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Posts with tag: oscars | Return to the Writer's Blog Homepage

J.K. Rowling Turns Down Oscar Invitation

J.K. Rowling turned down the Oscars producers' invitation to present the award for Best Adapted Screenplay with Twilight author Stephenie Meyer. Jo said that she's too busy writing her next book to make the trip.
Rowling writes on her website, "You won't be hearing from me often I am afraid, as pen and paper is my priority at the moment."

The movies nominated for the screenplay award are In the Loop (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci & Tony Roche), District 9 (Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell), Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire (Geoffrey Fletcher), An Education (Nick Hornby) and Up In The Air (Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner).
Stephenie has reportedly accepted the offer, but it's not clear who she will be presenting with.

Posted on March 4, 2010
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Avatar, Hurt Locker Lead Oscar Race

Screenshot from Oscar nominations announcement


The Oscar nominations were announced this morning by Anne Hathaway. Here are the nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay:

Adapted screenplay:

  • District 9 (Sony Pictures Releasing), Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
  • An Education (Sony Pictures Classics), Screenplay by Nick Hornby
  • In the Loop (IFC Films), Screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
  • Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Lionsgate), Screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher
  • Up in the Air (Paramount in association with Cold Spring Pictures and DW Studios) , Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

    Original screenplay:

  • The Hurt Locker (Summit Entertainment), Written by Mark Boal
  • Inglourious Basterds (The Weinstein Company), Written by Quentin Tarantino
  • The Messenger (Oscilloscope Laboratories), Written by Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman
  • A Serious Man (Focus Features), Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
  • Up (Walt Disney), Screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy

    You can see the full list of nominations here.

    Photo: Todd Wawrychuk/©A.M.P.A.S.

    Posted on February 2, 2010
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  • Oscar Winning Screenwriter Budd Schulberg is Dead at 95

    Novelist, boxing journalist and Oscar-winning screenwriter Budd Schulberg has died. He was 95. Schulberg was best known for his Oscar-wining screenplay for On the Waterfront. The film starred Marlon Brando and was directed by Elia Kazan. It won 8 Oscars.
    Schulberg suffered breathing problems Wednesday afternoon and was rushed from his Westhampton, L.I., home to Peconic Bay Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, a family spokesman said. The legendary writer had been in good health, even attending a reading last week in Hoboken, N.J., of "On the Waterfront" put on by members of the cast of "The Sopranos." "I thought they did an excellent job. I was very pleased with it," Schulberg told the Jersey Journal in what turned out to be his last interview.

    Born Seymour Wilson Schulberg in New York City, he was raised in Hollywood, where his father, B.P. Schulberg, was a movie pioneer and head of Paramount Pictures. Struggling throughout his youth with a speech impediment, he became a good listener with an ear for poetry. While at Dartmouth, Schulberg collaborated with F. Scott Fitzgerald on a script based on the school's annual winter carnival.

    *****

    Schulberg was also the former chief boxing correspondent for Sports Illustrated and was elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 2002.
    Schulberg's first novel, What Makes Sammy Run?", was published in 1941 and won the National Critics' Choice for Best First Novel of the Year. He is survived by his fourth wife and two children. Our condolences to his family.

    Posted on August 6, 2009
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    Diablo Cody: From Stripper to Oscar Winner

    Photo of Diablo CodyFormer exotic dancer turned screenwriter Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Juno She didn't succumb to the entreaties of mainstream stylists, preferring to stick with her own original look, complete with pin-up girl tattoo and an animal print gown.

    Looking much less exotic than Ms. Cody, the Coen brothers (Ethan and Joel) won Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men. No Country for Old Men also won Best Picture. Overall, the Oscars had a dull feel to them. Jon Stewart was funny, but no one was that excited about the nominated films. The ratings -- as expected -- were the lowest in the show's history.

    You can see the entire list of winners here. You can see coverage of the Red Carpet fashions here.

    Posted on February 25, 2008
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    Tom Hanks Urges Corporate Bosses to Get Back to Negotiating

    Now that the Golden Globes has been scrapped for a boring newscast of who won (no red carpet, no fun) the Oscars are the latest telecast that is in danger from the continued writers' strike. Now Tom Hanks is asking the parties to negotiate to save the Oscars which is scheduled for February 24, 2008.
    "The show must go on, that is one of the tenets of everything," Hanks told Reuters in London. "I am a member of the board of governors of the Academy, and we definitely want to put on a great show and honor the films that have come out in the course of the year," he said on the red carpet at the premiere of his film "Charlie Wilson's War."

    Hanks said corporate bosses should remember that many people, from carpenters to caterers, were suffering as a result of the strike by about 10,500 Writers Guild of America members over their dispute with major film and TV studios. "There are caterers and carpenters ... and electricians and gaffers," the 51-year-old said. "There are a lot of people out there associated with the industry, for whom the sooner this work stoppage is over the better. "I just hope that the big guys who make big decisions up high in their corporate boardrooms and what not get down to honest bargaining and everyone can get back to work."

    The star of box office hits "Forrest Gump" and "The Da Vinci Code," and twice a best actor Oscar winner, added that a shift in the way screenwriters were rewarded for their work was needed in the Internet age. "The delivery systems, the revenue streams, just the very presentation media is now going to be a brand new place," he said in a brief interview on Thursday.
    February 24th isn't that far away and there are no talks scheduled. So it's possible that there won't be any televised Oscars this year.

    Posted on January 10, 2008
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    WGA: No Golden Globes or Oscars Waivers

    The WGA has announced that they will not be offering waivers to allow the Golden Globes or Oscar awards shows to use WGA writers to write jokes and commentary for the shows.
    The Writers Guild has notified the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and dick clark productions that their requests for an agreement to allow writers to prepare material for the 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards show have been denied.

    The Guild has also denied a request from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a waiver in connection with the use of clips from motion pictures and past Academy Awards shows for use during the annual Academy Awards presentation.

    In letters to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, WGAW President Patric M. Verrone described the Guild's respect and admiration for both organizations, explaining that:

    "Writers are engaged in a crucial struggle to achieve a collective bargaining agreement that will protect their compensation and intellectual property rights now and in the future. We must do everything we can to bring our negotiations to a swift and fair conclusion for the benefit of writers and all those who are being harmed by the companies’ failure to engage in serious negotiations."
    These awards shows will be very boring without any jokes written by writers. There is also the possibility that striking writers will picket outside the award shows. Hollywood Today reports that many of the big stars may also stay home and support the striking writers.

    Posted on December 18, 2007
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    Writers Invited to Join Academy

    A select group of writers have been invited join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The writers are:

  • J.J. Abrams - Mission: Impossible III, Armageddon

  • Michael Arndt - Little Miss Sunshine

  • Guillermo Arriaga - Babel, 21 Grams

  • Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck - The Lives of Others

  • Patrick Marber - Notes on a Scandal, Closer

  • William Monahan - The Departed, Kingdom of Heaven

  • Peter Morgan - The Queen, The Last King of Scotland

  • Billy Ray - Breach, Shattered Glass

  • Erin Cressida Wilson - Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, Secretary

    New members will be welcomed into the Academy at an invitation-only reception at the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills in September. Congratulations to the new members!

    Posted on June 23, 2007
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  • Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed Win Screenwriting Oscars

    Michael Arndt won Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine and William Monahan picked up the Oscar for Best Adapated Screenplay for The Departed. As Arndt walked to the stage, we learned from the announcer that "in order to write Little Miss Sunshine, Michael Arndt had to quit his job as assistant to Matthew Broderick." Arndt said in his acceptance speech that "A writer is only as good as people he works with," thanking the cast who "collectively saved my life."

    The normally publicity-shy Monahan opened his acceptance speech by noting that "Valium does work." He then went on to say that seeing the film Lawrence of Arabia when he was a boy made him want to be a screenwriter, and to be at the same Oscars as Peter O'Toole was "just crazy." The Departed was adapted from the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs.

    Beginning one's Oscar acceptance speech with a heartfelt Ode to Valium was not the choice we would have made, but hey, we're not judging. Maybe he can turn it into a paid endorsement deal from pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-La Roche.

    Posted on February 26, 2007
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    Academy Award Screenplay Nominations

    The Academy Award nominations for the Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay have been announced. Here are the nominees:

    Best Adapted Screenplay:
  • Sacha Baron Cohen and Anthony Hines and Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer and Todd Phillips, Borat
  • Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, Children of Men
  • William Monahan, The Departed
  • Todd Field and Tom Perrotta, Little Children
  • Patrick Marber, Notes on a Scandal

    Best Original Screenplay:
  • Guillermo Arriaga, Babel
  • Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, Letters From Iwo Jima
  • Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine
  • Guillermo del Toro, Pan's Labyrinth
  • Peter Morgan, The Queen

    Earlier we discussed the Writer's Guild nominations and said that Borat is an odd selection because much of the script was improvised. We also said we liked Thank You For Smoking and Stranger Than Fiction but unfortunately neither of these films was nominated for an Academy Award.

    Peter Morgan, the screenwriter behind The Queen, almost managed to be nominated in both Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. If The Last King of Scotland, an adaption of Giles Foden's novel, had received a nomination Morgan would have had a chance in both categories. As is stands he still has a good chance of winning -- there is good buzz behind The Queen.

    You can see a complete list of the Academy Award nominations here.

    Posted on January 23, 2007
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  • Jon Stewart Prepping For the Oscars

    The L.A. Times provides a sneak peek into the joke writing process for the upcoming Oscars telecast which will be hosted by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show.
    [I]f you're in the late-night comedy business, you have to go after Cheney this week, however much you're craving to do bits on North Korea or the secretary of Agriculture — and if you're writing the opening extravaganza and monologue for the Oscar broadcast, you've got to come up with "Brokeback Mountain" stuff and George Clooney stuff, no matter how many others are doing it. The trick is simply to do it smarter and funnier, and that's the challenge for Stewart and his partners in both endeavors, Ben Karlin, executive producer of "The Daily Show," and David Javerbaum, its chief writer.

    "I'm not doing this for posterity," he says of hosting Oscar night. Stewart leans back behind his desk and explains how these awards are a 78-year-old entity and a pretty sweet franchise and he'll be borrowing interest from it, not the other way around. Can he bring a slightly different atmosphere? "That may be," he says.

    "My impulse is always to start with absurdity, either the absurdity of me doing it, or whatever the absurdity may be of this year's films ... I'll do that or I will come up with a song parody that somehow figures out a way to rhyme 'Syriana' and 'Capote,' which is not going to be easy," though that quip comes out a little stale, the line perhaps past its expiration date, just as Cheney bits may be by Oscar night.

    "But I'm hoping that the vice president shoots someone [else], probably around March 3, March 4," Stewart says.
    Bruce Vilanch is busy writing the inane banter that goes on between presenters, but Stewart has two writers who used to work for The Onion and who helped him write America: The Book to help him with the monologue. We'll definitely be tuning in.

    Posted on February 27, 2006
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