The writers behind the film “Women Talking” and the series “Slow Horses” received the 35th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards at USC’s Doheny Memorial Library on Saturday night (3/4).
The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the big screen and episodic series.
Winning the Scripter honor in the film category were screenwriter Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews for “Women Talking>
“There’s not another person, another writer, another filmmaker, that I would entrust my book to other than Sarah Polley,” Toews said.
Polley described Toews’ work as “searing, uncompromising, funny, and wise,” commenting that “with this book she offered the world an offramp from grief and rage toward what true democracy might look like.”
In the episodic series category, novelist Mick Herron and screenwriter Will Smith took home Scripters for the episode “Failure’s Contagious,” from the Apple TV+ series “Slow Horses,” which Smith adapted from Herron’s book of the same name.
“It’s an absolute privilege to be on the short list tonight.” Herron said, “These are some of the best books you’ll ever read, made into some of the best TV you’ll ever see.”
“The only real test for me in fiction is do I believe it,” Smith said, “I love it when I read a book and feel the characters have a life before and after, and I always feel that with Mick’s writing.”
Glenn Sonnenberg, who co-founded the Scripter Awards in 1988 with Marjorie Lord Volk, served as master of ceremonies. In his opening remarks, Sonnenberg acknowledged that this was the first year the Scripters were presented in person since January 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic upended normal life.
Earlier in the evening, longtime USC Libraries Board of Councilors member Jim Childs received the Ex Libris Award, which honored his exceptional commitment to the libraries.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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