The Writers Guild Nominates Diverse, Inclusive Slate for 2018

It’s been ten years since a female writer won the Writers Guild Award for Original Screenplay — Diablo Cody for Juno. That’s ten years of mostly white males being nominated in that category and winning that prize. Sofia Coppola won in 2003. Jane Campion won in 1993 and Callie Khouri won in 1991. That’s four women since 1984 when the WGA split their honors into what we now know as Original and Adapted Screenplay. For non-white writers, the picture is even more grim. It was wonderful to see  Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney win last year for Moonlight, all the more because they were the first and only black writers to be awarded for original screenplay since 1984.

In adapted screenplay, you have to go back to 2005 to even find a female co-writer: Diana Ossana for Brokeback Mountain. Shari Springer Berman won for co-writing American Splendor in 2004. Emma Thompson won for Sense and Sensibility in 1996, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala won for A Room with a View in 1987. As far as I can tell, mostly white males have been winning in adapted going back to 1984.

What is kind of amazing about this year, and deserves to be pointed out, is the number of women and/or non-white writers among this year’s list of WGA nominees.

In original:

Jordan Peele for Get Out
Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird
Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor for The Shape of Water
Emily V. Gordon,  Kumail Nanjiani for The Big Sick

Four out of five of the nominees are non-white males or women. That has to be a record.

In adapted, we have:

Dee Rees and Virgil Williams for Mudbound. Rees made it a priority to choose many high-profile women and specifically women of color in key roles for Mudbound, in sound, makeup, score and editing. It’s great to see a much-deserved nomination here for her and for Virgil Williams.

There will be much to complain about this year, but it’s important to celebrate when something this significant shifts organically as it has here, with original stories being told from different cultural perspectives. Who but Guillermo del Toro with his expansive imagination could have told what is ultimately an American story from an outsider’s perspective? Del Toro might be seen as a version of his Eliza Esposito — observing a self-contained culture from the unique perspective of an insider who is still regarded by many as an outsider, finding solace in art and movies and whatever might be swimming around underneath the bustling repression of society. Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a distinctly African American story told from a specific point of view of how it feels to live here among lefty “I’m not racist” people who ostensibly mean well but whose deep-seated attitudes are still contaminated by the legacy of our country’s past. Kumail Nanjiani’s story of meeting and falling in love with an ambitious American woman, Emily V. Gordon, examines how both sides see this country’s sudden and extreme shift into Trumpland, and how they overcame restrictions of their upbringing to find their own way by blending two extremely different cultures. Greta Gerwig’s story is one of a restless young California girl who wants something better for herself but doesn’t yet know what that may be. She buzzes with urgency and yearning, but is still learning how to to focus that energy. That isn’t a story a man could tell — it is very much from the point of view of a young woman finding her way in a culture really built for men to soar, not women.

Dee Rees told her own personal story with Pariah six years ago, and now with her collaborator Virgil Williams she reaches out for larger themes. Though Mudbound takes place 70 years ago, this film, this script is so much about right now — how the two unequal Americas that existed after WWII still remain. Mudbound shows how we can forge bonds nonetheless and find peace in our individual relationships, but the bottom line is still that there is a different set of rules, a different justice system, and a morass of brutal perceptions that still need to change. What I love most about Mudbound is that it isn’t Dee Rees’ personal story, but because she felt compelled to tell it, and made a universally moving film, she has proven how such an opportunity is itself an enormous step forward, no matter whether everyone is ready for it.