Great and unconventional screenplays won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards this weekend: Moonlight, the story of a young man’s life told throughout three acts that encompass his youth and adolescence and adulthood, and Arrival, a heady and ambitious sci-fi film that challenges our assumptions about the way we communicate and, potentially, the universe.
Two great films that at least arguably deserve the WGA Awards honor, but from the perspective of the Oscars, the WGA Awards this year do very little to help predict the eventual Academy Award winners. That’s because Moonlight won the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay, but the Academy Awards nominated the film in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. That places it in direct competition with Eric Heisserer’s script for Arrival, meaning that only one of them has a serious chance of winning (unless there’s a tie, which is ludicrously rare).
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Also: Eric Heisserer Dissects His Screenplay for ‘Arrival’ on The B-Movies Podcast
Moonlight is adapted from In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who receives a “Story By” credit in the film. For some reason the WGA and the Academy Awards decided the film belonged in different categories. (A similar dilemma struck Whiplash, the first feature film by La La Land writer/director Damien Chazelle, which was deemed an “original” screenplay by the WGA and an “adapted” screenplay by the Academy because Whiplash was preceded by a short film, even though the feature-length screenplay was written first.)
So it seems as though there may be two serious frontrunners for the Best Adapted Screenplay category, but Best Original Screenplay is going to be a scorcher this year. Hell or High Water and The Lobster are both nominated, and they’re both worthy and exciting screenplays, but it seems as though the award is likely to go to either La La Land or Manchester By The Sea.
Meanwhile, the WGA Award for Best Documentary Screenplay went to Command and Control, a film about nuclear weapons in America. The film deserves congratulations for its WGA Award win, as do Arrival and Moonlight, but again Oscar handicappers might be frustrated: Command and Control isn’t nominated for the Academy Awards at all.
It’s almost as though we shouldn’t be looking at awards like this and using them to predict another awards ceremony, as if the Oscars is the only one that counted. And by “almost” we mean “exactly.” But we know a lot of people love their annual Oscar wagers – so do we, obviously – and we want to give you as much ammunition as possible.
Where Oscar Winners Keep Their Oscars:
Top Photos: A24 / Paramount
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
Where Do they Keep Their Oscars?
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Dustin Hoffman
A studious man who won Academy Awards for his performances in both Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man has said that he keeps his Oscars in his study. We haven't been to Hoffman's house, but it's easy to imagine a room full of books, low lighting, and darkened wood furniture. This was admitted to InStyle, where he also said they used to be kept out of sight.
Image: MGM/UA
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Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson has won two Oscars, one for her performance in Howard's End, and another for her writing of Sense & Sensibility. In an interview with The Guardian she said her statuettes were gaudy, and the only good place for them is in her bathroom.
Image: Columbia Pictures
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George Clooney
Clooney also has two Academy Awards, for acting in Syriana, and for producing the Best Picture winner Argo. Like Hoffman, as he told The Guardian, he keeps his statuettes in a studious place: His personal library.
Image: Warner Bros.
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Goldie Hawn
Hawn won an Academy Award back in 1969 for her performance in Cactus Flower, playing opposite Walter Matthau. A famously spiritual person, Hawn, according to InStyle, keeps her Oscar in a room in her house she calls "The India Room." It's where she goes to meditate.
Image: Columbia Pictures
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Gwyneth Paltrow
Paltrow won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Shakespeare in Love, and she may feel ambivalent about the attention she got. She claims to have her statuette "tucked away." Evidently, as she told Digital Spy, it's not on display anywhere.
Image: Miramax
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Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence, one of the more lauded actresses of her generation, won an Oscar for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook, and gave the statuette to her parents. According to The Radio Times, they keep it in her old Kentucky home, on top the piano.
Image: The Weinstein Company
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Jodie Foster
For many years, Foster, who won Oscars for The Accused and for The Silence of the Lambs, kept her Oscars in the bathroom in an attempt to be modest. She has since moved them into a trophy case. This was a fact collected by ABC News.
Image: Orion Pictures
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Kate Winslet
The bathroom seems to be a rather popular place to keep an Oscar. I like to think that all actors keep them atop their toilet tanks. Winslet, who won her Oscar for The Reader, has said her statuette is in her loo, according to an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Image: The Weinstein Company
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Russell Crowe
Crowe, who won an Oscar for Gladiator, feels that the statuette has some appealing properties that help chickens lay eggs, so he keeps his statuette, as he told The Guardian, in a chicken coop in his Australian ranch.
Image: DreamWorks
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Timothy Hutton
Once, just to play a prank on some party guests, Timothy Hutton stuck his Oscar, won for Ordinary People, in his refrigerator. Evidently, according to ABC News, he liked in there so much, that it remains there to this day.
Image: Paramount
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Tom Hanks
Hanks famously won the Best Actor Oscar two years in a row (for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump), but he is still one of the friendlier and humbler of Hollywood's giant stars, keeping his Oscars - according to The Hollywood Reporter - on the same shelf as football trophies and "World's Greatest Mom" trophies.
Image: TriStar Pictures
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Anna Paquin
Anna Paquin admitted to InStyle Magazine that she keeps her Oscar for The Piano, won when she was a wee lass, in her closet next to her boots.
Image: Miramax
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Susan Sarandon
As told to The Hollywood Reporter, Susan Sarandon, who won an Oscar for Dead Man Walking, used to keep her Oscar in a guest bathroom, but eventually lent it to a traveling exhibit in the Natural History Museum, according to what she told ABC News. It doesn't seem to be in earshot anymore.
Image: Gramercy Pictures
