Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards - 2007 Winners
by Andre Soares
The populist Little Miss Sunshine and the absurd The Departed were given, respectively, best original screenplay (Michael Arndt) and best adapted screenplay trophies (William Monahan) at the Writers Guild of America (WGA) awards ceremony last night.
Amy Berg’s screenplay for Deliver Us from Evil, about a pedophilic priest, received the WGA Award for best documentary screenplay.
Earlier that day, Little Miss Sunshine also won top original screenplay honors at the British Film Academy ceremony. At the WGA ceremony, Michael Arndt thanked his agent and producers for helping him to achieve "the screenwriters’ dream of seeing their words up on the screen uncompromised and undiluted."
Peter Morgan’s considerably more deserving — though hardly flawless — The Queen has apparently been demoted to lady-in-waiting.
There have been some well-written films in 2006, but for the most part you won’t find them in the lists of nominees/winners given out by critics, guilds, globers, and academies. However, you’ll be able to find them in a few years, when I get around to compiling my own list of top pictures of 2006.
As an aside, I’m almost done with Budd Schulberg’s excellent What Makes Sammy Run?, published in 1941. In the novel, a mix of satire and drama, Schulberg depicts the convoluted creation of the Writers Guild in the mid-1930s, during the height of the Depression. (More on Sammy in an upcoming post.)
The U.S. and (much of) the world economy may be in better shape now, but labor issues continue to flare up. As quoted in the Hollywood Reporter, WGA West president Patric Verrone "joked that he would not subject the crowd to long speeches about ‘the guild’s determination to work with our sister unions to preserve health and pension benefits.’"
The WGA’s film and television contracts expire in October. A debilitating strike is a possibility — some say a probability — after that.
Michael Arndt quote: The Hollywood Reporter
Full list of 2007 WGA Award winners and nominees
Full list of 2006 WGA Award winners and nominees
Full list of 2005 WGA Award winners and nominees
Visual Effects Society Awards - 2007 Winners
Irish Academy Awards - 2007 Winners
SIGNS OF LIFE (1968) by Werner Herzog: DVD Review
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