Moonlight, The Night Manager, People v OJ Simpson are 2017 USC Scripter Winners

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The 29th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards were held in a ceremony at USC’s Doheny Memorial Library last night and Moonlight, a screenplay by Barry Jenkins based on the play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” by Tarell Alvin McCraney won the group’s film award, which recognizes both the script writer and the author of the source material – the only award of its kind during the season to do so.

Accepting the award via video from the U.K., where the BAFTAs are being held today, Jenkins, on behalf of himself and McCraney, said that he’s often described the experience of first reading McCraney’s original piece as it being “halfway between the stage and the screen. I love that this award is for the adaptation because I feel like blending Tarell’s voice with mine . . . has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.”

The other nominees were Arrival, Fences, Hidden Figures and Lion. All five are also nominated in the Adapted Screenplay category at the Oscars.

For television adaptations there was a tie; the first winner was The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski from the nonfiction book “The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” by Jeffrey Toobin. The second was The Night Manager, adapted by David Farr and based on the 1993 novel of the same name by John le Carré.

The other nominees were Game of Thrones, The Man in the High Castle, and Orange is the New Black.

Writer/comedian Carl Reiner was the recipient of the 2017 Literary Achievement Award.

The USC Scripter Award began in 1988, co-founded by USC Libraries board members Glenn Sonnenberg and Marjorie Lord. For more information about Scripter—including additional images from the ceremony—visit scripter.usc.edu.