The Big Short wins the USC Scripter

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.