Oscars: Who Wrote This Year's Best Picture?

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

Every year as the Academy Awards near, it's interesting to look at the origins of those movies nominated for Best Picture. Obviously, the screenwriters did something right, and sometimes their job was made easier by a good book that preceded it. So how did this year's nominees stack up?

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
This drama about an unsolved murder, expected to do very well on Oscar night, was an original screenplay written by its director Martin McDonagh, He came up with the idea after seeing similar billboards about a crime "somewhere down in the Georgia, Florida, Alabama corner".

LADY BIRD
Another film written by its director (Greta Gerwig), this light drama focuses on the stormy relationship between a high school senior and her well-meaning but demanding mother. Gerwig admits that although it's fiction from start to finish, its inspiration comes from her own experience.

THE SHAPE OF WATER
This drama involving a mute spinster and the man-like amphibian she bonds with was also written by its director (Guillermo del Toro). It has its origins in del Toro's childhood viewing of Creature from the Black Lagoon. He had pondered what would happen if, instead of abducting a girl, the creature became friendly with her.

PHANTOM THREAD
Yet another screenplay written by its director (Paul Thomas Anderson, whose There Will Be Blood, also starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was a 2007 Best Picture nominee), Anderson loosely based this 1950s story about a quirky but revered dressmaker on late fashion designer Charles James, labeled "America's First Couturier".

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
Here's one that actually began as a novel by André Aciman, published in 2007. This drama centers around a teenage boy and the male graduate student he begins a summer romance with. Not for the kids.

GET OUT
TV comedian Jordan Peele (Key & Peele) wrote and directed this horror movie about a black man who encounters strange circumstances when he meets the family of his white girlfriend. Peele says comedy and horror have much in common and that the story was vaguely inspired by the classic satirical film The Stepford Wives.

DARKEST HOUR
Written by Anthony McCarten, who previously wrote The Theory of Everything (about the life of Stephen Hawking), Darkest Hour focuses on another famous figure, Winston Churchill. Through drama and humor it chronicles Churchill's first days in office against the backdrop of WWII.

DUNKIRK
Speaking of war, Dunkirk tells another tale from troubled 1940s Europe. Director Christopher Nolan was inspired to write the film after he and his future wife sailed across the English Channel and followed the path of boats in the Dunkirk evacuation. Nolan's 76-page screenplay was half the length of a typical script, as he chose to focus on visuals and music to tell the story rather than rely on dialogue.

THE POST
Still speaking of war, this historical political drama depicts the Washington Post's pursuit to publish classified documents about America's involvement in Vietnam.  It was co-written by first-timer Liz Hannah and by Josh Singer, who also wrote the 2015 fact-based nominee Spotlight.

So, there you go. Three films were based on actual events, while most of the rest were inspired by something based on real life or by reimagining an existing story. As you cheer on your favorites on Sunday, March 4th, let it serve as a reminder that truth is stranger than fiction and is always a ready source of writing inspiration worth its weight in gold.

That Oscar Feeling!

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine


For my money, there is no greater example of artistic collaboration than movies.  Where else do writing, music, acting, directing, choreography, cinematography, set design, editing, etc all come together as one? The exhaustive list of credits at the end of any feature film catalogs hundreds and sometimes thousands of people who all contributed to the project in a significant way.

Of course, it all begins with a story.  When the Academy Award nominations are announced each year, it's an interesting exercise to look into the written origins of each Best Picture nominee.  In alphabetical order, here are the ones that made the grade for the February 26, 2017 telecast:

ARRIVAL
This Sci-Fi flick, starring Amy Adams as an interpreter commissioned to decode alien communications, was based on a 2010 short story called Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. One reviewer, noting significant differences between the film and the original story, made the insightful observation that it's like two friends telling you about the same event from their individual viewpoints.

FENCES
In 1950s Pittsburgh, an ex-con blames discrimination for his failures and alienates his family through stubbornness and drinking. Denzel Washington and Viola Davis reprise their roles from the Pulitzer Prize winning play Fences by August Wilson.

HACKSAW RIDGE
This WWII tale about a combat medic who refuses to carry a gun because of his religious convictions but earns the Medal of Honor is based on real-life hero Desmond Doss. A 2004 documentary film called The Conscientious Objector and a 1960s biography, The Unlikeliest Hero, led Mel Gibson to put the story on the silver screen.

HELL OR HIGH WATER
Jeff Bridges plays an about-to-retire Texas ranger working his last case, tracking bank robbers. This original script was one of the "most-liked screenplays yet to be produced" in a 2012 survey known as The Black List. Published every December, this list has been influential in getting other Oscar picks produced, including recent Best Picture winners Argo, The King's Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, and last year's top dog, Spotlight.

HIDDEN FIGURES
NASA's first female mathematicians and America's early victories in space add up to an out-of-this-world history lesson in this movie based on Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. She began research and writing in 2010 and sold the film rights before the book was published this year. Some liberties were taken in the movie for dramatic purposes, including portraying astronaut John Glenn as a much younger man than he actually was at the time.

LA LA LAND
This acclaimed musical romantic comedy/drama was written and directed by Damien Chazelle, whose Whiplash also caught the eye of the Academy two years ago. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling carry this well-told tale of an actress and a musician trying to make it in Tinsel Town. While completely original, it draws its inspiration from the spirit of every Hollywood musical, romance, comedy, and drama Chazelle pays affectionate homage to.

LION
Based on Saroo Brierley's memoir A Long Way Home, one challenge the filmmakers had was to adapt the book—which primarily focused on online research—into a dramatic chronicle of a lost Indian boy who doesn't know where he's from when he falls asleep and wakes up in Australia.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
A handyman's past comes back to haunt him in this original screenplay written by its director, Kenneth Lonergan, who also wrote a polar-opposite The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000). It's total fiction, but there is a town called Manchester-by-the-Sea in Massachusetts, where this atmospheric film was shot.

MOONLIGHT
The struggles of a bullied child begin a raw portrayal of three stages of his life, with lots of drugs and sex. This is based on a semi-autobiographical play called In Moonlight Black Boys Looks Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney.

So, of the nine Best Picture nominees this year, four began as books, two were stage plays, and three were original screenplays. As you watch any of these movies, and as you cheer on your favorites this Sunday on ABC, I hope you'll feel a sense of pride as the whole world honors the magic of storytelling, which always begins with a storyteller.

I also hope you'll enjoy my tongue-in-cheek musical tribute to this year's Best Picture nominees. As a writing challenge, I find it a fun project each February to turn one of the Best Song nominees into a parody that fits the flicks. Pass the popcorn! bit.ly/OscarsParody2017

All Action and No Talk

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

British audiences love American cinema.  Hollywood films have always been very successful across the pond.  Ironically, we don't seem to return the favor.  Comparatively few British films achieve major success here in the States.  One reason, experts have determined, is that American movies contain 1/3 less dialogue than British films.

Think of any British movie (or TV series, for that matter).  Conversation is basically nonstop.  Sometimes the only pause is for an establishing shot, and then they're right back at it again. Even an action flick like James Bond will have more dialogue than most, which makes sense since exposition is what espionage is all about.

They say the reason for this dates back to the 1930s, when movies were still young.  Once the silent film era ended and talkies were possible, British cinema went for intellectual, heady dramas, while America's post-war influx of non-English-speaking immigrants caused filmmakers to rely less on the spoken word and more on the action.  Musicals were extremely popular, and Gene Kelly's long dance numbers caught on with people of any language.

I'm reminded of a CD a friend recommended years ago and gave me for my birthday, an album by a foreign soprano who sang many of the selections in Italian.  Since the only Italian I know involves pasta dishes, the music and the performances had to work extra hard to get my attention, which they did.  I remember marveling at how effectively emotions were conveyed despite my lacking any understanding of the message.

The orchestration, of course, did much of the heavy lifting.  If, by the same token, you were to listen to a spoken radio broadcast in a foreign language you don't know, chances are there would be a total failure to communicate.

2012's Best Picture Oscar winner,  The Artist, is a silent film relying largely on what the audience sees rather than hears (or, in this case, reads). Pixar's Wall-E (2008) is an even stronger example of delivering an entire story without the use of words.

There's a legendary scene in the classic On the Waterfront where Marlon Brando's brother threatens him in the back of a cab, pointing a gun at him.  The disappointment on Brando's face and the gentle way he moves the gun away conveys more pathos than any diatribe a writer could have put in his mouth at that moment.

By now you may be reminded of the old adage "Show, don't tell", and indeed, all of the above makes a decent argument for that philosophy.  I bring it up not necessarily to promote writing less dialogue, but to encourage greater appreciation for the power of imagery, whether on the screen or in a novel.

We are, after all, visual people.  The quote "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear" is attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Edgar Allen Poe to Benjamin Franklin.  I myself heard it through the grapevine from Marvin Gaye.   I don't know how true that statement is, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Books That Became Movies

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

Have you considered adapting your own book?

Film reviewer Leonard Maltin reminded his TV audience last week that faithfully adapting a movie from a book takes a special kind of talent.  Indeed, translating one medium into another to adapt it into a new form of entertainment is a challenging task, but one which introduces a good story to millions who never knew about the book.  It's a safe bet that the number of movies we've seen in our lives far outnumber the books we've read.

In a full-circle way, films often inspire moviegoers to read the original book on which their favorite flicks are based, so the two make a great partnership.  In that spirit, I thought it would be enlightening to scan the list of some top movies which were adapted from the printed word.  Do you remember seeing these books (prior to the movie coming out)?

JURASSIC PARK by Michael Crichton
THE PRINCESS BRIDE by William Goldman
SILENCE OF THE LAMBS by Thomas Harris
DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
DANCES WITH WOLVES by Michael Blake
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
FIELD OF DREAMS (based on Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella)
FORREST GUMP by Winston Groom
MILLION DOLLAR BABY (based on a short story by F.X. Toole)

In more recent years. Hollywood gave us:

THE SOCIAL NETWORK (based on The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich)
WAR HORSE by Michael Morpurgo
WE BOUGHT A ZOO by Benjamin Mee
HUGO (based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick)
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen
THE LINCOLN LAWYER by Michael Connelly
BEASTLY by Alex Flinn
I AM NUMBER FOUR by Pittacus Lore
JACK REACHER by Lee Child
CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK by Matthew Quick
ONE FOR THE MONEY by Janet Evanovich
LIFE OF PI by Yann Martel
THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL by Deborah Moggach
LES MISERABLES by Victor Hugo
THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER by Stephen Chbosky
THE HOST (in theatres now) - Stephanie Meyer, of Twilight fame

Soon to come:

THE GREAT GATSBY — the fourth screen retelling of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic
THE SEVENTH SON — based on Joseph Delaney's The Spook's Apprentice
THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY — based on a short story by James Thurber
DOROTHY'S RETURN (2014) — based on Dorothy of Oz by Roger S. Baum

Worth noting is that some of the biggest blockbusters like Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Twilight and The Hunger Games were all series, and were all aimed at young adults.  Does this say something about book-to-film potential?  It definitely says that the younger generation is reading books, and I find that pretty encouraging.

In any given year, Hollywood translates dozens of books into film. As you're writing your next bestseller, it may not hurt to visualize being on the NY Times Best Seller list at the same time Meryl Streep accepts her Academy Award for playing your heroine. 

Which reminds me, add THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, JULIE & JULIA and THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY to that list.