‘Women Talking,’ ‘Slow Horses’ claim 35th USC Scripter Awards

The writers behind the film Women Talking and the series Slow Horses received the 35th annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards at USC’s Doheny Memorial Library.

The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the big screen and episodic series and is the only body that recognizes the original source as well as the adaptation.

Glenn Sonnenberg, who co-founded the Scripter Awards in 1988 with Marjorie Lord Volk, served as master of ceremonies. In his opening remarks, Sonnenberg acknowledged that this was the first year the Scripters were presented in person since January 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic upended normal life.

“I’m grateful for the support of the Scripter community, particularly since 2020,” Sonnenberg said. “You remained engaged, committed, and invested during a time of uncertainty and change, and I thank you for staying so connected to our libraries.”

In the film category, the winners were screenwriter Sarah Polley and novelist Miriam Toews for Women Talking.

“There’s not another person, another writer, another filmmaker, that I would entrust my book to other than Sarah Polley,” Toews said.

Sarah Polley described Toews’s work as “searing, uncompromising, funny, and wise,” commenting that “with this book she offered the world an offramp from grief and rage toward what true democracy might look like.”

The film bested where fellow Oscar nominees Living and Top Gun: Maverick as well as Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and She Said. All Quiet on the Western Front and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, also Oscar-nominated for Adapted Screenplay, were not nodded here.

In the episodic series category, novelist Mick Herron and screenwriter Will Smith took home Scripters for the episode “Failure’s Contagious,” from the Apple TV+ series Slow Horses, which Smith adapted from Herron’s book of the same name.

“It’s an absolute privilege to be on the short list tonight,” Mick Herron said, “these are some of the best books you’ll ever read, made into some of the best TV you’ll ever see.”

“The only real test for me in fiction is do I believe it,” Will Smith said, “I love it when I read a book and feel the characters have a life before and after, and I always feel that with Mick’s writing.”

Earlier in the evening, longtime USC Libraries Board of Councilors member Jim Childs received the Ex Libris Award, which honored his exceptional commitment to the libraries.