed to honor both the book and the screenplay, so I’ll never get over their choosing Argo – as good as it was – over the combination of Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tony Kushner. But that does show you how this group, and others, often just vote for what they like as opposed as to the best adaptation.
The festivities start around 7:30 p.m. Pacific.
Here are the nominees for tonight after the cut:
“The Big Short”
Screenwriters Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, adapted from Michael Lewis’s nonfiction work “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine”
Paramount Pictures and W.W. Norton
“Brooklyn”
Novelist Colm Tóibín and screenwriter Nick Hornby
Fox Searchlight and Viking
“The End of the Tour”
Screenwriter Donald Margulies, adapted from David Lipsky’s memoir “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace”
A24 and Broadway Books
“The Martian”
Novelist Andy Weir and screenwriter Drew Goddard
Twentieth Century Fox and Crown Publishing Group
“Room”
Emma Donoghue for the novel and screenplay
A24 and Little, Brown and Company
These are all really great books and scripts. It would be difficult to choose from them, if it were me.
Any of them could win, even if The Big Short has the Big Mo at this point, which is why we can’t predict anything but. Both The Martian and The Big Short are astonishing adaptations. Both adaptations really took fairly simple books and turned them into funny, vibrant masterworks. I would have a really hard time choosing between those two. I will predict The Big Short to win.
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The best adaptation won 🙂
Kushner should have an Oscar and a Scripter on his mantle at home.
“They were supposed to honor both the book and the screenplay, so I’ll
never get over their choosing Argo – as good as it was – over the
combination of Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tony Kushner. But that does show
you how this group, and others, often just vote for what they like as
opposed a̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶d̶a̶p̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ to what I Sasha Stone like.”
There I fixed this for you!
I only went to see The Big Short on a sweltering day last month and the session time suited me; or i may not have seen it. I tend to glaze over with finance and business; but it was incredibly skillfully put together; from the pacey dialogue to the dynamic direction and array of seasoned and newer actors. I was really impressed!
Best script of the year, in my opinion.
Brooklyn should have won. Ronan didn’t have to sit in a bathtub and try to make sense of the economic dilemmas.
🙁 What happened???
Love Brooklyn, for me, the best Picture, Actress,Script….
Something like that…
Argo winning anything that year was a joke !
I am delighted that The Big Short won!
Aw, I loved The End of the Tour! Though I agree Carol’s snub here is terrible.
I’d be fine with any of these winning but Room was a brilliant adaptation and Donoghue beautifully translated her already excellent novel into an equally effective screenplay. She would be my win here.
Brooklyn should and will win tonight
Preach.
There is nothing simplistic or pedestrian about The Big Short. The film’s themes extend way beyond Wall Street. It is great social commentary on the nature of corruption and humanity. We experience it through the eyes of these traders who were ostracized for seeing what everybody else refused to see. It was a masterful and highly thought-provoking piece of work that made me furious and increased my level of empathy. It educated, enraged, and entertained me.
Instead of going off on a huge rant defending The Big Short, I would encourage people to read the script:
http://www.paramountguilds.com/pdf/the-big-short.pdf
There is a lot of depth and substance to The Big Short.
“I’m still annoyed about “Lincoln” losing.”
That was clearly an absolutely ridiculous decision.
This year, The Big Short probably deserves it, in my opinion. Even over Brooklyn, a movie I love quite a bit more.
My lord, I don’t think I can’t offer a proper rebuttal about a movie like The Big Short that has such a dense and complicated subject matter without writing an essay about it. I honestly don’t want to waste my time going into an endless debate about it. The reductivism that you keep applying to The Big Short is blowing my mind with how absurd and inaccurate it is.
The audience has to deeply understand the context to understand the movie and the situation which has numerous layers to it. The movie doesn’t resort to any simple or basic generalizations like that. This is such shallow reasoning against an important issue that victimized millions of people. Do you not understand the ramifications of the economic collapse in 2008 or the various intricacies as to what caused it? Everything about the film from the subject matter, characterizations, themes, and various viewpoints are a thousand times more complex than how you are misportraying it.
Blurry settings? Only a person who didn’t deeply comprehend the plotline and subject matter would say that. The film has various gray areas when it comes to the morality and human nature of all of these characters. It acknowledges how the immigrants and poor people were the greatest victims. It addresses the level of manipulation, exploitation, and opportunism the masses were subjugated to. It addresses the pain, tension, struggles, or remorse that Mark Baum or Michael Burry or etc felt. The characters in The Big Short were fully developed, you don’t need a entire film about each individual character to get a strong sense as to who they are. The film very much presented each character as strong emotional figures and we get some backstory or personal insight into each of them. The film doesn’t have a happy ending and gives a raw & honest insight into the situation.
The Big Short is highly topical and can be analyzed from a multitude of psychological and emotional perspectives as well as finanical and political ones. The film is a drama, comedy, horror fillm, suspense thriller, cautionary tale, and tragedy all rolled into one.
True. I am predicting Revenant right now for both sounds just based on my gut.
I’m still annoyed about “Lincoln” losing. I would be fine with any of the five winning, but would personally be happiest with “Brooklyn” winning. It was my top film of the year, and I loved the book, which I read shortly after last year’s Oscars.
If I had to bet money, and I wouldn’t because I’m very frugal (maybe even cheap), I’d say Big Short will win.
Audience is not required to understand the context and for the most part they don’t. All they get is “Wall Street BAD” and that’s enough to enjoy the movie. It’s a simplistic message which reaches its target. The easy felons of the story are the financial crooks in the shadows, very poorly portrayed (like that guy in the restaurant or those fresh faced sharky pups in the big offices). I don’t see grey areas, just blurry settings. It’s a tutorial to “feel the Bern” with talking heads instead of fully developed characters.
Quick re-post:
Off topic, but this is a message that should prevent many other such off topic comments from me (and not only) from happening in the future, so I hope you’ll forgive me for this one bit of (in my view, necessary) spam!
This Andrew situation has got to stop right now. He continues to ignore my arguments and just repeat the same bullshit over and over, and provoke me every chance he gets. He is an evil troll and, therefore, from now on, he’s on ‘ignore,’ in my book, except for the standard responses I will list below. Whenever he actually brings up something of worth (which he actually does, from time to time), my response will not be a reply to him, but a post of my own addressing his points, as though someone else had made them. If he replies to my comment, he will, again, receive one of the replies below.
I have better things to do with my life than try to get a broken record to stop skipping. I need to devote my time here to the people that make this site great, not the ones that take away from that.
From now on, the only responses he’s ever getting out of me are:
– ‘SLANDER’ (Whenever he claims I said something I didn’t.)
– ‘BROKEN RECORD’ (Whenever he rehashes the same old tired arguments myself and others have already refuted.)
– ‘TROLL’ (Whenever he’s being purposely malicious towards me in some way other than the above.)
– ” (Whenever he’s not being malicious towards me – which shouldn’t be very often – or I just don’t care enough to respond.)
– PLUS quotes (of whatever length I feel is appropriate) from this message, whenever absolutely necessary. Without any comments; just the quotes and the appropriate standard reply, as listed above. He’s not getting a single word out of me from now on that isn’t included in this message.
Make no mistake – he WILL try to provoke me again. Probably within minutes. And, in his infinite stupidity, he WILL think he has a chance of being successful. In that respect, he’ll be proven wrong swiftly and unequivocally. Fun’s over, troll!
You said it.
There are a group of haters on this site regardless of whether you acknowledge it or not. They do on this on every article section. Then they generalize and troll everybody who defends The Big Short. Do not give me a hypocritical lecture about that. There are people who make a point to smear the film on every pundit site by revving up a huge mob against it. They have to ignite a backlash on every article that mentions The Big Short. You even have certain pundit sites and a number of journalists even actively campaign against The Big Short by using every card in the book. There are people who have even tried to label TBS supporters as misogynistic or dude bros/frat bros or racist. There is a strong bias operating here as well as a smear campaign. The film had a major target on its back from rivals from the get-go.
I am not going to get into a discussion about that from people who will try to deny that. I have been cyber-bullied enough over this already from other people.
In your opinion. Please try not to lump everyone who disagrees that Big Short is the masterpiece of the year into the group of “haters” … I personally loved it, and I certainly did *understand* it, but I found other adaptations this year – particularly Brooklyn and Carol – to be more complex, intelligent, and socially resonant. That’s also my opinion. Doesn’t mean I think Big Short was simple, stupid, and socially irrelevant.
I have avoided responding directly to the haters on this site too much. I think it would take me a dozen pages to refute this wildly inaccurate description of The Big Short. Seriously, wtf. A person who describes TBS this way doesn’t understand the film at all or the economy or the dire gravity of the circumstances. That is such a trite and superficial dismissal of what the film is about as well as disregarding the multi-layered characterizations in the film. It is not just about the economic collapse but about human nature, greed, corruption, and societal injustices that occur on a global level.
The Big Short actually has legitimate depth, intelligence, and complexity. It actually has substance unlike most of the other BP nominees. I don’t think describing the economic collapse of 2008 from multiple perspectives based on the experiences of a group of people using many components and narrative devices can be blown off that way. I don’t want to waste time dissecting every piece of dialogue or subplot in the film.
It is not a populist film considering not everybody can understand the context of this film or the jargon. The entire cast delivered excellent and impressive performances. Mark Baum is loosely based on Steve Eiseman who is a real person. There is nothing phony about that. The Mark Baum character’s display of outrage and concern over the bank fraudulence came across as very sincere and passionate to me. It came from a very organic place. We also get more backstory into Mark Baum’s character about him struggling with his brother’s suicide and how he has guilt issues.
Honestly, it would take me too long to properly respond to this. The entire movie’s tone is firmly planted in a gray area. Michael Burry and the other main characters are not depicted to be easy heroes at all, they are depicted as flawed human beings who took the realistic course of action considering they are hedge fund managers and bankers who live by making a profit out of short or long term investments. There are no ‘easy felons’ either. Everything the film conveys is far more multi-faceted than that. It is a sharp criticism and analysis of our capitalistic system.
TBS tries to be smart, tries very hard. That’s its problem. There’s nothing complex in overstuffing. Just a captioned cartoon, digits and buzzwords. The only gust of life comes from Carell’s character but in the end his integrity sounds too phony to be true. It’s a populist movie with easy heroes and easy felons.
The Big Short will deservedly win but gosh, I’d love a Room win too.
I agree, Brooklyn was too polite and dull for my tastes.
The Revenant’s winning Sound Mixing at the Oscars. It’s a done deal. Then again, I said Boyhood was a “done deal” at the Oscars last year, and look how wrong I was…..
I agree.
The Big Short will win. Love that Carol was snubbed (NO false accusations of homophobia or slandering here please.) although I’m confused by The End of the Tour’s inclusion.
It was a solid vehicle for Jason Segal to show his dramatic chops, but I didn’t find much more than that. I think Cary Joji Fukunaga’s underrated Beasts of No Nation script or even the worse underrated, brilliantly and unpredictably crafted and detailed Kingsman: The Secret Service script by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman deserved recognition far more. 😉
Not because Academy members gave a shit though. Because their tastes happened to align. Stats are only reliable if they’re indicative of a mindset that might influence members to vote one way or another. This stat isn’t strong enough to suggest that, nor does it make any sense to theorise that Academy members make their decision as to which film wins Sound Mixing based on what BAFTA members chose for Sound.
It is not about conformity, it is about selecting the strongest screenplay. The Big Short would be a deserving winner.
I personally thought the Brooklyn script was average, mundane, and too simple. I wouldn’t describe Brooklyn as being spectacular from a writing perspective. Even The Martian or Room winning would be more plausible.The Big Short was probably the most challenging to adapt and it is the Oscar frontrunner.
Of course, all of the TBS haters respond first. The Big Short had the most complex, intelligent, and socially resonant screenplay in my opinion.
Yeah, Carol not being nominated is pretty shocking.
Gonna also have to go with Brooklyn here, its writing is flawless. Surprised Carol hadn’t been nominated.
Will win: The Big Short (conformist choice)
Should win: Brooklyn
Last 8 BAFTA winners in sound won Sound mixing at oscars so…
As if 6,000+ non-sound professionals in the Academy could give a shit which film wins the Best Sound BAFTA and the Cinema Audio Society award. They’ll pick whatever film they want.
I think more important are CAS (sound mixing) awards tonight. Revenant or Mad Max? If Revenant wins then is clear its winning sound mixing at oscars
Screenplays are locked up.
The Big Short’s bound to win.
Never mind Argo winning over Lincoln, as egregious as that was. Snubbing such a beautiful script as Phyllis Nagy’s adaptation of the legendary Patricia Highsmith’s novel, and nominating instead the self-satisfied, latent dudebro mutual wankery of The End of the Tour means that I couldn’t give the tiniest shit about what Scripter voters do this year.