Borat Nominated for Screenplay Award
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Awards, Scripts, 20th Century Fox
Even if you consider Borat (full title not necessary) to be primarily a scripted work, it is still a film that works best in its unscripted sequences. This is debatable, sure, but I would like someone at the Writers Guild to tell me what was so great about the actual screenplay used. Personally, I think the scripted parts, as well as the adherence to the plot, are the weakest elements.
Nonetheless, Sacha Baron Cohen and his five collaborators are nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Adapted Screenplay. And despite my questioning of this recognition, I don't really prefer any of its competition. The other titles in the adapted category are Little Children, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada and Thank You for Smoking. If I had to choose, I'd go with the last of these, but I think the prize will go to the overrated Little Children.
I also don't think the Original Screenplay category is that great, either. The nominees for that award are Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, United 93, Stranger Than Fiction and The Queen. Again, I'd have to go with the last of these, but predict the overrated first.
Hopefully, unlike with other guild awards, the WGA's honors will not reflect the Oscar nominations, which may recognize foreign films Volver and Pan's Labyrinth, which were ineligible here.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-12-2007 @ 6:19PM
theoutrageousming said...
Borat gets nominated for best adaptation but The Prestige does not? What is wrong with these people.
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1-13-2007 @ 3:40PM
mister_wiggles said...
I'm a WGA member and here's why I voted for Borat:
1. The "unscripted" parts were largely scripted. S.B.C. has said on many occassions that he and his collaborators script many possible lines, reactions, etc. based on a sort of advanced scouting report of the location and unwitting scene partners. In my opinion this takes just as much or more planning, forethought and screencraft as the traditional method of screenwriting (ie: ocassionally pecking away at a laptop in between internet procrastination).
2. Weak competition. I had to read through the list of possible nominees three times just to find 5 films in each category that wouldn't make me physically sick to vote for. The original screenplay category was especially thin.
3. Politics. I personally hate the brand of film that is specifically constructed to win awards. They are usually mediocre films with "important" social messages or by the numbers biopics of "important" people or lousily pretentious movies from "important" filmmakers. So after voting for any undeniably great artistic films, I do what little I can to promote what I think are exceptionally well made, innovative and/or underappreciated mainstream films. In addition to Borat, I thought The Prestige, Thank You For Smoking and Casino Royale were all examples of top notch writing in mainstream films.
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1-14-2007 @ 3:30PM
Christopher Campbell said...
Thank you for your input Mister Wiggles. I do understand your first point, and agree that it takes a lot of craft to write such sequences. Kim wrote about an interview that points this out: Borat, Exposed! No, Not in That Way
I guess I was just ruling out that kind of writing, because I always associate the laptop/internet procrastination type screenwriting with the award. There is a hard line between what Cohen and his collaborators did with Borat and what actual improv comedians do or even what actual non-fiction film writers do, but there is also a line between Borat and a typical scripted film. And because Borat is still slightly in between the fiction and nonfiction styles, it still seems an interesting choice for the predominantly all-fiction categories of best screenplay.
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