RECAP: Who Will Win the Best Screenplay Oscars?

A fact sheet at a glance for handicapping the race.

Learn about all of this year’s Oscar-nominated screenplays and screenwriters in our ten-part series. Click on the titles or pictures to go to the script’s in-depth profile. (Most include links to download the screenplay for free.)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

AMERICAN HUSTLE
Screenwriters: David O. Russell (also director), Eric Warren Singer
Total nominations: 10 (tied for first place), including Best Picture, Director, and all four acting categories
* Russell’s 5th nomination, second for writing; Singer’s first nomination
* Rusell’s 3rd consecutive film to be nominated for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay
* Singer’s previous credits: The International
* Script’s original title: American Bullshit
* Script was on the 2010 Black List
* Highest grossing of all nominated screenplays
Other accolades: BAFTA (Original Screenplay), Golden Globes (Best Picture Comedy), SAG (Cast)

BLUE JASMINE 
Screenwriter: Woody Allen (also director)
Modernization of: A Streetcar Named Desire
Total nominations: 3, including Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress
* Allen’s 24th nomination, 16th for writing
Previous wins:
Annie Hall (1978), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay
Hannah and Her Sisters (1987), Best Original Screenplay
Midnight in Paris (2012), Best Original Screenplay
Likelihood of winning: Same as Roman Polanski presenting

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
Screenwriters: Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack
* Based on a true story
Total nominations: 6, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor
* Borten’s first screenplay written, first screenplay sold, and first produced credit
* Wallack’s first screenplay sold, previous credits include Mirror Mirror
In development: 20 years

HER
Screenwriter: Spike Jonze
Total nominations: 5, including Best Picture
Other script accolades: Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice, WGA, and more
* Jonze’s fourth feature film, his first solo feature writing credit
Jonze’s other work:
* Nominated for co-writing the song, “The Moon Song”
* Acted in Best Picture nominee The Wolf of Wall Street
* Produced Best Makeup nominee Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
* Previously nominated for directing Being John Malkovich
* His first two films were nominated for Best Screenplay, both by Charlie Kaufman
* Previously married to Best Original Screenplay winner Sofia Coppola

NEBRASKA
Screenwriter: Bob Nelson
Total nominations: 6, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress
* First Alexander Payne film not written by Payne
* Fourth of Payne’s last five films nominated for Best Screenplay (his last two won)
* Nelson’s first screenplay
In development: 10 years
* Lowest grossing of all original screenplay nominees

PROJECTED WINNER: Her
Most likely to pull an upset: American Hustle

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

BEFORE MIDNIGHT
Screenwriters: Richard Linklater (also director), Ethan Hawke (also star), Julie Delpy (also star)
Adapted from: characters from Before Sunrise by Linklater and Kim Krizan
Total nominations: 1
* Linklater’s and Delpy’s second nomination, Hawke’s third
* All three previously nominated for writing Before Sunset
* Hawke also nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Training Day
* Only nominee in category not based on a true story
* Only nominee in category not adapted from a book
* Lowest grossing of all nominated screenplays
Last screenplay nominated that was the third part of a trilogy: Toy Story 3

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
Screenwriter: Billy Ray
Adapted from: memoir by Richard Phillips with Stephen Talty
Total nominations: 6, including Best Picture and Supporting Actor
Other accolades: WGA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
* Ray’s first Oscar nomination
Ray’s previous credits: The Hunger Games
Ray’s previous writer-director credits: Shattered Glass, Breach

PHILOMENA
Screenwriters: Steve Coogan (also star and producer), Jeff Pope
Adapted from: non-fiction book by Martin Sixsmith
Total nominations: 4, including Best Picture and Best Actress
Other script accolades: BAFTA (Adapted Screenplay)
* 5th Stephen Frears film nominated for its screenplay (Dangerous Liaisons won)
* Coogan’s 1st feature screenplay
* Coogan’s 1st and 2nd nominations (Best Picture, Best Screenplay)
* Pope’s 1st nomination

12 YEARS A SLAVE
Screenwriter: John Ridley
Adapted from: memoir by Solomon Northrup with David Wilson
Total nominations: 9, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress
Other accolades: Golden Globe (Best Picture Drama), BAFTA (Best Picture), Critics’ Choice (Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay), Producers Guild (Best Picture, tied with Gravity)
WGA award: disqualified, Ridley left guild during 2007 strike
*Ridley’s 1st nomination
Ridley’s previous credits: U-Turn, Undercover Brother, Red Tails

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
Screenwriter: Terence Winter
Adapted from: memoir by Jordan Belfort
Total nominations: 5, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor
* Winter’s 1st nomination
* Winter is married to Best Picture nominee Rachel Winter (Dallas Buyers Club)
Winter’s other work: The Sopranos (writer/producer), Boardwalk Empire (creator)
Number of Scorsese films nominated for Best Screenplay: 8
Number of Scorsese films to win Best Screenplay: 1 (The Departed)
* Highest grossing of all adapted screenplay nominees

PROJECTED WINNER: 12 Years a Slave

Days Left to Vote in the Inaugural ScripTipps Screenplay Awards: 1 (today)

Best Screenplay Nominee: 12 YEARS A SLAVE

LOGLINE - A man struggles to regain his independence after being kidnapped and sold into slavery.

WHO WROTE IT - Born in New York in 1808 the son of a freed slave, violinist Solomon Northrup was kidnapped by slave traders in 1841 while following a bogus lead on a job offer in Washington, D.C. After twelve years of bondage, he was finally able to get word of his whereabouts to his family, who were then able to help free him.

A year after returning home, Northrup wrote his memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, with the help of David Wilson, a New York legislator. Following the success of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin a year earlier, Northrup’s book became a bestseller.

Solomon Northrup

Screenwriter John Ridley met Steve McQueen at a screening of the British director’s first film, Hunger. They were both interested in making a film about slavery and began tossing ideas back and forth until McQueen’s wife discovered Northrup’s book.

Ridley began his screenwriting career in television sitcoms such as Martin and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In 1997, he published his first novel, Stray Dogs, and adapted it for the screen as U-Turn for acclaimed director Oliver Stone.

His spec script Spoils of War was turned into Three Kings by David O. Russell (nominated this year for directing and co-writing American Hustle). Kings starred Spike Jonze, who is nominated against Russell in the Original Screenplay category for Her.

Prior to 12 Years a Slave, Ridley was best known for writing and producing the 2002 blaxploitation spoof Undercover Brother.

John Ridley

During the 2007 writers strike, Ridley publicly denounced the WGA’s handling of the negotiations and left the union. As a result, his work on the 12 Years a Slave screenplay was ineligible for a WGA award. A man of principle, Ridley agreed to forgo payment in addition to the coveted WGA gong, working on the script for four years on spec (ie, for free).

THE TITLE IS A SPOILER - In the first act of 12 Years a Slave, the protagonist experiences an “unfair injury,” instantly making him a sympathetic hero. The inciting incident forces him on a journey. Everything about the setup is classic storytelling.

The story is somewhat episodic, passing the antagonist duties that first lie with the kidnappers from one owner to the next, always with increasing cruelty. While the institution of slavery is the main antagonist, it is personified as a villain primarily in Epps (Michael Fassbender), the meanest of Northrup’s taskmasters.

Michael Fassbender, Chiwetel Ejifor

Like the hero in Captain Phillips (also based on a true story and also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay), Northrup is incapable of actively participating in his salvation, lest he become Django, the protagonist of last year’s Best Original Screenplay winner. Instead, his heroism comes from his perseverance; eventually he finds the chance to convince one of the executive producers to solve his problem.

The movie is told entirely from Northrup’s point of view, but Northrup wasn’t directly involved the aftermath of whatever happened when his family found out where he was. While we do get to witness his triumphant homecoming, the machinations of his release occur off screen. And since we know from the title that his captivity lasts exactly twelve years, the film's “ticking clock” works to diffuse the tension of the hero's plight rather than build it up.

THE TITLE IS ALSO MISSPELLED - The book spells out the number twelve in its title. The screenplay uses the numeral 12. In his Q&A podcast, journalist Jeff Goldsmith asked Ridley about the discrepancy.

“Everything that I learned, and someone feel free to correct me, that up to ten, if it is the first word of a sentence it is spelled out, up to ten, right?” the Oscar-nominated screenwriter asked.

Not quite. He's mixing up two separate rules. Style guides differ about the over-ten rule in the middle of a sentence. But almost all style guides say numbers must be spelled out when they are the first word in a sentence, even if they are ridiculously long numbers, in which case they recommend rephrasing the sentence.

WILL IT WIN - 12 Years a Slave scooped up top prizes at the Golden Globes, BAFTA, and Critics’ Choice Awards, and tied with Gravity at the Producers Guild Awards. It garnered nine total Oscar nominations, the second only to Gravity and American Hustle, which tied for first place with ten apiece. They are in a three-way battle for most statuettes.

In the screenplay races, Slave lost to Her at the Globes, where they combine adaptations with originals, and took a surprise hit at the BAFTAs from Philomena, and, of course, was left out of the WGA heat altogether. But Ridley did pick up a cool dozen trophies from various critics awards, including the Broadcast Critics’ Association, as well as the prestigious USC Scripter Award.

American Hustle and Her may be running neck-and-neck on the original side, but Slave seems to have a strong lead to claim Best Adapted Screenplay along with its expected Best Picture and Supporting Actress wins. The most likely script to pull an upset here is Philomena, which appeals to the Academy's older voters and still addresses a social injustice.

The script for 12 Years a Slave is also nominated for Best Screenplay Based on a True Story in the inaugural ScripTipps Screenplay Awards, which you can vote in for free up until Friday night. (Click here)

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE FIRST-TIME OSCAR-NOMINATED SCREENWRITER - John Ridley made his directorial debut with the Jimi Hendrix biopic All Is by My Side, due in theatres this May. He was also hired by MGM to rewrite a remake of Ben-Hur and last month received a pilot order from ABC for a crime drama series he created called American Crime.

This is Part 10 of our ten-part series of profiles on this year’s Oscar-nominated screenplays.

Best Screenplay Nominee: AMERICAN HUSTLE

LOGLINE - Two con artists are forced to help the FBI entrap a corrupt politician.

WHO WROTE IT - Fifteen years ago, neophyte screenwriter Eric Warren Singer was on a plane from New York to LA. The man sitting next to him was an assistant U.S. attorney who was peripherally involved in the ABSCAM sting operation in the late 1970s and shared some interesting stories about it with Singer.

After a decade of having sold many scripts that never got made but had made him an in-demand writer, Singer’s first produced feature credit came on 2009’s The International starring Clive Owen. His next project was to be an adaptation of a Middle Eastern thriller called Damascus Gate. When several other Middle Eastern thrillers flopped at the box office that year, Singer remembered the stories he’d heard on that long ago flight and the studio bosses agreed to let him switch gears and write what would become American Hustle.

The script, originally titled American Bullshit, landed on the 2010 Black List. Ben Affleck was attached to direct at one point and had Singer do four rewrites before dropping out. Eventually, David O. Russell came on board and did his own rewrite, earning himself a co-screenwriter credit.

David O. Russel, Eric Warren Singer

Writer-director David O. Russell burst onto the independent film scene in 1994 with the incest comedy Spanking the Monkey, which won the Audience Award at Sundance and earned Russell two Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Screenplay and Best First Feature.

Russell’s Gulf War heist film, Three Kings, was the subject of a bitter screenplay credit dispute. Warner Bros. had bought a script called Spoils of War and showed it to Russell while the director was in search of his next project. Russell claimed he never read Spoils, but admitted he got the idea for Kings from its logline. A “story by” credit was ultimately given to the original Spoils of War screenwriter, John Ridley, who is nominated this year for his adapted screenplay for 12 Years a Slave.

Conflict on the set of Russell's next movie, I Heart Huckabees, leaked to the internet in videos showing the director ranting at actress Lily Tomlin and calling her the C-word. His follow-up, Nailed, was shut down by IATSE four times for failure to pay the crew and is expected to never be released.

Russell has experienced a creative resurgence in the last four years. His previous two films, The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, earned Oscars for Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, and Jennifer Lawrence. Like American Hustle, both were also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

WHAT ABOUT THE PLOT - American Hustle is one of six of the nine nominated pictures and ten nominated screenplays that are based on true stories. Along with Dallas Buyers Club, it falls in the Original Screenplay category because it was written from original research rather than being adapted from a book on its subject.

Moving Hustle further into the originals column, screenwriter Eric Warren Singer “realized very quickly that to tell the most compelling story, I had to let go of the truth to get to the truth of the characters, using the scandal and all these characters I had been researching as templates, as jumping off points to write this fictionalized version.”

The fictionalization was carried further in David O. Russell’s rewrites, turning the characters into caricatures for comedic effect. On set, Russell strayed even further from whatever fiction or non-fiction was left on the page by encouraging his cast to improvise as much as one-third of their performances by the director’s own estimate. When questioned about how those in-the-moment changes might impact the plot, Russell reportedly told Christian Bale, “I don’t give a damn about plot. I’m all about character.”

Amy Adams, Christian Bale

Russell’s disregard for plot is impossible to miss in the finished film. Variety called the result “a shaggy, meandering journey,” and “a messy C-minus movie at best, one that makes Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain look downright disciplined by comparison,” and said, “the whole affair appears to have been cobbled together in haste, off-script and with little consideration for the fine art of narrative.”

WILL IT WIN - American Hustle is nominated for ten Academy Awards, tied for first place with Gravity. As mentioned earlier, it is Russell’s third consecutive film nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. It’s his second film in a row nominated in all four acting categories, a feat that, prior to last year’s Silver Linings Playbook, hadn’t been accomplished in over thirty years. (Russell is the first director to hit the acting nomination jackpot twice.)

Hustle gives Russell his third directing nod but only his second for writing screenplay, since he didn’t pen The Fighter. In other award ceremonies this year, American Hustle’s screenplay won the BAFTA, where Gravity and the Coen Bros.’ Inside Llewyn Davis ran instead of Her and Dallas Buyers Club. Three Golden Globes went to Hustle, including Best Picture (Comedy or Musical), but the screenwriting Globe went to Her, as did the WGA and Critics’ Choice awards for Best Original Screenplay.

Jennifer Lawrence

Top prizes this awards season have been consistently split between Hustle, 12 Years a Slave, and Gravity. With separate categories for dramas and comedies, the Globes were able to honor both Slave and Hustle. The Producers Guild declared a tie between Slave and Gravity. BAFTA honored Gravity as Best British Film (because it was filmed there) while naming Slave Best Film. The DGA picked Gravity as its favorite, while the actors’ union favored Hustle for its grand prize.

The way things seem to be lining up, the big six categories are all virtually spoken for – Slave as Best Picture, Alphonso Cuarón for Best Director for Gravity, and acting trophies reserved for Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, both from Dallas Buyers Club, Blue Jasmine’s Cate Blanchett, and Slave’s Lupita Nyong’o.

Her may lose its early lead in the Original Screenplay race as voters realize the movie they gave the most nominations to might otherwise go home empty-handed. Its surprise box office success won’t hurt its chances either. With $144 million, it’s the highest grossing Original Screenplay candidate, second only to Gravity in the Best Picture contest. After making three films in four years that have amassed a whopping 25 total Oscar nominations and three acting wins, the scripting category is Russell’s best bet at some gold this year.

READ THE SCREENPLAY - Whether you want to see how far the American Hustle actors strayed from the page or you just want to hunt for plot threads that got lost in all that top-notch scenery-chewing, you can download 153-page screenplay for the 138-minute film directly from Sony Pictures website by clicking here.

INTERVIEWS WITH THE SCREENWRITERS
Moveable Fest interview with Eric Warren Singer
HuffPost interview with David O. Russell

This is Part 9 of our ten-part series of profiles on this year's Oscar-nominated screenplays.

Best Screenplay Nominee: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

LOGLINE - An unemployed stockbroker amasses a fortune committing securities fraud and indulges in excessive sex-and-drug orgies until federal authorities catch up with him.

WHO THE FUCK WROTE THIS FUCKING SHIT - The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the memoir of its main character, Jordan Belfort. In 1998, Belfort was sent to prison for defrauding investors of nearly $200 million. During his 22-month stay behind bars, he shared a cell with stoner comic Tommy Chong, who says he coached Belfort on how to write about his exploits in not one, but two, best-selling books.

Tommy Chong

Belfort sold the film rights to his first book to Leonardo DiCaprio, who beat out Brad Pitt in a bidding war, to the tune of $1 million. The success of the film has upped Belfort’s speaking engagement fees and he is now reportedly shopping a reality show. The unreliable narrator claims all proceeds will go to paying back his fraud victims.

Emmy-award-winning The Sopranos writer/producer Terence Winter had been working in the legal department at Merrill Lynch on 1987’s Black Monday, the same day and just a quarter-mile away from where the film begins. He began developing the Wolf screenplay adaptation with DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese in 2007.

Leonardo DiCaprio, screenwriter Terence Winter, director Martin Scorsese

Unable to secure a studio greenlight, Scorsese left the project to work on Shutter Island, but not before hiring Winter to create the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, which Scorsese was executive producing. Some of Winter’s pre-Sopranos TV writing credits include Flipper, Xena: Warrior Princess, and The Cosby Mysteries. His wife, Rachel Winter, is also nominated this year for her first Academy Award as a producer on Dallas Buyers Club, which is up for Best Picture as well as Best Original Screenplay.

THE FUCKING PROTAGONIST - Some critics have accused the film of glorifying a criminal. Winter told The Boston Globe he’d made “a conscious choice to not show the people on the other side of that phone. By design, you the viewer are taking the place of the people being duped by what these guys are doing and being seduced by them.”

Apparently, the writer’s goal was to help us understand by proxy how ordinary investors were charmed out of their life savings, then make us laugh at our own stupidity along with the hedonistic crooks pissing away our life savings on whores shoving candles up their butts, and then finally remind us that, yes, they really are bad guys, and then, for good measure, rub our faces in the light punishment given to Belfort.

Giovanni Ribisi in Boiler Room

Another approach to the cautionary tale of Stratton Oakmont might be a completely fictionalized account from the point of view of an impressionable trainee stock broker who gets sucked into the world of selling worthless stocks for higher-than-legal commissions but struggles with his conscious when he realizes he’s hurting people.

Inspired by the same real-life events depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street, first-time writer-director Ben Younger's Boiler Room (2000) told the story of fictional foot soldier Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi) at the fictional Stratton-Oakmont-like firm of J.T. Marlin under the fictional, Belfort-esque Michael Brantley (Tom Everett Scott) with a relatable protagonist, a love interest, compassion for his victims, and a moving father-son conflict arc.

The lesser-known film included enough sex and drugs and fast cars to get the point across that the brokers’ windfalls were being spent on sex and drugs and fast cars, then moved on to send the hero on a journey. In short, Boiler Room told a story, whereas The Wolf of Wall Street recreated events. And Boiler Room did it with two-fifths fewer occurrences of the F-word per minute. (Scorsese is executive-producing Younger's next project, Bleed for This, starring Aaron Eckhart and Miles Teller.)

WILL THE WOLF WIN A FUCKING OSCAR TO TAKE HOME AND SHOVE UP ITS FUCKING BUTT - One elderly Oscar voter from the screenwriters branch of the Academy reportedly shouted, “Shame on you!” at Scorsese while her friend, 75-year-old actress Hope Holiday concurred, calling the movie “three hours of torture.” That’s two votes that won’t be going to The Wolf of Wall Street.

Other senior Academy members may see The Wolf of Wall Street on the ballot and confuse it with another Paramount film called The Wolf of Wall Street that was initially shot as a silent picture but then quickly re-filmed as a talkie before its 1929 release. Maybe Paramount should have called the new version Lee Daniels’ The Wolf of Wall Street.

The Academy has always been a little iffy with Scorsese. Wolf has five total nominations and Scorsese, who is nominated twice as its director and producer, has been nominated 10 times in the past -- seven for directing, twice for co-writing his screenplays (Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence). However, he has only won once, for directing The Departed, his twentieth narrative feature, which also won Best Picture.

The Departed, adapted by William Monahan, is the only Scorsese film to win Oscar gold for its screenplay. In addition to the aforementioned two that Scorsese co-wrote, only five more Scorsese-directed screenplays have ever been nominated: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The Color of Money, Hugo, The Aviator, and Gangs of New York.

Wolf’s screenplay has lost at the BAFTA, WGA, and Critics’ Choice awards. Its only wins so far are from the National Board of Review and the Central Ohio Film Critics Association. Unfortunately for Mr. Winter, Ohio is not a swing state in this election. Given the polarization of Wolf, if 12 Years a Slave doesn’t win Best Adapted Screenplay, WGA winner Captain Phillips or BAFTA winner Philomena are more likely to pull an upset in this category.

READ THE FUCKING SCREENPLAY - In general, one page of a screenplay equals one minute of screen time. Winter has estimated his first draft to be about 128 pages; his longest, in the 140s or 150s. The final shooting draft came down to 137, while the final cut of the film runs 42 minutes longer -- a whopping 179 minutes cut down from a rumored four-hour rough cut. Obviously Scorsese filmed more than was on the page.

The combination of the letters f-u-c-k appears in the 137-page draft 181 times, or 1.32 times per page, including dialogue and scene description. The record-setting 569 occurrences in the finished movie means that for every fuck on the page, the number of times the F-bomb is uttered on screen is π. Click here to download the script for free from Paramount Pictures and count the fucking fuckity-fucks for yourself.

INTERVIEWS WITH THE FUCKING WRITER
Collider interview with Terence Winter
In the Wolf's Den: Creative Screenwriting interview
Media Mayhem: 45-minute in-depth video interview

This is Part 8 of our ten-part series of profiles on this year's Oscar-nominated screenplays.

Best Screenplay Nominee: DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

LOGLINE - A homophobic man gains compassion for the homosexual community when he contracts AIDS and struggles to legalize unapproved drug treatments that he believes will prolong his life.

WHO WROTE IT - In 1992, Craig Borten had been living in Los Angeles for five years, struggling to break into screenwriting, when he read an article about Ron Woodroof’s plight that resonated with him. Borten’s father had also grappled with seeking alternative treatments, for lymphoma, in Mexico.

Cold calls to Woodroof went unanswered until finally the would-be protagonist agreed to an interview with Borten. After three days, the Philadelphia native came away with 25 hours of tape which he began shaping into a screenplay that would take more than twenty years to make it to the big screen. Woodroof died a month after the interviews.

Melisa Wallack and Craig Borten

Melisa Wallack launched a Minneapolis tech company with her sister and, in 1995, moved to L.A. to run their West Coast office. There, she began meeting aspiring screenwriters. By 1999, Borten had sucked Wallack into his passion project, Dallas Buyers Club, and the pair collaborated on the screenplay over many, many drafts.

While riding out several false starts, one with Brad Pitt attached to star, another with Dennis Hopper interested in directing Woody Harrelson in the lead, Wallack married 300 producer Bernie Goldmann. Together, they co-directed Meet Bill, starring Aaron Eckhart and Jessica Alba, from Wallack’s script. She also received screen story credit for the Goldmann-produced Snow White reinterpretation, Mirror Mirror starring Julia Roberts. Dallas Buyers Club is Borten’s first produced credit.

TRUE STORY - Six of this year’s nominated screenplays are based on true stories, all with varying degrees of truthiness. Dallas Buyers Club seems to be getting the most backlash for its dramatic licenses.

The supporting characters portrayed by Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner are both composites, of transgender women and doctors, respectively, but not necessarily of any transgender women or doctors who actually knew Woodroof.

Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto play fictional characters in Dallas Buyers Club

Provoking more controversy, however, is that some people who did know Woodroof are claiming he was never homophobic and may have even been bisexual, thus fictionalizing the protagonist’s entire inner journey.

Even worse, some participants in the actual buyers clubs dispute some of the medical facts of the movie, calling the hero’s life-saving advice for HIV patients to eschew AZT treatments irresponsible at best, “murderous” at worst.

And then there’s the leading man’s metaphoric ride on a bucking bull that bookends the film. The real Woodroof is not known to have ever rodeoed.

WILL IT WIN - Like Philomena over on the adaptation side, the screenwriter first discovered his true story from a newspaper article. Borten, however, based his work on original research and invention, choosing not to option Bill Minutaglio’s article, thus landing in the Original Screenplay category. Philomena, on the other hand, is considered to be adapted from the book that was the subject of the article its screenwriter had found -- even though Steve Coogan ended up writing an essentially original work about the writing of the book he’d optioned.

Being called “original” may excuse Dallas Buyers Club’s lack of factual integrity in some Academy voters’ eyes. After all, Borten and Wallack, using the creative freedom of “original screenplay” writers, have crafted the kind of courageous hero Hollywood loves. A David vs. Goliath cleverly circumventing the System in a fight to stay alive, combined with a gay-basher finding a soul-searching change of heart.

Dallas Buyers Club has six nominations in all, including Best Picture. Early favorites Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto have been collecting prizes left and right for Best Actor and Supporting Actor, respectively. The writing, however, has picked up no other accolades, save for a WGA nod, which it lost to Her, the favorite at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice. If Spike Jonze doesn’t add Oscar to his trophy case, David O. Russell’s American Hustle, the only other true story in the Original Screenplay category, is the most likely script to pull off an upset.

READ THE SCREENPLAY - The December 2, 2012, draft (Green - Fifth Revision) can be downloaded FREE from Focus Features in PDF and EPUB formats (click here). The script is 93 pages. The finished film is 117 minutes.

INTERVIEWS WITH THE SCREENWRITERS
Philly.com interview with Craig Borten
ScreenwritingU audio interview with Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack
Academy Conversations: video Q&A with cast, writers, and producers

This is Part 7 of our ten-part series of profiles on this year's Oscar-nominated screenplays.

Best Screenplay Nominee: CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

LOGLINE - The captain of an American cargo ship struggles to stay alive and protect his crew when his vessel is boarded by Somali pirates and held for ransom.

WHO WROTE IT - The film is based on the true story of Captain Richard Phillips, who wrote about the events in his book, A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea. The hijacking occurred over five days in April, 2009. The book, co-authored by Stephan Talty, was published by Hyperion the following April and optioned by Columbia Pictures.

Captain Richard Phillips

The open writing assignment for the screenplay went to Billy Ray, whose feature writing credits include Flightplan, State of Play, and The Hunger Games. After being turned down for meetings 21 times about his original screenplay Shattered Glass, Ray finally convinced Lionsgate to make that his directorial debut, which he followed up in 2007 with Breach.

Billy Ray

This Billy Ray is not the father of Miley Cyrus. He is the son of a literary agent whose stellar client roster included Alvin Sargent (Ordinary People), Paul Brickman (Risky Business), and Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon). Ray’s first sale, at the age of 19, was a Jetsons episode.

He recommends aspiring screenwriters study the following five screenplays to learn structure: Broadcast News, Kramer vs. Kramer, Ordinary People, Rocky, and The Wizard of Oz.

THE HERO'S JOURNEY - Captain Phillips has a classically delineated hero and villain, but Ray’s script does a couple things with them that make it stand out.

First, he makes the bad guy sympathetic, to a degree, because he knows a big, bad meanie isn’t as dramatic as a dilemma. Ray makes sure we see first-hand the desperation that motivates the pirate to seize Phillips’ ship. It’s wrong, but it’s business, and a necessary line of work, from the pirate’s point of view, for his own survival.

The story is true, but other writers might not have chosen to research and include the pirate’s side of the story. Understanding how important the pirate's mission is to him makes us fear more for the hero because we know the bad guy can’t and won’t back down. Without this insight, he would be a cardboard villain.

Ray’s second major achievement was overcoming the “passive” protagonist problem. Like Solomon Northrup's dependence on Brad Pitt to regain his freedom in 12 Years a Slave, or one of the main villains literally showing up on the heroine's doorstep in Winter's Bone saying, "We're going to fix your problem for you," Ray's hero literally has his hands tied for the second half of the movie and has to wait for the U.S. Navy to swoop in and rescue him.

That's not what they teach in screenwriting school.

It helps to have the World’s Most Likable Actor in the lead role, and there is one beat where the hero actively tries to escape, but other writers would have been tempted to have him participate even more in his own salvation. Instead, Ray lets Phillips be the heroic leader in the first half of the movie, nearly negotiating a peaceful retreat, then, after a game-changing midpoint, shows his courage through his ability to stay calm and not try to become Rambo.

WILL IT WIN - Here at ScripTipps, Captain Phillips is our favorite of the ten nominated screenplays. But what are its chances for nabbing some Oscar gold on the big night?

In our January 13 predictions, we expected the script to be ignored altogether in favor of August: Osage County. Luckily, that didn’t happen, but Tom Hanks, who seemed like a shoe-in for Best Actor, was left stranded in the ocean with Robert Redford.

The film picked up a respectable total of 6 nods, placing it in a three-way tie for fourth place with Nebraska and Dallas Buyers Club. The captain's citations include Best Picture and a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor shout-out for Barkhad Abdi as the lead pirate.

Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass with co-stars Barkhad Abdi and Tom Hanks

The script didn’t make the cut at all in the Golden Globes’ only screenplay category that pits adaptations against originals. (The win went to Her.) Captain Phillips lost in all four of the Globes categories it was nominated in and was also shut out of all six of its Critics’ Choice nominations, including Adapted Screenplay. It’s still up for nine BAFTA awards (to be announced February 16), including Best Adapted Screenplay.

The most prominent award that’s gone to Phillips so far is the WGA Adapted Screenplay prize. However, 12 Years a Slave, the front-runner for Best Picture, which beat out Ray for the Critics’ Choice and USC Scripter awards, wasn’t eligible in the WGA contest. And the WGA had also elected Ray to its board of directors in 2011.

Captain Phillips is also nominated for Best Screenplay Based on or Inspired by a True Story in our own inaugural Platinum Brad Screenplay Awards. You can vote in this and 15 other screenwriting categories by clicking here.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE FIRST-TIME OSCAR-NOMINATED SCREENWRITER - Billy Ray has numerous high-profile projects in various stages of development, including a rewrite of a Frank Sinatra biopic for Martin Scorsese, a reboot of Universal’s Mummy franchise, and an HBO series based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon.

INTERVIEWS WITH SCREENWRITER BILLY RAY
Tricks of the Trade: The Dialogue video interview with Billy Ray
Examiner Red Carpet Interview with Billy Ray at Captain Phillips NYFF Premiere
Film Independent: How to Take the Terror Out of Writing

This is Part 6 of our 10-part series of profiles on this year's Oscar-nominated screenplays.

An 80s Valentine's Weekend At The Movies

Valentine’s Day falls on a Friday this year. So Hollywood is taking aim at romantic moviegoers of all ages -- or at least those old enough to have started dating in the 80s.

Not taking any chances, three of the four big Valentine’s Day releases are remakes of 1980s hits. The fourth is an adaptation of a novel first published in the 80s.

ENDLESS LOVE

Having hit it big with teens in 1968 for his racy-for-its-time version of Romeo and Juliet, Italian filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli tried to titillate love-starved high schoolers again with his steamy 1981 adaptation of Scott Spencer’s 1979 novel, Endless Love.

The book is bleak, more heavily focusing on the boy’s incarceration in a mental institution for being a dangerous, sex-crazed stalker. But Zeffirelli had Brooke Shields in his bag. The film featured her in soft light and various stages of undress with the title tune crooned by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross. Tom Cruise made his screen debut in a supporting role.

About seven years ago, I was contacted by a producer to write a treatment for a direct-to-video sequel that never sold. Instead, Universal has revamped the tragic love story for a new generation, with Gabriella Wilde, from last year’s Carrie remake, in the Brooke Shields role opposite Alex Pettyfer (Magic Mike, I Am Number Four) as her endless love interest.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT

The 1974 play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, launched the career of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and, later, screenwriter and acclaimed filmmaker David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross). In 1986, the four-character exploration of sexual mores of the day was turned into the Hollywood rom-com About Last Night..., adapted by SNL alum Tim Kazurinsky. starring Brat Packers Rob Lowe and Demi Moore.

The updated film moves further from its original source material by about 2,000 miles, moving the action from the Chicago of the play's title to Los Angeles and removing the ellipsis from its secondary source’s title. Following in the footsteps of 2005’s The Honeymooners and 2010’s Death at a Funeral, About Last Night (no ellipsis) is reimagined with an all black cast. It’s also the only one of the this weekend’s three 80s remakes to retain its counterpart’s R rating.

ROBOCOP

Boy meets girl. Boy is killed, revived as a robot, and hunts down his killers. Boy gets girl.

The 1987 classic, RoboCop, spawned two sequels, several TV series, comic books, and video games. And now a big-screen reboot starring Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman (Snabba Cash). The love interest character originally played by Nancy Allen is gone. This time, look for the law enforcement machine to be reunited with his wife, played by Abbie Cornish, in the last reel.

This redo follows the 2012 remake of another 80s sci-fi Paul Verhoeven hit, Total Recall. Look for a new Starship Troopers to complete the trifecta. Any chance a Spetters reimaginingis on the horizon?

WINTER’S TALE

Not to be confused with Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, this weekend’s only previously unfilmed adaptation of source material from the 1980s is Winter’s Tale (no The), the directorial debut of Academy Award winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind). Goldsman penned the script, based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Mark Helprin.

The complex, time-tripping narrative follows true love across a century as Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe fight an apocalyptic battle of Good vs. Evil in an epic fantasy about stopping time and bringing back the dead.

Which movie will you take your Valentine to? Next year's choice won't be as tough. Scheduled for release on Valentine’s Day weekend, 2015: Fifty Shades of Grey.

Best Screenplay Nominee: BLUE JASMINE

LOGLINE - A financially ruined Manhattan socialite struggles to start a new life in San Francisco.

WHO WROTE IT - Allen Stewart Konigsberg was born in 1935. As a child, he sold jokes to newspapers under the name Woody Allen and legally changed his name to Heywood Allen at the age of 17. He wrote for the top television shows in the 1950s and performed stand-up comedy in the early 1960s, honing the nebbishy persona he would later bring to the big screen following his success as a Broadway playwright and director.

His zany comedies of the late 1960s and early 1970s were his most popular and made him a star. By the late 1970s, his films became more artistic and serious. On average, he puts out a movie a year, modestly budgeted with a cast of A-list actors who clamor to work with him, though the public pays attention to his films only once in a while.

Allen married a 16-year-old when he was 19. After they divorced, she sued him for telling jokes about her in his act. He next married actress Louise Lasser, who continued appear in his films after they divorced. His next muse was Diane Keaton, whom he dated for a year and cast in several of his films, including Annie Hall. Written specifically for Keaton, the 1978 Best Picture winner was the most successful film of Allen’s career.

In his early 40s, Allen is said to have been romantically involved with 17-year-old high school student Stacey Nelkin, a secret relationship he flaunted in his film Manhattan, in which he played a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer dating a 17-year-old high school student (played by Mariel Hemingway).

A twelve-year relationship installed Mia Farrow as Allen’s next muse and produced a son whom the actress now claims may have been fathered by her first ex-husband, Frank Sinatra. She ended her personal and professional relationship with the 55-year-old director when she caught him having an affair with her 20-year-old adopted daughter from her second marriage and accused him of molesting their adopted 7-year-old daughter.

Woody Allen in Take the Money and Run (1969)

Allen was never charged with a crime. Six years later, he married Soon-Yi, the woman who had come between him and Farrow. They remain happily married to this day with two adopted teenage daughters.

BUT WHAT ABOUT BLUE JASMINE - Woody Allen’s 45th feature film shares elements of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire about a Southern Belle who... Oh, come on. Who are we kidding? Ever since the filmmaker’s accuser, now 28, came out publicly last week with details of her two-decades-old abuse claims, no one gives a tweet about the actual movie anymore.

SO WILL IT WIN - Allen has been nominated in the Academy’s Best Original Screenplay category 16 times, more than any other screenwriter in history. He won three of those, plus a fourth in the directing heat for Annie Hall. He has six more nominations for directing, and one for Best Actor, also for Annie Hall, bringing his total nominations to 24.

Add to that his two Golden Globes, 9 BAFTAs, a Grammy, a HUGO, a Spirit, and five WGA awards, plus over a hundred more nominations, and it's clear that Allen’s oeuvre has always been awards-ceremony-friendly even if he has not. Allen is notorious for skipping his own fêtes, including last month’s Cecil B. DeMille award bestowed upon him by the Golden Globes for his five decades of work.

Oscar nominees Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine has three nominations. In addition to the original screenplay, Cate Blanchett is in the running for Best Actress and Sally Hawkins for Supporting Actress. Including these two, Allen’s films have received a total of 18 acting nominations.

Only Diane Keaton has won in a lead acting category for a Woody Allen film, so far. Blanchett is considered the front-runner, having already claimed the prize at the Globes and the SAG awards, as well as numerous critics’ contests. The director’s scandal is not expected to touch her, as long as she doesn’t do or say anything politically incorrect, like, say, signing on to work with Roman Polanski next.

Allen's Oscar record has had its biggest success in the supporting actress category, with 9 nominations and 4 wins. However, Hawkins was never a front-runner here, with most supporting actress kudos this year going to Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave, so the scandal is definitely unlikely to impact her, either.

But what about Woody’s script? He, too, has been losing awards all season -- to Spike Jonze’s Her. But in the spirit of the old adage, “no publicity is bad publicity,” Hollywood could shift their votes into Allen’s column to show their support in the wake of the unproven allegations that have been dredged up after 22 years.

Roman Polanski and Woody Allen

Is that possible? Well, Roman Polanski had been nominated for Best Director twice before he raped a 13-year-old girl in Jack Nicholson’s hot tub. He was nominated again for Tess in 1981, a few years after fleeing the country, losing to Robert Redford. (Martin Scorsese was also in competition that year with Raging Bull.) But jump to 2003, when his nomination for The Pianist suddenly reminded everyone, oh yeah, he's a pervert on the lam. How did the Academy react to those child sex crimes dredged up after 25 years? By shipping a shiny gold statuette to his European hideout, that's how.

On the other hand, Allen's most recent win was just two years ago, his first since five years before his scandal broke. Midnight in Paris might have been his we-forgive-you award.

Might the Academy decide to show Allen how much they’re on his side with a fifth Oscar? Unlike the actual he-said-she-said allegations swirling around him, this is a question that will be definitively answered in less than 22 years.

This is Part 5 of our 10-part series of profiles on this year's Oscar-nominated screenplays.

Best Screenplay Nominee: BEFORE MIDNIGHT

LOGLINE - On their last night of a summer vacation in Greece, a couple gets into an argument that threatens to end their marriage.

WHAT’S IT ADAPTED FROM - Adapted screenplays can be adapted from novels, plays, comic books, TV series, or, in the case of remakes, other movies. Sequels to original movies are considered to be based upon characters created for the original movie, even though the sequel’s story may be completely new and original.

Before Midnight is the third installment in a series of movies that follows the relationship of an American man and French woman who met on a train one magical night in Vienna in 1994. The characters are considered to have been created by the first film’s screenwriters and are the source material “previously produced or published.”

The last screenplay to be nominated for its adaptation of characters created for an earlier movie was another threequel, Toy Story 3, in 2011.

WHO WROTE IT - Richard Linklater is the director and co-writer of all three films in the series. His indie film Slacker inspired a generation of do-it-yourself filmmakers like Kevin Smith, while his follow-up, Dazed and Confused, launched the careers of Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, and others.

In 1989, Linklater met a woman in a Philadelphia toy store. They spent the night walking the through the city, just talking. The incident inspired 1995’s Before Sunrise. Linklater asked actress Kim Krizan, who had appeared in his previous two films, to write the screenplay with him to bring a female perspective to the character of Céline.

More recently, Krizan has branched out into writing comic books and graphic novels and currently teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension.

Kim Krizan, co-creator of the Before... series of films

For the sequels, Linklater turned to the actors who had inhabited the roles in Before Sunrise, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, to bring more of themselves into the reexaminations of their alter egos. Together, the trio penned the scripts for Before Sunset and Before Midnight, based on Linklater’s and Krizan’s characters.

Hawke made his screen debut at the age of 15 in Joe Dante’s Explorers. He had starring roles in Ben Stiller’s Gen-X drama Reality Bites, opposite Denzel Washington in Training Day, and in the sci-fi thriller Gattica, where he met his first wife, co-star Uma Thurman. His divorce from Thurman is said to have informed his contributions to his character, Jesse, in Before Sunset.

Hawke divides his time between stage and screen. He has acted on Broadway and directed two Off-Broadway plays. He has also written two novels, including The Hottest State, which he later turned into a movie, directing and writing the screenplay adaptation himself.

Born in Paris, Julie Delpy was discovered at the age of 14 by director Jean-Luc Godard and became internationally famous after starring in 1990’s Europa Europa as a Nazi who falls in love with a Jew. In addition to her work in the Before... series, she has appeared in the acclaimed Three Colors trilogy by Krzysztof Kieslowski and has written and directed a number of her own movies, including 2 Days in Paris and its companion, 2 Days in New York. She became a U.S. citizen in 2001.

Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Richard Linklater

Linklater’s other films include School of Rock and Bernie, both starring Jack Black, Fast Food Nation, and the 2005 remake of The Bad News Bears. Last month he premiered Boyhood at the Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews (currently 100% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes). The experimental film, which features Before... star Hawke, was filmed over a few days a year, every year for twelve years.

PART THREE - We first met Jesse and Céline when they first met each other on the train in Before Sunrise. They spent the night getting to know each other, never expecting to meet again. By the end of the movie, they’d become so close, they agreed to return to Vienna in six months, and we’re meant to be left eternally wondering if they ever did keep that date.

A little piece of what made Sunrise special was erased nine years later when we were given a definitive answer. Jesse showed up, Céline did not. Now he’s written a book about that fabled Austrian night, and she shows up at his Paris book signing. They have until Before Sunset to catch up and maybe reignite their lost romance.

Another nine years later, they are married and have two children. On the last night of their summer vacation in Greece, they reach an impasse about their future. He wants them to move to the States so he can spend more time with his teenage son from a marriage that occurred between the first two movies, while she wants to take a job in Paris.

The dilemma opens a Pandora’s box of exploration into their relationship, ultimately begging the question: Do they still love each other? They have until Before Midnight to decide. More importantly, we wonder, where will they be nine years from now, and what will Part 4 be called -- Before Breakfast?

WILL IT WIN - Before Midnight is the only nominee in its category not adapted from a book. In fact, the other four nominees are all true stories, adapted from memoirs or non-fiction books. Two of the Best Original Screenplay nominees are also true stories, written from general research rather than a single book. So for the Academy, truth seems to be more noteworthy than fiction this year.

Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy penned the screenplays for both Before Sunset and Before Midnight. Both scripts were nominated for Oscars and WGA awards in the Best Adapted Screenplay category and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay. In 2005, they lost all three awards to Sideways.

Before Midnight is the second nomination for Linklater and Delpy, while Hawke is on his third go-round, having been nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Training Day.

This year, Captain Phillips took home the WGA award for Best Adapted Screenplay in a contest that didn’t include 12 Years a Slave or Philomena due to the WGA’s stricter eligibility requirements. If Slave wins the top prize, it’s likely to nab a statuette for its screenplay too, as it did at the Critics' Choice Awards this year in both categories.

Those who see the Before... movies walk away from each chapter desperate to know what will become of their beloved Jesse and Céline down the road. For the two later installments of the small, intimate, indie franchise to both be recognized with nominations for their writing shows the series has obviously resonated with Oscar voters, so there is an outside chance of an upset come March 2.

Before Midnight is also nominated for two ScripTipps Platinum Brad Screenplay Awards in the categories of Best Franchise Screenplay and Best Screenplay Written or Co-Written by the Film’s Lead Actors. You can vote in these and thirteen other screenplay categories by clicking here.

READ THE SCREENPLAYS - Download a PDF of the Oscar-nominated, 114-page screenplay for the 109-minute film, Before Midnight, for free from the Sony Pictures Classics website (click here).

The first two screenplays, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, are available at Amazon.com.

INTERVIEWS WITH THE WRITERS

Screenwriter Diane Drake (What Women Want) interviews Screenwriter Kim Krizan (Before Sunrise)

Slant interview with Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater

IndieWire interview with Hawke, Delpy, and Linklater

Backstage interview with Hawke, Delpy, and Linklater

NPR interview with Hawke, Delpy, and Linklater

The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith: Richard Linklater, audio podcast, May 24, 2013

VIDEO INTERVIEWS AND FESTIVAL Q&As
HitFix (Linklater)
HitFix (Hawke, Delpy)
DP/30 (Linklater, Delpy, in-depth)
DP/30 (Hawke, in-depth)
Film Society of Lincoln Center Summer Talks
Tribeca Talks Director Series
Oscars (Hawke and Delpy answer social media questions)

This is Part 4 of our 10-part series of profiles on this year's Oscar-nominated screenplays.