Oscars Debate: 2009's Best Adapted Screenplay
My relationship with the Oscars is a strictly causal one. I enjoy debating the caliber of the movies nominated and who deserves to win what award, but I draw the line at taking them seriously. There seems to be a lot of emotional investment into who wins and who didn’t get nominated and what it all means, and I understand the impulse. The Academy does a great job making the Oscars seem like they’re more important than they actually are. In the end, however, I take comfort in the knowledge that we get to decide which movies remain culturally significant and which fade from our collective memory. Take 1980. Which movie do you think holds more cultural significance: Best Picture winner Ordinary People or, to pick a random movie that wasn’t nominated for any Oscars that year, The Shining?
Still, I love my dumb Oscar debates. I love going back and forth with whoever will indulge me on which films deserve to win based purely on the merit of their respective categories. I don’t actually have any emotional investment in who actually wins, though it always feels good when a truly deserving nominee gets the award. I just enjoy the discussion.
One day, whilst goofing around on IMDB and not writing articles or scripts or looking for jobs or apartments or any of the things I’m supposed to be doing, I found what very well might be the toughest Oscar debate I’ve ever encountered: The 2010 Best Adapted Screenplay category. I put a truly embarrassing amount of time and thought into which one I think should've won, but I couldn’t make a decision. So I thought to myself, “Hey, I have a blog. Let’s turn this stupid debate into some motherfucking content!” So I rewatched every movie nominated, and we’re going to figure this thing out together! Let’s do this shit!
Actually, before we do this shit, I want to clarify a few things: I didn’t read any of the actual scripts, and I’ve only seen seen/read the source material for two of the five nominees. This has partly to do with availability and time, but mostly because the award isn’t really given to the “best screenplay” so much as “most interesting story on screen.” A writer wrote a script, and it became a movie. How much said movie resembles said script doesn’t really matter in the end. It’s more a question of, “Hey, you wrote the thing that became that movie. Here’s an award!”
Also, I’m going to write about these movies as if you’ve already seen them, so spoilers and all that. If you haven’t, all five of these films are well worth your time. Now let’s do this shit:
1. An Education
Feel free to take away some of my hipster points, but I’ve never actually read a Nick Hornby book. Many a fellow high school/college friend were reading them and telling me how much they loved them. I, however, was too busy being distracted by the internet and staring at shiny objects in the road. However, apart from the English adaptation of Fever Pitch and Love, Nina, I’ve seen all of Nick Horby’s screenwriting credits and I think they’re all fantastic. Wild was unfairly written off as “Oscar bait” for reasons I never quite understood. (Apparently we live in some weird dimension where Wild is “Oscar bait” and The Theory of Everything isn’t.) Brooklyn was one of my absolute favorite movies of last year. And, of course, I love An Education. Hornby’s scripts aren’t epic and they’re light on thrills, but you want to spend as much time in them as you can. He might be the greatest hangout writer ever, and I need to get off my ass and read those books... ooooh, Twitter!
Ah, my good friend 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Now all my An Education screenshots get to look too small. Yay.
The case for An Education:
There’s been many a coming-of-age story written in which somebody falls in love with someone “cool.” They have some sort of “greatest night ever” and the cool person introduces our protagonist to the cool bands and the cool movies. Inevitably though, that cool person will let the protagonist down. In some works, the letdown is relatively minor, but in some cases it’s catastrophic. Our protagonist eventually bounces back, and the “coming-of-age” is the process of getting over said “cool” person. The general message is that you should learn what you can from the experience of your first love, but you shouldn’t lose yourself or your goals in the process.
An Education is very much one of these movies, but with several important differences. Our protagonist, Jenny, is sixteen when we first meet her. Her father is almost comedically restrictive and disapproves of anything Jenny does if it won’t help her get into Oxford. Her love interest is David. We’re never directly told his age, but given certain context clues and his appearance, he’s probably somewhere between his mid-thirties and early forties. I don’t know what consent laws were like in the UK during the early 60s, but a modern audience should feel uncomfortable with the idea. David, however, then shows Jenny not just the “cool” stuff, but also the larger world in general. He takes her to classical music concerts. He plays her jazz records. They go to nice restaurants. He even takes her to Paris. Soon, she has to decide between leaving school and getting married.
We’re oddly drawn to him because she grew up in the soul crushing suburbs of England and he’s a portal to world of endless cultural possibilities. However, the more we learn about David’s mysterious “job,” and the more Jenny commits to David, the more clear it becomes that this is going to end in disaster. It might cost Jenny not only her future, but her agency as a person. This is now a coming-of-age story with serious dramatic stakes.
All the great romances start with a creepy age gap and the potential for future ruin.
While the structure is certainly sound, An Education is also rich with nuance that really sets it apart from similar movies. It’s steeped in cultural details of the English middle class of the sixties. Jenny is a character caught between the conservative world of her parents and the next generation. She doesn’t want to end up like her mother, a quietly interesting person tethered to a man who scoffs at everything she idolizes. David could be that future she wants for herself: An actual person with access to art and culture. She learns the hard way, however, that personal growth is nothing to be cast aside.
The case against An Education:
So it’s here I run into a problem. On one hand, Jenny’s father Jack often comes off as kind of a joke. Early on in the movie, a young man from Jenny’s Youth Orchestra named Graham comes over for lunch. Graham brings up the idea of taking a year off to travel, and Jack immediately accuses him of being a “teddy boy.” Whenever Jenny brings up any idea involving some sort of interaction with the world around her, Jack will crack a joke and shoot the idea down. This could be a totally accurate representation of how people like Jack truly behaved. I have no way of knowing.
All I can say is that it feels false, and the reason why it’s an issue in An Education is that all the other characters feel more layered. Jenny is incredibly book smart and can socialize in seemingly any kind of environment, but she’s also a bit too wide-eyed for her own good. David is charming and sophisticated, but emotionally immature. Jack is stubborn, and that’s about it. While he does realize the error of his ways, for most of the story he sticks out like a sore thumb.
Jack's stomping ground. Shocker.
I’m also not entirely on board with act three. It’s only around fifteen minutes, and while the story beats work well on paper, it feels a bit abrupt onscreen. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s only nine story beats, one of which is a montage. I think it would’ve been easier for me to stomach if it weren’t for the last scene. Jenny receives her acceptance letter from Oxford, and as we see her biking on campus, she tells us in a voiceover about how a boy asked her if she wanted to go to Paris and she agreed as if she’d never been before.
I understand the purpose of the scene, but I think I would’ve like to have seen the moment rather than hear about it. The ending does do a good job reveling in the joy of experience and education, but it feels like too finite an ending. Part of that joy comes from not knowing what comes next.
2. District 9
I’m not entirely sure I think District 9 should be in the “adapted” category. It’s based on a short film by the same director called Alive in Joburg, but it really seems to be more of a proof of concept for District 9 than something that’s supposed to stand on it’s own. Logic in the award categories can be hard to come by, and District 9 is only an “adaptation” in the most anal retentive sense of the word. For all intents and purposes, District 9 is an original idea, and I’m always happy when original ideas in Hollywood are successful.
I hate Wilkus.
The case for District 9:
Wilkus Van De Merwe is a bold choice for a protagonist. Whereas most blockbuster protagonists are chisel-jawed alpha males, Wilkus is a scrawny beta. In fact, he might be the most beta-y beta in the history of betas. (Read no alt-righty bullshit into my usage of "beta." It was a rhetorical thing to pair with "alpha male." You get it.)
On top of that, he’s a total piece of shit.
He’s smug, he’s incompetent, but most importantly, he’s a monster. Though the aliens are intelligent beings with emotions and self-awareness, he doesn’t treat them with an ounce of dignity or respect. He even takes an uncomfortable amount of glee in destroying the house with all the alien eggs inside. He’s the exact kind of heartless bureaucrat that was probably responsible for god knows how many disasters during Apartheid.
Fuck you, Wilkus.
Irony is a great friend for storytellers. There’s always gold in taking your character’s worst prejudice and forcing them to confront it. District 9 goes one step further in literally turning Wilkus into one of the aliens. For most of the first act, District 9 runs at a pretty steady pace. We learn about the aliens. We watch Wilkus be horrible. They serve the eviction notices. Wilkus gets a face full of black goo. Nothing too out of the ordinary happens until they remove his cast to reveal his newly formed alien arm. From here on in, we’re in high octane mode as events spiral more and more out of control. It’s a really effective story escalation, and it never really slows down.
There’s also something to be said about the content itself. Blockbusters don’t have to go out of their way to have allegory or subtext. In fact, one wouldn’t be deemed crazy for assuming that the dumber the movie, the more successful it will be. Yet, District 9 goes out of it’s way to talk about Apartheid and the general apathy towards immigrants in South Africa. It can be enjoyed as a thinking man’s blockbuster, but it can just as easily be enjoyed as pure spectacle. After all, it’s hard to argue that District 9 is a thinking man’s anything when a single shot from an alien gun causes a human being to explode into a million pieces.
The case against District 9:
District 9 is probably the weakest script in this category. The original ideas on display are admirable, but there’s a lot of weird structuring choices and the movie spends most of its runtime barely keeping itself together. District 9 begins as a fake documentary that uses fake security footage and talking heads to convey information. Then without warning, the documentary pretext is all but abandoned. Sometimes it returns to the format, but it’s clear that there isn’t a fake documentary crew filming what we’re seeing on screen. It’s a device for delivering information in the beginning that becomes increasingly less useful once the story actually begins.
I would also say that Wilkus’s arc is a little undercooked. He goes from dickhead to good guy like any well-told story demands, but he doesn’t quite get there organically. After spending the whole story being an insufferable prick, “Christopher” is captured, and Wilkus steals the mech suit. Initially, he leaves Christopher behind to die, but then he changes his mind and rescues him. I’m being a tad bit reductive, but that’s essentially it. He’s a bastard until he arbitrarily decides not to be.
"Seriously, fuck you Wilkus." - All screenwriting books
More importantly though, and I realize this is a point that’s been made many times, what can charitably be called act three falls flat. The ship is gone, the PMC is crippled, and Wilkus has fully transformed from human to alien. However, the aliens still move to District 10, and they’re still being treated like dirt. Wilkus leaves a metal rose for his wife, but the script thinks we care about their relationship way more than we actually do. Nothing has actually resolved. Maybe that was the point: The treatment of immigrants in South Africa is still a problem, so the story has no resolution. It still feels like dissatisfaction for dissatisfaction’s sake.
3. In the Loop
I’ve seen In the Loop more times than any other film in this category. I love this movie. If I ever do a top ten comedies list, I guarantee you In the Loop will make it. I’m also a huge fan of the TV show it’s based on, The Thick of It. The show was created by Armando Iannucci, who would later create Veep. The Thick of It, and by extension In the Loop, are a lot like Veep, only they’re both far more angry and dark…
I’m going to move on now before this gets to fanboy-y.
The case for In the Loop:
In the Loop is the least conventionally structured story in this category. There are problems and obstacles for the characters to overcome, but It doesn’t really have anything that resembles an arc or a hero’s journey. I think it can be argued that this is one of the rare occurrences where traditional structure wouldn’t be as effective. In the Loop’s premise is fairly simple: A minister for a government department in the UK makes a stupid comment in an interview. Various factions around the world, including key staff members in the State Department and the Prime Minister’s office, then try to spin said stupid comment to go to war in the Middle East while everyone else tries to stop them.
It’s a movie about spinning a tiny occurrence into a full blown disaster. Every event that happens in this movie makes everyone’s circumstances all the more dire. Conventional film stories, to put it in stupidly simple terms, work like this: Things get better, then they go bad, then they get better again. In this movie, things start fine, then they go bad, then it gets worse. Yet by sheer inertia, In the Loop somehow makes it work.
I took so many screenshots of Malcolm yelling at people.
Despite the constant downward trajectory, the story still manages to pull off something a lot of movies try to do but fail, and that’s a late game tonal shift. I wouldn’t call In the Loop a “light” comedy, but at some point in act three when the all the players in the story wind up at the UN, the story effortlessly transitions from dark-leaning comedy to just dark. People have been lying and behaving ridiculously, but none of it had any real consequences. Now all of this is going to end in war, and it’s going to cost actual lives.
Now let’s pretend you don’t care about structure, and you think the only important part of the script is the dialogue. On those grounds alone, In the Loop is your clear winner. The dialogue in this movie is incredible, and while there are a bunch of “best of In the Loop” videos you could watch, I’ll leave you with this exchange between General George Miller, played by the late great James Gandolfini, and Head of Communications Malcolm Tucker, played by the equally incredible Peter Capaldi. (Forgive the homophobia. This is a movie about angry members of an older generation yelling at each other. We’re supposed to find it off-putting.)
The case against In the Loop:
I suppose one could say that the lack of structure and character arcs make the story feel distant, and all we’re really watching is stressed out government workers yelling at each other with increasingly creative strings of profanity.
If one were to say that, I would say that’s a bit of an oversimplification.
Guess what word Malcolm's about to say!
The only part of the script that initially rubbed me the wrong way was the handling of the DC portion. Basically, all the UK officials go to DC, make fools of themselves for a while, and then go back home feeling dejected and worse off. However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to feel like that was the whole point. In the film’s universe, the UK officials think DC is political Disneyland. They go, they have a few meetings hoping things will go well for them, and then they leave with nothing to show for it. It’s deliberating unsatisfying, and I actually kind of love it.
I’m someone who tries to be critical of every movie I watch. It helps me become better at my craft, and I feel like it’s healthy to learn to be rational about the art you love. I’ve scanned my brain over and over, and I can’t really think of anything wrong with In the Loop. I know that there might be flaws, but they don't add up to much in the shadow of the whole. I suppose the strongest case against it then is the fact that because of the lack of character arcs, it might somehow feel “less than” compared to other nominees. I don’t know. In this one case, I just don’t really care.
4. Precious
Precious ended up walking away with the award. One one hand, Precious winning makes a certain degree of sense, as it’s very much the kind of script that often wins. Underdog protagonist? Check. Social issues? Check. A dramatic crying scene that showcases the lead’s acting chops? Check. However, it’s an adaption of a book by an African American woman written by an African American about African American women. We all know how the Oscars feel about black people and women, and it’s a minor miracle Precious did so well in the Oscar race to begin with. In fact the more I think about it, the more the prospect of Precious winning is actually kind of fascinating, as it occupies a weird space between a safe Oscar pick and the furthest away from an Oscar pick possible.
I personally like to believe it won as a cosmic punishment for nominating The Blind Side for Best Picture.
Fun story: I got into my first car accident shortly before seeing Precious in theaters for the first time. That was a night.
The case for Precious:
Precious might have the most nuanced characters of the pack. Maybe it has more to do with direction and acting than how they actually jump off on the page, but most of the characters that appear on screen feel effortlessly well-developed. We spend two seconds with Cornrows, the lady behind the desk at Precious’s new school, and we already feel like we know her. The same can be said about Nurse John or Ms. Rain or most of the characters we meet. We get to know Precious’s new classmates, and the more time we spend with them, the more we learn. We think Joann and Precious won’t get along because Joann’s loud and goofy and Precious is quiet and justifiably somber. Yet they become pretty good friends. Joann’s supportive, and though she comes off initially as a bit of an airhead, she has moments of genuine kindness and humanity.
The opposite can be said about Precious’s mother Mary. This has nothing to do with story structure or character arcs, but holy shit Mo’Nique’s performance can’t be praised enough. I’ll admit that there are times when I think her character’s a bit overwritten, but Mo’Nique sells those moments so well that it doesn’t really matter. More importantly though, Mary is a character I can’t say I’ve really seen before. Most horrible movie mothers show at least some sort of twisted affection for their children. If only Precious could be so lucky.
I thought about doing some sort of Mary vs. Livia Soprano comparison article, but that would mean thinking about a lot of things I don't want to.
Film structure teaches us to expect a satisfying reason for Mary’s constant tirade of abuse. (I use “satisfying” in the loosest way possible.) At the end of the story, Mary has Ms. Weiss arrange a meeting between her and Precious so she can be reunited with her grandchildren. Ms. Weiss makes Mary explain her actions, and the only explanation we get is that she felt jealous and betrayed that Precious’s father was more attracted to Precious than to her. She still fundamentally thinks that Precious's rape was her own fault. Even when her relationship with her daughter and grandchildren are at stake, Mary can’t admit her culpability in Precious’s abuse. I think it’s safe to assume Mary suffers from some sort of mental illness, but she knows right from wrong, and she chooses wrong.
The most fascinating character, however, is Precious herself. Precious grows up in an abusive home with no love to speak of, and everyday, her mother tells her that she’s stupid and worthless. After her school finds out she’s pregnant with her second child by her own father, she’s transferred to a special class. It’s there that she learns to respect herself, and that there are people who love her and will treat her with kindness. She finally gathers the strength to sever ties with her mother, and though her future is bleak, it’s at least in her control. Her arc isn’t a particularly grand one, but I think it’s substantial and quietly powerful. It’s a story about love setting someone free.
The case against Precious:
Way back in my early college days, I stumbled upon this incredible video of South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker giving writing advice to some undergrads. In the video, they talk about how when you’re outlining a story, the word that should go between each story beat should not be “then,” but rather “therefore” or “but then.” In other words, each event in your story should either directly cause the next event, or obstacles need to get in your character’s way.
Precious is rather light on “therefores.” There is a structure that binds the story together, but it often unfolds in a way that doesn’t resemble a story so much as a sequence of events that happen in chronological order. There is a way to make that work, In the Loop being a good example of that, but it makes the story seem less focused. There’s a scene early on in the movie where Precious spills her heart to Ms. Weiss, and thus gets the family cut off from receiving welfare checks. Time passes. Precious gives birth. We hang around in the hospital. Finally, after almost twenty minutes of screen time, Precious returns home and suffers the consequences of getting Mary cut off from welfare when Mary almost kills Precious with the television set. In an hour and fifty minute movie, twenty minutes is a huge chunk of time.
Precious takes shelter with Ms. Rain.
Certain parts also feel a bit overwritten. This may be a matter of taste, but I don’t like sentimentality. I don’t want to be aware that I’m watching an Oscar clip, and I always thought that the famous “nobody loves me” scene, while powerful, feels a bit ham-fisted compared to some of the more powerful moments of the story. The worst offender, however, is during the welfare fight. After each heavy blow, there’s a flash of a family photo from Precious’s childhood. Mary seemed to love her at first, but soon she’s no longer smiling. Some of Precious’s most powerful moments are also its quietest. We don’t need to veer needlessly into the realm of the melodramatic.
5. Up in the Air
Every year or so since I saw this movie in theaters, I feel an urge to watch it again. Every time I do so, I get something new out of it. It’s one of those movies that takes on a new meaning the older you get. I first saw this movie in high school, and during those years, it was about the exhilaration of new love and how those feelings can be dashed. Now I’m in my early twenties, I’m two years out of college, and the job angle of Up in the Air and Ryan’s desire for emotional weightlessness are more tangible to me now than ever before.
Let’s move on before this gets more depressing.
Going through Ryan's "gauntlet."
The case for Up in the Air:
Up in the Air communicates the feeling of loneliness better than most movies that have tried. It’s one of the more difficult emotions to capture, as interacting with others is built into how most stories work. Whether it’s a love interest or a mentor or a new friend, somebody’s going to shepherd our protagonist away from the fear of being alone. There are some, however, who won’t go quietly into that good night. Ryan Bingham lives to feel unburdened by connection. He thinks he finds another person just like him, and despite his best efforts, he finds himself attached to her. He soon learns that the road life was only a lark for her, and she didn’t take their “romance” seriously. The road life is all Ryan knows.
All of which is a very long way of saying that this movie’s structuring is unbelievably clever. It uses your your want for Ryan to connect with someone, and by association your own desire to connect with people, against you. As Ryan’s feelings for Alex grow stronger, he watches his new protégé Natalie brutally fire a worker in Detroit over video chat while said worker is in the next room. He finally understands the downside of his lifestyle.
This relationship won't end in heartbreak. I promise.
He wants connection now. He takes Alex to the wedding. He walks away from his speaking gig. He does the thing you’re supposed to do in a movie and gets on a plane. But there’s no big kiss in the end, and Alex severs her connection with him. (She “fires” him, if you want to stretch with me a little.) He finds out somebody that he and Natalie fired committed suicide, and Natalie quits. The consequences of the job take their tole on Natalie, and she leaves while she still can.
Ryan’s already in too deep. While all the fired employees return to the grind of finding a new job and Natalie starts her new career in a new city, we end with Ryan returning to what he knows: The airport. He lets his suitcase go, much like the backpacks in his speeches, and stares at all the destinations on the board. Only this time, the point isn’t to keep traveling. The point is to wind up at a destination.
The case against Up in the Air:
Much like In the Loop, I don’t really have much to say here except to make a quick point. If you wanted to say that act three is a little too short, I wouldn’t argue too hard with you. I should be nitpicking Up in the Air’s act three for the same reasons as An Education. (To give you a general idea, Ryan shows up at Alex’s door a little over an hour and half in and the credits role about fifteen minutes later.)
Though they’re around the same length, I would argue that Up in the Air's act three uses its time more effectively than An Education. While most of An Education's resolution is tied up in a closing montage, Up in the Air uses its third act to tie back into the story’s central themes. The story slowly unburdens Ryan of all his friends and acquaintances. Alex breaks up with him. Natalie moves to a new city. Ryan, I think, quits his own job. He’s finally free from any emotional baggage, just like he thought he wanted.
Ryan picks a place and goes.
The story ends with him reveling in the uncertainty of what comes next. There’s new people to meet. There’s places to go. Sure, it also has a voiceover, but it does what I wanted An Education to do, which is showing us Ryan embracing his new circumstances rather than telling us.
Other than that, I only have nitpicks that I don’t honestly care that much about. I could’ve used a few less “you’re old” jokes from Natalie. There are some scenes that depict Ryan as a little shallower than I think he actually is. That’s about it.
So who should win?
As you might’ve guessed, I think this is between In the Loop and Up in the Air.
I don’t mean to dismiss the other nominees so casually. The whole point of this article is that this decision was unbelievably hard for me. That said, District 9 wasn’t as structurally intact as I remembered it and Precious is a little too overwritten at times. I spent a whole heap of time trying to decide between the remaining three, and ultimately, I cut An Education because of that act three. It hurt me though. It hurt me deep. I love An Education. Go watch it. Now.
So what we have here is a debate between conventional structure and atypical but effective storytelling. Wounded emotional cores and angry comedic id. Straight up drama and satire. There are many ways we can go about deciding a winner. I think relevancy can certainly be one of them. Jobs are rather hard to come by these days, or maybe it feels that way as I’m currently on the job hunt and hating every second of it. I also write this during the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, and it’s easy to see why a film about the incompetence of the UK government might seem rather pertinent.
But the point of this article is to pick a theoretical winner.
I really don’t want to do this.
Please don’t make me do this.
Fine.
Were I in charge of the Oscars, I would’ve given it to Up in the Air.
I love you, In the Loop.
I had a conversation with a buddy of mine about this article. He said he’d go with Up in the Air because on general principal, it shouldn’t work. It’s a movie about a guy flying around and firing people. It’s an interesting job, for sure, but on paper it’s not enough to sustain an entire movie. We had this conversation before I rewatched it, and after the credits rolled, I realized that the mundanity of it is why it works. It’s a movie about the kinds of common stresses that seem the most daunting. The unease of not having a job. The desire to connect with someone who doesn’t feel the same way. The encroaching feelings of a wasted life. Loneliness. Up in the Air’s themes are universal and all too real for those of us who have to live in the real world and not on some Hollywood set. It’s a story about a man whose job is to “make limbo tolerable, to ferry wounded souls across the river of dread until the point were hope is dimly visible. And then stop the boat, shove them in the water and make them swim.” After I was done with this rewatch, limbo did seem tolerable, if only for a few moments.
Obviously I’m projecting a lot of my own shit onto Up in the Air, but even if my circumstances were different, it would still be a movie with almost impeccable structuring and character development. I’ll admit that if I sat down and told myself I wanted to watch a movie, I’d probably pick In the Loop, but that has more to do with my personal taste. Up in the Air is for everybody.
