Looking At The 2018 Best Original Screenplay Race

All ten of these films have already opened or have been screened, so we’re evaluating known quantities.  There’s no perfect nominee here, as each film has its pros and cons for a nomination, so let’s take a look at the pluses and minuses of each contender (in alphabetical order) as we count down to the final five nominees for Best Original Screenplay.

The winner of the Best Screenplay award at this year’s Venice Film Festival, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” the latest entry from the Coen Brothers, was originally conceived as a 6-part series for Netflix. It was re-edited into a feature film that is winding up its theatrical run and is now available on the streaming service.

PRO: The Coen Brothers are the current kings of the writing categories. In original screenplay, they triumphed with a win for 1996’s “Fargo,” as well as nominations for “A Serious Man” (2009) and the Steven Spielberg-directed “Bridge Of Spies” (2015). And in adapted screenplay, they won for the script of their Best Picture winner “No Country For Old Men” and earned nominations for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000) and “True Grit” (2010). They are writing royalty, and if voters are looking for a fifth slot, the Coens have got the pedigree to get in.

CON: Even admirers of “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” acknowledge that the film, as fun as it may be, is not exactly top-tier Coen, and in a category that contains scripts for a number of Best Picture favorites, a screenplay nomination for the brothers might be a bit of a stretch. In addition, distributor Netflix may be more likely to focus their campaign for this category on stablemate “Roma.”

With one of the year’s most acclaimed screenplays, Burnham, once a YouTube sensation, has grown into a fully developed screenwriter.  “Eighth Grade” has been the winner of juried or audience Best Picture prizes at this year’s Sundance, Seattle, and San Francisco Film Festivals.

PRO: Burnham’s script for “Eighth Grade” is a perfect example of the kind of screenplay that this category was meant to honor. As much as the film’s production, direction, and performances have been widely praised, most of the laudatory reviews of the film have focused on Burnham’s screenplay, which takes what would have, in other hands, been an ordinary premise and lifts it up into something more universal, that combination of fear and hope when you’re about to turn a corner into something new.

CON: That being said, “Eighth Grade” didn’t exactly burn up the box-office despite its stellar reviews, and given all the bright shiny objects that will open over the next six weeks, will voters remember or even care enough to pop in their screener?

“The Favourite” director Yorgos Lanthimos has been quoted as saying that he was attracted to this Deborah David/Tony McNamara because they have created three very complex female characters “which is something you rarely see.”  “The Favourite” won the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, and its screenplay has already been nominated for this year’s Gotham Award and a British Independent Film Award.

PRO: The unique sensibilities of Greek writer/director Lanthimos may not be to everyone’s taste, but they appear to be in line with that of the Academy, which has nominated his “Dogtooth” in 2009 for Best Foreign Language Film and again in this very category for his script for 2015’s “The Lobster.”  Lanthimos did not write this script, but still, the razor-sharp dialogue by Davis and McNamara is more accessible than his earlier films but yet still very much reflects his sensibility.

CON: Not many cons, as the Davis & McNamara’s script has been cited as one of the highlights of this year’s Best Picture front-runners. Still, there’s always the possibility that voters could just assume that the script will be nominated and vote for other screenplays, thus allowing it to fall through the cracks. Not a likely scenario, but we’re talking about Oscar voters here.

Schrader has been writing screenplays for 44 years now and, after the two most recent decades of writing films that drew scant attention, made a serious comeback this spring with this story of a Protestant minister (Ethan Hawke) who, faced with his own spiritual crises, must find a way to grow his dwindling congregation while competing with a megachurch nearby. Hawke, the film and Schrader’s screenplay are all nominated for this year’s Gotham Awards.

PRO: It’s tough to believe, but Schrader, the legendary writer of such classics as “Taxi Driver,” “American Gigolo” and “Raging Bull,” has never even been nominated for an Academy Award. Move over, Glenn Close, you’ve got some company on that “overdue” bench, as the powerful “First Reformed” is his strongest script in years. He will likely have to rely on critics’ groups, however, to get the comeback ball rolling.

CON: “First Reformed” was released in May, a handicap that may challenge the short attention spans of some Academy voters. And with a domestic gross of less than $4 million, the film was not as widely seen as any of the candidates on this list.

Set in the 1960s, “Green Book” is the story of the unlikely friendship that slowly develops between Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a Jamaican-American classical pianist on tour in the deep South, and Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a New York palooka who is hired to be Don’s driver and muscle as the pair follow The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide to where it’s safe for black people to stay in the South.  “Green Book” beat “Roma” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” to win this year’s People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival.

PRO: The Toronto People’s Choice Award has become a reliable precursor to Oscar success, with nearly all of its winners in the last decade earning Best Picture nominations as well as nominations for screenplay.  Audiences who have seen the film so far have given “Green Book” a rare A+ CinemaScore, a plus that has helped other scripts grab a nomination in this category.

CON:  However, the audiences who have paid to see “Green Book” to date have been shockingly few in number, and unless word-of-mouth can kick in soon and help to draw in more moviegoers, the film may be tagged as a flop, which could turn off potential Oscar voters.  Add to that Mortensen’s controversial use of the N-word at a screening Q&A and the reported displeasure of Don Shirley’s family at how he is depicted in the film, and all in all, this was a bad week for “Green Book.” And the window for the film to turn this bad news around may be closing soon.

Alfonso Cuarón’s recollection about his childhood is definitely one of the big dogs in this category, with the film having won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival and finishing in the Top 3 for this year’s People’s Choice Award in the Toronto Festival. Ignore “Roma” at your own peril.

PRO: In “Roma,” Cuarón’s memory piece about his Mexico City upbringing has reportedly brought many audience members at screenings to tears with the power of its emotional storytelling. As one of the front-runners for Best Picture, “Roma” will likely figure in a number of high-profile categories, and Original Screenplay should be considered near the top of that list.

CON: Limited theatrical play (because it’s Netflix) could make it more difficult for voters to experience “Roma” in the way it was intended. Still, the only potential hiccup that I could see for the film here would be if that “Roma,” with its stunning black-and-white imagery, is perceived as much more an achievement in directing than in writing. Not much chance of that happening, but as I said, Oscar voters…

The new film from Oscar-winning writer Adam McKay focuses on Dick Cheney, a Wyoming Congressman who eventually works his way up through the ranks to become Vice-President to George W. Bush and the power behind a very wobbly throne.

PRO: “Vice” will face paying audience, “Vice” will finally open to paying audiences on Christmas Day, but early screening reactions have been extremely favorable, and its pedigree alone would make it a contender. For McKay’s most recent film, 2015’s “The Big Short,” he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay by offering a uniquely comic take on the 2007 housing crisis. Taking on the foibles of Cheney and the Bush crew with the same approach might prove to be another winning route to a second Oscar.

CON: Screenplay Oscars for back-to-back films might be a bit of a reach for McKay at this point, and there may be a political portion of the Oscar electorate who may not want to reward anything that has to do with the Cheney family. We will all know more soon enough.