‘Leave No Trace,’ ‘A Very English Scandal’ win USC Scripter awards

The 31st USC Scripter Awards were held last night at the Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library and gave us quite a surprise. Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace came out on top. The USC Scripter awards both the adaptation and the original source so Granik and Anne Rosellini were awarded along with author Peter Rock from his book My Abandonment. It bested Academy Award nominees If Beale Street Could Talk and Can You Ever Forgive Me? and now makes the Adapted Screenplay Oscar race even harder.

Only four films have won the USC Scripter Award without receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay: 84 Charing Cross Road (1988) A Civil Action (1999) The Hurricane (2000) and now Leave No Trace.

In Television, Amazon’s A Very English Scandal also surprised, winning over one of this season’s biggest awards favorites The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

The USC Scripter Awards began in 1988 and are given by the USC Library Board of Councilors and are chosen by a committee of Writers Guild of America Members, Academy Award-winning and -nominated screenwriters, industry executives, authors, faculty members and some members of the Friends of the USC Libraries.

Here is the full list of nominees and winners.

Film
Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole for Black Panther, based on the character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty and author Lee Israel for Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Armando Iannucci, Ian Martin, and David Schneider for The Death of Stalin, based on the graphic novel by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin
Barry Jenkins and author James Baldwin for If Beale Street Could Talk
Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini for Leave No Trace, based on the novel
“My Abandonment” by Peter Rock – WINNER

Television
Tom Rob Smith, for the episode “The Man Who Would Be Vogue” from The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, and author Maureen Orth for the nonfiction book “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History”
Bruce Miller and Kira Snyder, for the episode “Holly” from The Handmaid’s Tale, and author Margaret Atwood
Dan Futterman and Ali Selim, for the episode “9/11” from The Looming Tower, and author Lawrence Wright
David Nicholls for the episode “Bad News,” from Patrick Melrose, based on the series of novels by Edward St. Aubyn
Marti Noxon for the episode “Vanish,” from Sharp Objects, and author Gillian Flynn
Russell T Davies, for “A Very English Scandal,” and author John Preston – WINNER

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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