USC Scripter Awards: ‘Bad Education,’ ‘First Cow,’ ‘Ma Rainey,’ ‘Normal People,’ ‘The Plot Against America’ among nominees

Erik Anderson January 26, 2021

Winners will be announced Saturday, Mar. 13, 2020

The USC Libraries named the finalists for the 33^rd annual USC Libraries Scripter Award, which honors the year’s most accomplished film and episodic series adaptations, as well as the works on which they are based.

The finalist writers for film adaptation are, in alphabetical order by film title:

Mike Makowsky for “Bad Education” based on the New York magazine article “The Bad Superintendent” by Robert Kolker
Jon Raymond and Kelly Reichardt for “First Cow” based on the novel “The Half-Life” by Jon Raymond
Screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson and playwright August Wilson for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”
Chloé Zhao for “Nomadland” based on the nonfiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century” by Jessica Bruder
Screenwriter and playwright Kemp Powers for “One Night in Miami”

The finalist writers for episodic series are, in alphabetical order by series title:

Mark Richard and Ethan Hawke, for the episode “Meet the Lord,” from “The Good Lord Bird,” based on the novel by James McBride
Sally Rooney and Alice Birch for the fifth episode of “Normal People,” based on the novel by Sally Rooney
Ed Burns and David Simon for the sixth episode of “The Plot Against America,” based on the novel by Philip Roth
Scott Frank for the episode “Openings,” from “The Queen’s Gambit,” based on the novel by Walter Tevis
Anna Winger for the first episode of “Unorthodox,” based on the autobiography “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots” by Deborah Feldman

Traditionally held in the historic Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library at the University of Southern California, the USC Libraries will this year announce the winning authors and screenwriters to a worldwide audience on Saturday, March 13, 2020, online at scripter.usc.edu.

The 2021 Scripter selection committee selected the finalists from a field of 87 film and 65 episodic series adaptations. Howard Rodman, USC professor and past president of the Writers Guild of America, West, chairs the 2021 committee.

Serving on the selection committee, among many others, are film critics Leonard Maltin, Anne Thompson and Kenneth Turan; authors Michael Chabon and Janet Fitch; screenwriters Greta Gerwig, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby; producers Jennifer Todd and Paula Wagner; and USC deans Elizabeth Daley of the School of Cinematic Arts and Catherine Quinlan of the USC Libraries.

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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), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) 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.