The writers behind the feature film Nomadland and limited series The Queen’s Gambit won the 33rd-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards at an online ceremony this evening (3/13).
The Scripter Awards honor each year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen and, uniquely, recognize the screenwriters and the authors of the source material.
This year, screenwriter Chloé Zhao and author Jessica Bruder won in the feature film category for Searchlight Pictures’ Nomadland, based on the book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.” All films are collaborative works, but even more so in the case of adaptations—a fact that Zhao, who also directed and edited Nomadland, acknowledged in her acceptance.
“Jessica, your love for the people in your book and your love for the road and for the American West is the reason why we’re here today,” Zhao said. “And I really look forward to the day when I can sit around a campfire and listen to you rock out on your guitar again.”
Bruder thanked Zhao for adapting her “poetic meditation about life on the road” and all the people who gave her “the time of day when I showed up with a tent and a notepad.”
In the episodic series category, writer/director Scott Frank and the late Walter Tevis (1928-84) won for The Queen’s Gambit, based on Tevis’ novel of the same name. Julia Tevis McGory and Will Tevis accepted on their father’s behalf, sharing remembrances of their father as a storyteller.
Frank, who also directed the seven episodes in the Netflix limited series, thanked Tevis in his acceptance speech. “I could have never, ever done this without that novel. The gift of that novel was tremendous. My mission was to realize it in a way that, if Walter were still with us, he would be incredibly proud of it and still recognize himself in it as well.”
In most years the Scripter Awards are presented at a black-tie gala in USC’s Doheny Memorial Library. This year, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the ceremony was streamed online. USC Libraries Dean Catherine Quinlan alluded to the change.
“When we honor adaptation at Scripter, we also celebrate the original written word,” Quinlan said. “Adapting while remaining true to our foundations—that’s something that libraries do and have always done. This year, our ability to adapt has been more vital than ever.”
A selection committee comprising 52 writers, producers, journalists, and other distinguished members—including several past winners—determined this year’s awards.
Howard Rodman, a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a former president of the Writers Guild of America West, chairs the committee. In his remarks, Rodman noted that the art of adaptation requires the screenwriter to strike a delicate balance.
“How to apportion what you owe, backward, to the book; what you owe, forward, to the audience?” Rodman said. “All of the adaptations we honor tonight have answered that questions in ways that are honest, unique, at once heartfelt and full of the very highest craft.”
Earlier in the evening, Quinlan presented California State Librarian Greg Lucas with the Ex Libris Award.
“Being the State Librarian is my dream job,” Lucas said. Also speaking of the adaptability of libraries, he praised “their ability to adapt and reflect the communities that they serve. That’s an extraordinary thing to see happening through the state of California.”
The 2021 Scripter Award was presented by the USC Libraries Board of Councilors, with sponsorship support from HBO, Netflix, and Searchlight Pictures.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More