Best Screenplay 1987

[Precious Doll]

For original it was a toss up between Malle & Allen. I went with Malle.

As for the adapted category I don't think any of the nominees was worth a win so I have abstained from voting in this category.

[ITALIANO]

None of the Original Screemplay nominees is bad. None - I guess - is great, either. I could find good aspects in each of them, but I could also discuss on their flaws (not in English though). The winner, Moonstruck, is a pleasant, though not exactly challenging, piece of writing, with a strong emotional empathy towards is character and at least one very well-written dialogue (interestingly, between two "minor" characters, the mother and a university professor). The movie itself was also a big box-office hit at time, and generally much-loved. The only other possible winner that night could have been the other Best Picture nominee, Broadcast News, which isn't stupid, has some good roles for its actors, is witty and everything - but is also a bit on the "soft" side - you feel that its writer's roots are in television, and not only because it IS set in the world of television. Radio Days is, I think unfairly, considered a minor Woody Allen, but it has actually many good things, and its mood - nostalgic, elegiac - is rather well conveyed (much better, for example, than in the same writer's later Midnight in Paris - but then Radio Days is rooted in America's popular culture, a definitely more familiar background for him). I think it's between the two autobiographical "war" movies, one French and one British, so different yet both so "true". I've gone with Louis Malle, but I could have easily voted for John Boorman on another day.

In Adapted, even if I personally think that The Last Emperor is an intelligently-written movie (and something rare: an epic centered on a loser), I can't deny that there are two masterpieces here: The Dead and Full Metal Jacket. This is why the Screenplay awards are more difficult to deal with - the level of the nominees is often higher than in Best Picture, and choosing isn't easy. How can you compare John Huston and Stanley Kubrick? I've voted for The Dead only because Full Metal Jacket is probably more a director's than a writer's movie, but it's tough, really.

[Big Magilla]

This was quite an interesting year for screenplays. The New York Film Critics started things off with their award to James L. Brooks for his witty, incisive script for Broadcast News, then the L.A. Film Critics, the National Board of Review and the Golden Globes all agreed that John Boorman's script for his World War II British home front comedy-drama was best. TheWwriters Guild nominated them both for Original Screenplay, along with two other comedies, John Patrick Shanley's hilarious Moonstruck and Woody Allen's nostalgic Radio Days. Their fifth nominee was curiously Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertoucci's The Last Emperor which was actually an adaptation, at least in part, of Pu-Yi's autobiography. The Academy substituted Louis Malle's autobiographical Au Revoir, Les Enfants, a Best Foreign Film nominee, for The Last Emperor, which they nominated, and eventually awarded, in Adapted. Both bodies agreed Moonstruck was the year's best original. My preference is Broadcast News, but Moonstruck was a fine choice as would have been either Hope and Glory or Au Revoir, Les Enfants. The only nominee I didn't much care for was Radio Days. I would have substituted Dan Petrie, Jr.'s screenplay for The Big Easy.

The Writers Guild and the Academy agreed on only two films in the adapted category - Stanley Kubrick and partners' screenplay for Full Metal Jacket and James Dearden's adaptation of his previous screenplay (for television) for the lurid Fatal Attraction. The Writers Guild added David Mamet's screenplay for The Untouchables, based on the old TV show; William Goldman's The Princess Bride based on his novel and Roxanne, Steve Martin's sweet and funny adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, which won. The Academy, in addition to moving The Last Emperor into this category, also added Lasse Hallstrom and collaborators' screenplay for My Life as a Dog and Tony Huston's adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead, which was concurrently an Independent Spirit Award nominee and my pick for the year's best adaptation by a mile. I would have gone along with My Life as a Dog and The Last Emperor but would have liked to see No Way Out, Robert Garland's adaptation of The Big Clock and The Untouchables take the other two slots.