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Brokeback, Crash Take Writers Awards
By Rich Drees
February 6, 2006-
The dramas Crash and Brokeback Mountain took the Best
Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay awards Saturday
night at the 58th annual Writers Guild Awards in parallel
ceremonies held in Los Angeles and New York City.
Last week, the Writers Guild awarded their prize for Best
Documentary Screenplay to Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room.
You can read our coverage here.
Crash,
which details the intersecting lives of several Los Angelinos over a
36-hour period, was written by Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco. The
script beat out the boxing drama Cinderella Man, the comedy
The 40 Year Old Virgin, and the dramas Good Night, And
Good Luck and The Squid And The Whale for the top prize.
Brokeback
Mountain
was adapted by Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana from a short story by
E. Annie Proulx. Brokeback’s screenplay was in competition with the
scripts for Capote, The Constant Gardner, A History
Of Violence and Syriana.
The Writers Guild Awards are often considered strong indicators as
to which pictures will win their corresponding Academy Award
category. Since 1990, the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay has
gone to the Writers Guild Award winner 59% of the time while 69% of
the Writers Guild Adapted Screenplay winners have gone on to win an
Academy Award.
The guild also presented special awards to Lawrence Kasdan (the
Screen Laurel Award), George Clooney & Grant Heslov (the Paul Selvin
Award), Frank Pierson (the Morgan Cox Award), James L. Brooks (the
first Herb Sargent Award for Comedy Excellence) and Marshall
Brickman (the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement in
Writing).
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