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WGA Awards Preview: Writing on the Wall
By Jay A. Fernandez
Hollywood Reporter
Dec 10, 2008, 10:00 PM ET
...
Original Screenplay
The original category will likely maintain its eclectic flavor, as everything from politics and police corruption to immigration, sobriety and existential despair buoys a crop of strong screenplays.
Thomas McCarthy, a character actor and writer-director, spun the indie gem "The Visitor" (Overture) into one of the goodwill hits of the year. A low-budget festival favorite about an older white man's experience with a pair of illegal African immigrants in New York City, "The Visitor" spoke to a compassion too often buried in a traumatized populace.
Two scripts are likely front-runners for their real-life bases and the firsthand research that went into capturing the flavor of cultural and historical milieus. Dustin Lance Black's "Milk" (Focus) script manages to be both an intimate and an epic portrait of murdered San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay candidate to hold public office and a catalyst of the gay rights movement.
J. Michael Straczynski's "Changeling" (Universal) takes a fascinating case of a mother's search for her young boy, missing and then "found" in 1920s Los Angeles, and wraps it in the corruption of the city's police and political machinery. While it certainly helps Straczynski's chances that Clint Eastwood directed (two of Eastwood's last four scribes have been nominated for WGA Awards), it's Straczynski's career arc from longtime TV scribe to sudden feature breakthrough that may earn him props from guild voters. ...
Original Screenplay
The original category will likely maintain its eclectic flavor, as everything from politics and police corruption to immigration, sobriety and existential despair buoys a crop of strong screenplays.
Thomas McCarthy, a character actor and writer-director, spun the indie gem "The Visitor" (Overture) into one of the goodwill hits of the year. A low-budget festival favorite about an older white man's experience with a pair of illegal African immigrants in New York City, "The Visitor" spoke to a compassion too often buried in a traumatized populace.
Two scripts are likely front-runners for their real-life bases and the firsthand research that went into capturing the flavor of cultural and historical milieus. Dustin Lance Black's "Milk" (Focus) script manages to be both an intimate and an epic portrait of murdered San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay candidate to hold public office and a catalyst of the gay rights movement.
J. Michael Straczynski's "Changeling" (Universal) takes a fascinating case of a mother's search for her young boy, missing and then "found" in 1920s Los Angeles, and wraps it in the corruption of the city's police and political machinery. While it certainly helps Straczynski's chances that Clint Eastwood directed (two of Eastwood's last four scribes have been nominated for WGA Awards), it's Straczynski's career arc from longtime TV scribe to sudden feature breakthrough that may earn him props from guild voters. ...
They even pronounced J. Michael Straczynski correctly. 
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