‘Call Me By Your Name’ Wins USC Scripter Award For Adapted Screenplay; ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Nabs TV Honor
Call Me By Your Name screenwriter James Ivory and author Andrei Aciman took home the top prize tonight at the 30th annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards, making the film the favorite to win the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, as have the last seven Scripter winners.
In the television category, The Handmaid’s Tale writer Bruce Miller and author Margaret Atwood won the adapted TV writing award for the “Offred” episode. The winners were announced tonight at a black-tie gala at the Edward L. Doheny Memorial Library on the USC campus.
Francis Ford Coppola received the Literary Achievement Award. Coppola, a UCLA Film School grad who was nominated for a Scripter Award in 1997 for The Rainmaker, paid tribute to the authors upon whose books so many of his films were based. “Anyone who’s ever adapted a screenplay knows that the original author did the heavy lifting.”
The Scripter Award honors authors of printed works and the screenwriters who adapt their stories. Sony Classics’ Call Me By Your Name is up for four Oscars, including best picture, best actor for Timothee Chalamet, original song, and adapted screenplay for Ivory and Aciman, as well as the WGA Award which will be bestowed tomorrow night. The past seven Scripter Award winners went on to win the Oscar, including last year’s Moonlight screenwriter Barry Jenkins and author Tarell Alvin McCraney. Eight of the past nine also went on to win the WGA best adapted screenplay award.
The other film nominees were: Molly’s Game screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and author Molly Bloom; The Disaster Artist screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber and authors Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell; Logan screenwriters Scott Frank, Michael Green and James Mangold, and authors Roy Thomas, Len Wein and John Romita Sr.; The Lost City of Z screenwriter James Gray and author David Grann; Mudbound screenwriters Virgil Williams and Dee Rees and author Hillary Jordan; and Wonder Woman screenwriter Allan Heinberg, story by Jason Fuchs and Zack Snyder, and author William Moulton Marston.
The other TV nominees were Alias Grace writer Sarah Polley and author Margaret Atwood; Big Little Lies writer David E. Kelley and author Liane Moriarty; Genius writers Noah Pink and Ken Biller and author Walter Isaacson; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks writers Peter Landesman, George C. Wolfe, and Alexander Woo, and author Rebecca Skloot; and Mindhunter writers Joe Penhall and Jennifer Haley and authors John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.
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