A Century of Film: Adapted Screenplay

A Century of Film

Adapted Screenplay

It didn’t take long for screenwriters to realize that what had been successful in other mediums could be successful in film as well.  After all, what is probably the first great film, A Trip to the Moon, came from H.G. Wells before Melies visualized it.

The awards groups knew it right from the start, with Best Writing (Adaptation) a category in the very first Oscars.  Great literature could be adapted but the not-so-great could also transcend its original material.  My whole project of going through the Adapted Screenplay, year by year, is a documented history of the kinds of great (and not great) works that have been adapted into great (and not great, but award winning or nominated) films over the years.

My Top 5 Adapted Screenplays in Film History:

1. Casablanca
2. The Princess Bride
3. The Seventh Seal
4. The Godfather
5. Touch of Evil

The other 9 Point Adapted Screenplays (chronological):

• The Petrified Forest
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Philadelphia Story
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Best Years of Our Lives
• Brief Encounter
• Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• All About Eve
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• Rashomon
• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• Paths of Glory
• Touch of Evil
• Some Like It Hot
• Dr. Strangelove
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
• Chimes at Midnight
• M*A*S*H
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• All the President’s Men
• Being There
• Breaker Morant
• Terms of Endearment
• A Room with a View
• Glory
• Field of Dreams
• GoodFellas
• The Silence of the Lambs
• Schindler’s List
• The Age of Innocence
• Ed Wood
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Trainspotting
• The English Patient
• L.A. Confidential
• The Ice Storm
• Out of Sight
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Hours
• Adaptation
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Sideways
• Brokeback Mountain

note:  I rate all aspects of film on a 9 point scale.  They also correspond to the 100 point scale for Best Picture.  Films above *** (76-99) all land on the scale.  1 point is for 76-79, just worth mentioning.  2 points is for 80-83, a weak mention, 3 points is for 84-87, near great, 4 points is for 88-89 (which is ****), a solid nominee, 5 points is for 90-91, a very solid nominee, 6 points is for 92-93, a weak winner, a 7 points is for 94-95, a worthwhile winner, 8 points is 96-97, the kind of winner you can’t complain about even if it’s not your #1 choice and 9 points is for 98-99, the very best of all-time.  The above list are my 9 point films for Sound through 2011, listed chronologically.

The Writers

Ben Hecht

Though Hecht would eventually direct some films, he was primarily a writer and the first major writer to come to Hollywood and transition into this new system (he was already well-known as a playwright, namely for The Front Page and he had been a reporter in Chicago).  While both of his Oscars were for Original Story, he was actually a better writer when it came to adapting.
Key Films:  Wuthering Heights, Scarface, Design for Living

Robert Riskin

Frank Capra’s writer all through the thirties and one of the top person when it comes to points in that decade, whether it be Nighthawk Points or the Oscars (where he won one and earned three other nominations, all with Capra, all for adapted scripts).
Key Films:  Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, It Happened One Night, You Can’t Take It With You

John Huston

The only writer with a lot of mentions on my own list to not have an original Screenplay on the list.  He was the consummate adaptor, mostly for male oriented material with tough guys in hard situations.  He’s 4th All-time in Oscar Points and in the Top 10 for the WGA and just outside the Top 10 at the Nighthhawks.
Key Films:  The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, The Asphalt Jungle

Billy Wilder

The writer who, more than any other, has the best balance between Original and Adapted and the relatively rare writer (ten all-time) to win Oscars in both.
Key Films:  Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sabrina, Stalag 17

Akira Kurosawa

Though his Samurai films were mostly Original, his other great work was mostly Adapted and the four films listed here are just the tip of the iceberg.  To their own shame, the Oscars never nominated him for writing but he’s in 4th place at the Nighthawks.
Key Films:  Rashomon, Ran, High and Low, Throne of Blood

Stanley Kubrick

He never won an Oscar (in five nominations) and the Globes somehow never even nominated him for writing but he did win a WGA among his five nominations there and at the Nighthawks he wins three Adapted awards.
Key Films:  Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Paths of Glory, The Shining

Ernest Lehman

Another pure writer (he produced as well but never directed), Lehman earned four Oscar noms but never won.  However, he’s third all-time in WGA points where he won a whopping five awards.
Key Films:  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, West Side Story

William Goldman

Another of the rare breed to win Oscars for both Original (Butch Cassidy) and Adapted (All the President’s Men).  Also, he’s well known for writing multiple great books about the process of being a screenwriter in Hollywood (if you’ve never read Adventures in the Screen Trade or Which Lie Did I Tell you need to – they are among the very best film books available).
Key Films:  The Princess Bride, All the President’s Men, Misery

The Academy Awards

Summary:

There is much to be read here and a bit to be read here as well.  The former includes some tidbits about the history of the category, how it has dominated among the major Oscar films of all-time as well as some bits about the long history of great writers from other mediums who managed to earn an Oscar nomination but not win the award itself.  I failed to mention Tony Kushner in that original bit and since then Nick Hornby also earned a nomination without winning.

Directors:

William Wyler’s films have the most nominations (10, including two wins) but John Huston is the most dominant since he earned seven nominations for writing his own films.  Fred Zinnemann is the only director whose films won three Oscars (with three different writers) while Coppola, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Alexander Payne and George Seaton are the only writer-directors to win multiple Adapted Screenplay Oscars.

Franchises:

Of course this is the category where franchises would be eligible but most people don’t think highly of the writing in franchises, so nominations haven’t been that prevalent.  That being said, they are more common than perhaps you might think, beginning in 1936 with a nomination for After the Thin Man.  After that, it was a long wait until The Godfather Part II came along.  The next one to get a nomination also won (Return of the King).  Since then there has also been Before Sunset and Toy Story 3.

Genres:

Adapted is really heavy in Drama, far more so than Original Screenplay is.  It accounts for a whopping 57% of the nominations and an astounding 65.48% of the wins.  It has won 55 times, with Comedy (10) and Crime (6) the only other genres with more than three wins.  Comedy (70 noms to Drama’s 231) is the only other genre with more than 20 noms.  Adventure and Sci-Fi have never won the Oscar and there are six genres that have only won once.

Best Picture:

Thirty nine films have won Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay, far more than Original Screenplay, and another 15 Picture winners were nominated for Adapted Screenplay.  Every Picture winner from 37-47 and 13 of the 15 from 55-69 were Adapted Screenplay nominees or winners.  It took until 1976-78 for three straight Picture winners not to earn a nomination here and there have been only two other such streaks (97-99, 09-11).  33 films have won Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay compared to 11 doing that with Original though Going My Way, because of the screenplay intricacies, is counted on both lists.  It took until 2009-10 for Original to do that in back-to-back years while Adapted did it five straight from 42-46.  Only eight Originals have won Picture, Director and a lead acting Oscar while 19 Adapted have done it.  In total, 241 films have been nominated for Picture and Adapted Screenplay, well over 50% of the total nominees as opposed to just barely more than a quarter of the Original Screenplay nominees.  Until 1996, The Bad and the Beautiful was the only Adapted winner without a Picture nomination and there still have only been three (Sling Blade and Gods and Monsters are the others).  From 1937 to 1942 every Adapted nominee earned a Picture nomination.  Until the late nineties it was rare to have a year with just one Picture nominee among the Adapted nominees (there has never been a year with zero) and in 1964 and 2010 they all were nominated.

Foreign Films:

This is one place where Original is much better.  It took until 1946 for Adapted to have a Foreign nominee (by which point Original already had a Foreign winner) and Open City only counts because of the way the categories were structured (today it would be Original).  By 1969, at which point Original had a several year streak going of at least one Foreign nominee a year, Adapted was only reaching its fourth nomination.  But the seventies were much stronger (nine nominations including two each in 75 and 76) and through 2011, there have been 21 Foreign nominees though there still hasn’t been a Foreign winner.

Single Nominations:

Unlike Original where it happened for years, no Adapted winner has won without at least another nomination.  Until 1996, no Adapted film won without at least two other nominations.  A whopping 36% of the Original Screenplay nominees received no other nominations as compared to the less than 10% for Adapted.  Original has never gone more than two years without a single nominee while Adapted once went six (37-42) and only had one from 1932-42.

Other Categories:

Picture, of course, is a huge match-up, with over half the films nominated for both.  Director also appears among more than half the films and all the acting categories match up far more than for Original.  Even Visual Effects crosses over (Forrest Gump and Return of the King won both).  No film has yet won Adapted and Sound Editing.  There has been little crossover with Animated Film (two Adapted nominees, both won Animated – Shrek and Toy Story 3) and with Foreign Film (three Adapted nominees have won Foreign but obviously nothing has won both).

Points:

Because the two screenwriting categories are not only fluid but also overlap depending on how the script is categorized, I keep just one point spreadsheet for both writing categories.  So here are the points for all the writing categories at the Oscars.

Top Oscar Points by Decade:

• 20s:  Joseph Farnham  –  160
• 30s:  Robert Riskin  /  Frances Marion  –  200
• 40s:  Billy Wilder  –  240
• 50s:  Michael Wilson  –  240
• 60s:  Robert Bolt  –  200
• 70s:  Francis Ford Coppola  –  320
• 80s:  Woody Allen  –  240
• 90s:  Woody Allen  –  200
• 00s:  Ethan and Joel Coen  –  160

note:  Farnham, Marion, Wilson, Bolt and Coppola didn’t receive any points outside of those decades.

Top 10 Oscar Points:

1. Woody Allen  –  720
2. Billy Wilder  –  600
3. Charles Brackett  –  400
4. John Huston  –  360
5. Ben Hecht  –  320
6. Federico Fellini  –  320
7. Francis Ford Coppola  –  320
8. Ethan and Joel Coen  –  280
9. Joseph L. Mankiewicz  /  Carl Foreman  –  280
10. Paddy Chayefsky  /  Robert Benton  /  Oliver Stone  –  280

Top 5 Oscar Winners:

1. Casablanca
2. The Godfather
3. L.A. Confidential
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
5. All About Eve

Worst 5 Oscar Winners:

1. Sling Blade
2. Cimarron
3. Gigi
4. Out of Africa
5. Driving Miss Daisy

Worst 5 Oscar Nominees:

1. Love Story
2. Airport
3. Sling Blade
4. Fatal Attraction
5. Peyton Place

Top 5 Oscar Years:

1. 1993  (Schindler’s List, Age of Innocence, In the Name of the Father, Remains of the Day, Shadowlands)
2. 1951  (A Place in the Sun, A Streetcar Named Desire, Detective Story, African Queen, La Ronde)
3. 2005  (Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Constant Gardener, History of Violence, Capote)
4. 2002  (Pianist, Hours, Adaptation, About a Boy, Chicago)
5. 2011  (Descendants, Hugo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Ides of March, Moneyball)

Top 5 Oscars Years by Oscar Score:

1. 1993  –  100  (Schindler’s List, Age of Innocence, In the Name of the Father, Remains of the Day, Shadowlands)
2. 1951  –  97.4  (A Place in the Sun, A Streetcar Named Desire, Detective Story, African Queen, La Ronde)
3. 2005  –  97.3  (Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Constant Gardener, History of Violence, Capote)
4. 2011  –  97.1 (Descendants, Hugo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Ides of March, Moneyball)
5. 1982  –  96.8 (Missing, Sophie’s Choice, Verdict, Das Boot, Victor/Victoria)

note:  The difference between this list and the previous one is that the first one is a flat total based on my 9 point scale.  In this one, it’s comparing my top five films to the ones the Oscars actually nominated.  So, in the first one, it’s how good are the nominees.  In this one it’s how good are the nominees compared to what else was eligible.

Worst 5 Oscar Years:

1. 1929  (The Patriot, In Old Arizona, Valiant, Leatherneck, Our Dancing Daughters, Wonder of Women)
2. 1931  (Cimarron, Criminal Code, Little Caesar, Skippy, Holiday)
3. 1942  (Mrs Miniver, Random Harvest, Pride of the Yankees, 49th Parallel, Talk of the Town)
4. 1930  (Big House, All Quiet on the Western Front, Disraeli, Divorcee, Street of Chance)
5. 1956  (Around the World in 80 Days, Baby Doll, Lust for Life, Giant, Friendly Persuasion)

note:  1929 technically shouldn’t go there since I’ve only seen four of the six nominees (The Patriot and Wonder of Women are lost) but none of them earn any points, and it’s the only year with a flat zero for a score.
note:  The Worst 5 Years by Oscar Score are the same five.

Top 5 Films to win the Oscar (based on quality of film not writing):

1. The Godfather
2. Casablanca
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
4. The Bridge on the River Kwai
5. Schindler’s List

Worst 5 Films to win the Oscar  (based on quality of film not writing):

1. Sling Blade
2. Cimarron
3. Gigi
4. Out of Africa
5. On Golden Pond

Worst 5 Films to earn an Oscar nomination (based on quality of film not writing):

1. Fatal Attraction
2. I Want to Live
3. Love Story
4. Airport
5. Sling Blade

Years in Which the Worst of the Nominees Won the Oscar:

• 1931:  Cimarron over Little Caesar, Criminal Code, Holiday, Skippy
• 1932:  Bad Girl over Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Arrowsmith
• 1936:  Story of Louis Pasteur over Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Dodsworth, My Man Godfrey, After the Thin Man
• 1939:  Gone with the Wind over Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Goodbye Mr Chips, Ninotchka
• 1958:  Gigi over Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Separate Tables, Horse’s Mouth, I Want to Live
• 1961:  Judgment at Nuremberg over West Side Story, Hustler, Guns of Navarone, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
• 1981:  On Golden Pond over French Lieutenant’s Woman, Ragtime, Pennies from Heaven, Prince of the City
• 1989:  Driving Miss Daisy over Field of Dreams, Born on the Fourth of July, My Left Foot, Enemies a Love Story
• 1994:  Forrest Gump over Shawshank Redemption, Quiz, Show, Nobody’s Fool, Madness of King George
• 1996:  Sling Blade over Trainspotting, English Patient, Crucible, Hamlet
• 2001:  A Beautiful Mind over Fellowship of the Ring, In the Bedroom, Ghost World, Shrek

Oscar Scores By Decade:

• 1930’s:  48.6
• 1940’s:  67.0
• 1950’s:  58.7
• 1960’s:  67.7
• 1970’s:  70.9
• 1980’s:  78.3
• 1990’s:  78.6
• 2000’s:  79.3
• 2010’s:  92.9
• All-Time:  70.1

Golden Globes

Summary:

The Globes began their Best Screenplay Award in 1947, simply giving an award to Miracle on 34th Street.  They were then inconsistent, giving awards in 1948, 51, 53 and 54 but having a slate of two nominees in 1949 and three each in 1950 and 1952.  The first three to win the award were all Original but the next five were all Adapted.  Then the Globes dropped the category just as they were re-opening their other categories to full slates of nominees again.  It wouldn’t be revived until 1965 at which point it would become regular (5 nominees with a handful of exceptions with six nominees).

Many genres have won at least once (Kids, Suspense, Musical, War and Western have won just once).  Though a number of films with 6 nominations have failed to earn Screenplay noms (two of which came during the period where the category didn’t exist), no film has earned 7 or more Globe noms without a Screenplay nom.  A Star is Born (1976) is the only film to win 5 Globes without a Screenplay win (or even a nom).  The only Foreign nominee is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Given that the Globes have twice as many Picture nominees and half as many Screenplay nominees as the Oscars, it’s not surprising that the only films to win Screenplay without another nomination were all in the era where there were no nominees in categories other than the winners.  It’s also been fairly rare for films to earn a Screenplay nom with no other noms with just 16 films over the years and only 11 since the category began with a full slate of nominees in 1965.

Winners often win something else; just 10 of the 47 winners since the award began again have failed to win another Globe.  Most of them win Picture, with 29 films winning both awards though only four of those won Picture – Comedy and until 1998 the only film to win both was The Goodbye Girl, which is ironic, since it lost both to Annie Hall at the Oscars.  It is perhaps notable that of the four films to win Screenplay and Picture – Comedy, three were original (Sideways wasn’t) while in Drama, of the 25 films to win both, only three were original (Love Story, Chinatown, American Beauty).  Since 1965, The Hospital is the only film to win Screenplay without a Picture nom (Gandhi was a “Foreign Film” and it won Foreign Film).

There will be a lot more trivia about this category at the Globes in the forthcoming Globes post.

Top 10 Globes Points:

1. Woody Allen  –  320
2. Stirling Silliphant  –  240
3. Robert Bolt  –  240
4. Oliver Stone  –  240
5. Aaron Sorkin  –  240
6. Francis Ford Coppola  –  200
7. Alexander Payne  –  200
8. 12 writers  –  160

note:  The following list makes distinctions between original and adapted but the Globes themselves have never done so.  This is because I wrote no piece on the Globes for the Original Screenplay post.

• Best Winner (Adapted):  The Godfather
• Best Winner (Original):  Chinatown
• Worst Winner (Adapted):  The Ninth Configuration
• Worst Winner (Original):  Love Story
• Best Year for Nominees:  2004  (Sideways, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Aviator, Closer, Finding Neverland)
• Weakest Year for Nominees:  1965  (Doctor Zhivago, Collector, Slender Thread, Agony and the Ecstasy, Patch of Blue)
• Lowest Critical Acclaim for a Globe Winner (Adapted):  Charly
• Lowest Critical Acclaim for a Globe Winner (Original):  The People vs. Larry Flynt
• Highest Critical Acclaim for a Globe Nominee (Adapted):  L.A. Confidential  **
• Highest Critical Acclaim for a Globe Nominee (Original):  The Piano
• Lowest Critical Acclaim for a Globe nominee (Adapted):  Frenzy
• Lowest Critical Acclaim for a Globe nominee (Original):  Mulholland Drive
• Highest Critical Acclaim for a Globe snub (Adapted):  A Room with a View
• Highest Critical Acclaim for a Globe snub (Original):  Melvin and Howard
• Best Screenplay for a Globe snub (Adapted):  The Princess Bride
• Best Screenplay for a Globe snub (Original):  Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Best Globe Nominee Not Nominated by Any Other Group (Adapted):  A Few Good Men
• Best Globe Nominee Not Nominated by Any Other Group (Original):  House of Games

note:  The reason there is no “Worst Nominee” listed for either Adapted or Original is because the worst nominee won the Globe.  What fucking morons voted for those scripts?
note:  L.A. Confidential had a 20% higher Consensus score than any other Adapted film that failed to win the Globe.

The BAFTA Awards

Summary:

In some ways, possibly even more of a nightmare than the Oscars.  The award began as Best British Screenplay in 1954 and continued that way until 1967 (I only count it towards the Consensus in that stretch if it’s for a film that already has other nominations).  It is interesting to note that in that stretch they gave the award to four films that won Best Picture at the Oscars including one (Lawrence of Arabia) that didn’t win the Oscar (the other three were Bridge on the River Kwai, Tom Jones, A Man for all Seasons).  Then, in 1968, the year that they changed their awards system (dropping the British categories), they changed it to just Screenplay with no regard for whether it was original or adapted (an odd choice at the same time the WGA was finally making that split).  From 1968 to 1982, it was a four nominee, one award category and interesting to note that in that 15 year stretch, with no British requirement, only two Oscar winners for Best Picture won (Midnight Cowboy, Annie Hall).  Then in 1983, it finally broke into original and adapted as separate categories though it would continue to have four nominees (with some exceptions) until 1999.  Like with Original Screenplay, it wouldn’t agree much with the Oscars before it expanded to five Oscar nominees with only three films winning both (Out of Africa, Dangerous Liaisons, Schindler’s List).  Since 2000, six films have won both awards and only Last King of Scotland won the BAFTA without an Oscar nom.

For the following categories, I will only discuss both the Screenplay category as it existed from 1968 to 1982 (ignoring the British Screenply category) and the Adapted Screenplay category from 1982 forward.

Genres:

Action, Adventure, Fantasy and Kids never earned Screenplay nominations and 14 of the 17 winners were either Comedy of Drama (7 each).

In Adapted, Adventure is the only category without a nomination.  Drama has dominated the winners (15 of 29) but a number of genres have squeaked out one win (Fantasy, Horror, Kids, Musical, Mystery, War).  Drama accounts for over half of the nominations.

Best Picture:

The only film to win Picture without a Screenplay nomination during those 15 years was Day for Night and seven films won both.  Of the 60 Screenplay nominees in the era, 42 were nominated for Picture.

In Adapted, nine films have won both and another seven films have won Picture with an Adapted Screenplay nomination.  Just under half of the Screenplay nominees have earned Picture noms (65 for 133).  A whopping 11 films have won Adapted Screenplay without a Picture nomination in less than 30 years while it’s only happened 3 times in over 80 years at the Oscars.

Single Nominees:

During the 15 years of the single category only two films managed to earn a nomination without any other nominations: Blazing Saddles and Airplane.

It was fairly common in the early years of Adapted Screenplay to have a nominee with no other nominations (seven in the first seven years) but much more rare since then (six in 22 years).

Foreign Films:

Three Foreign Films earned Screenplay noms with Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie winning the award.  Twelve films have earned Adapted noms though only Jean de Florette and Diving Bell and the Butterfly have won the award.

Other Categories:

Screenplay had large crossovers with both Picture and Director (over half of the Screenplay nominees were nominated for each).  Since Adapted Screenplay came about every category has crossed over with it at least once (even Song thanks to Tootsie which was bizarrely nominated for Adapted Screenplay).  Toy Story 3 is the only Animated Film crossover and it lost Screenplay.  Surprisingly, the only two Foreign Films to win Adapted Screenplay lost Foreign Film.

Top 10 BAFTA Points:

1. Woody Allen  –  680
2. Jean-Claude Carriere  –  240
3. Anthony Minghella  –  240
4. Charlie Kaufman  –  240
5. Ethan and Joel Coen  –  240
6. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala  –  200
7. Ronald Harwood  –  200
8. Steven Zaillian  –  200
9. 11 writers  –  160

Top 3 BAFTA Winners (Screenplay: 1968-1982)

1. Chinatown
2. Annie Hall
3. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Top 5 BAFTA Winners:

1. GoodFellas
2. Trainspotting
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
4. Schindler’s List
5. Brokeback Mountain

Worst 3 BAFTA Winners  (Screenplay: 1968-1982)

1. Bugsy Malone
2. Julia
3. Gregory’s Girl

Worst 5 BAFTA Winners:

1. Out of Africa
2. Heat and Dust
3. The Last King of Scotland
4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5. Romeo + Juliet

Worst 5 BAFTA Nominees  (Screenplay: 1968-1982)

1. Nashville
2. Bugsy Malone
3. On Golden Pond
4. Yanks
5. A Wedding

Worst 5 BAFTA Nominees:

1. Scent of a Woman
2. The Chorus
3. Out of Africa
4. The Help
5. The Devil Wears Prada

Top 3 BAFTA Years  (Screenplay: 1968-1982)

1. 1980  (Being There, Airplane, Elephant Man, Kramer vs Kramer)
2. 1972  (Hospital, Last Picture Show, Clockwork Orange, Cabaret)
3. 1974  (Chinatown, Last Detail, Blazing Saddles, Conversation, Lacombe Lucien)

Top 3 BAFTA Years  (4 Nominees):

1. 1997  (Romeo + Juliet, L.A. Confidential, Ice Storm, Wings of the Dove)
2. 1985  (Prizzi’s Honor, Amadeus, Passage to India, Shooting Party)
3. 1991  (Commitments, Silence of the Lambs, Dances with Wolves, Cyrano de Bergerac)

Top 3 BAFTA Years  (5 Nominees):

1. 2002  (Adaptation, Hours, Pianist, About a Boy, Catch Me if You Can)
2. 2005  (Brokeback Mountain, Constant Gardener, Pride and Prejudice, History of Violence, Capote)
3. 2000  (Traffic, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Wonder Boys, High Fidelity, Chocolat)

Years in Which the Worst of the Nominees Won the BAFTA:

• 1976:  Bugsy Malone over All the President’s Men, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Sunshine Boys
• 1981:  Gregory’s Girl over Atlantic City, French Lieutenant’s Woman, Chariots of Fire
• 1983:  Heat and Dust over Betrayal, Educating Rita, Tootsie
• 1985:  Out of Africa over Ran, Room with a View, Color Purple, Children of a Lesser God
• 1997:  Romeo + Juliet over L.A. Confidential, Ice Storm, Wings of the Dove

The Broadcast Film Critics Awards  (Critics Choice)

Summary:

The Screenplay award came into existence with the first BFCA Awards in 1995.  However, for the first several years it was just an award (with no nominees) and it was a single award, regardless of the source.  In 1997, they started splitting the award into Adapted and Original but it was still just one winner each.  Then in 2001 they got strange, adding nominees, but combining it back into just one award.  It started with three nominees, went to four the next year (perhaps because of the double winner for Charlie Kauffman’s two scripts) then to five, and moved back and forth between five and six until 2008.  Then in 2009 they finally split into two separate award nominations although the number of nominees continued to be inconsistent.

As with other groups, the point leaders will be listed under Adapted Screenplay, especially since the history of this award has been so very strange.

Top 5 BFCA Points:

1. Aaron Sorkin  –  200
2. Ethan Coen  –  160
3. Joel Coen  –  160
4. Alexander Payne  –  160
5. 7 writers  –  120

• Best Winner (Combined):  The English Patient
• Best Winner (Adapted):  L.A. Confidential
• Worst Winner (Adapted):  The Green Mile
• Worst Nominee:  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
• Best Year for Nominees:  2010 (Adapted)  (Social Network, Winter’s Bone, True Grit, Toy Story 3, Town, 127 Hours)
• Weakest Year for Nominees:  2011 (Adapted)  (Moneyball, Hugo, Descendants, Help, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
• Lowest Critical Acclaim for a BFCA Winner:  Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
• Highest Critical Acclaim for a BFCA Nominee:  No Country for Old Men
• Lowest Critical Acclaim for a BFCA nominee:  A Single Man  /  Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Highest Critical Acclaim for a BFCA snub:  Out of Sight
• Best Screenplay for a BFCA snub:  Trainspotting
• Best BFCA Nominee Not Nominated by Any Other Group:  A Single Man

Writers Guild of America (WGA)

Summary:

This should be the pre-eminent award for writers and it’s not and the writers have no one but themselves to blame.  First, when they began in 1948, they had five different categories, covering four genres and a “Best Written Film Concerning Problems in the American Scene”, which was mostly filled with scripts nominated in another category as well.  Second, they seemed to have no limit on nominations in that first year so there were 50 total nominations that first year.  Third, they didn’t have rules about where things belong so Treasure of the Sierra Madre won the Western category and lost in the Drama category.  For the first three years, things continued the same, though, at least by 1950, they had the nominees under control with a limit for five in most categories.  In 1951, Westerns were dropped for a new “Low-Budget” film category which was thankfully dropped in 1952 along with the “Problem” category.  So, by 1952 they were at least down to three categories with five nominees in each.  But Musical (a category often filled with subpar nominees as is detailed in my Adapted Screenplay post laments from 1952 to 1968 though at least after 1964 it never again had five nominees).

By 1967, long after the Academy had mostly fixed their problems, the WGA finally addressed theirs and made things worse.  They added an Original category but didn’t drop anything else, so Bonnie and Clyde became the first film since 1949 to win two WGA awards.  Finally in 1969, they actually got quite clever and broke things up into Adapted and Original, divided by Comedy and Drama.  That works for me, although I sometimes question their classifications (Butch Cassidy is a Drama?  Catch-22 is a Drama?  Patton, explicitly based on a book, is Original?  Terms of Endearment is a Comedy?)  Also, unlike the Globes, they never explicitly named their category Comedy / Musical which makes it stupid to list Cabaret which is a Musical but is definitely not a Comedy.  The other problem, of course, which I am well aware of from my own Nighthawk Awards, is that there are not a plethora of awards-worthy Adapted Comedies.  By 1983, the last year of that category division, it had been five years since Adapted Comedy had the same number of nominees as Adapted Drama (not helped by considering a film like World According to Garp as a Drama).

So in 1984, the WGA made one final adjustment and ended up with categories just like the Oscars and the BAFTAs (though the BAFTAs had only been doing it for a year at that point): Adapted and Original.  Of course, the problems weren’t done and for this, I will break my “2011” curtain for a moment, and act like it’s 2020, which it is.  The first problem is that the WGA doesn’t have the same considerations about what makes an adapted screenplay as the Academy does.  That’s how The Last Emperor is nominated as Original at the WGA but wins Adapted at the Oscars or Moonlight actually wins the WGA in Original but Adapted at the Oscars.  In 2005, they went the opposite way, considering Syriana Adapted while the Academy decided it was Original.  The second thing is that the WGA is first and foremost a union.  Unlike the other guilds who give the awards based on what they think is the best work of the year, the WGA refuses to acknowledge scripts that are written by people who aren’t a guild member (any Tarantino script, which is why Pulp Fiction didn’t technically sweep all the awards) or don’t hold to the guild standards (which is why none of the Pixar films have ever been nominated in spite of their numerous Oscar nominations).  The WGA, I’m sure, thinks this makes them look strong and united while I think it makes them look insular, weak and petty.  That’s why there was a five year stretch where three films (King’s Speech, Artist, Birdman) won the PGA and DGA and weren’t WGA nominated (two of them going on to win the Screenplay Oscar).  Every year we have to decide going into the Oscar nominations which films might have taken a hit by being passed over by the WGA and which films simply weren’t eligible for their privileged award.

Top 10 WGA Points:

1. Woody Allen  –  1000
2. Billy Wilder  –  800
3. Ernest Lehman  –  560
4. I.A.L. Diamond  –  480
5. Neil Simon  –  480
6. Frances Goodrich  –  440
7. Albert Hackett  –  440
8. Robert Benton  –  440
9. John Huston  –  400
10. 6 writers  –  360

• Best Winner (Adapted):  Schindler’s List
• Best Winner (Adapted Comedy):  M*A*S*H
• Best Winner (Adapted Drama):  The Godfather
• Best Winner (Comedy):  Dr. Strangelove
• Best Winner (Drama):  Sunset Blvd.
• Best Winner (Musical):  Singin’ in the Rain
• Best Winner (Problems in American Scene):  All the King’s Men
• Best Winner (Western):  Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• Worst Winner (Adapted):  Driving Miss Daisy
• Worst Winner (Adapted Comedy):  Kotch
• Worst Winner (Adapted Drama):  On Golden Pond
• Worst Winner (Comedy):  Father’s Little Dividend
• Worst Winner (Drama):  Friendly Persuasion
• Worst Winner (Musical):  Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
• Lowest Critical Acclaim for a WGA Winner:  Sitting Pretty
• Highest Critical Acclaim for a WGA Nominee:  Adaptation
• Lowest Critical Acclaim for a WGA nominee:  14 films in 1948
• Highest Critical Acclaim for a WGA snub:  A Man for All Seasons
• Best Screenplay for a WGA snub:  Touch of Evil
• Best WGA Nominee Not Nominated by Any Other Group:  The Princess Bride

The Critics Awards

Summary:

The first critics group to present a Screenplay award was the NBR in 1948.  They gave it for three years then put it away for almost 50.  It took almost a decade before the NYFC revived the idea in 1959.  Like the NBR, they didn’t bother to distinguish between an original or an adapted script; the NBR gave its first two awards to adapted and then to an original while the NYFC went with an adapted the first year and an original the next year.  Other awards groups as they would follow will do the same with the NSFC starting in 1967, the LAFC in their first year of 1975 and the BSFC in their first year of 1980.  The CFC would start with a single award in 1990.  The NBR revived their dormant award in 1998 and then expanded it in 2003 to encompass separate original and adapted awards with the CFC following suit in 2006.

The first two NBR winners and the first NYFC winner were all adapted (Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Fallen Idol, Anatomy of a Murder).  But the various critics awards for Best Screenplay soon became the playground for Original scripts as only 11 Adapted scripts had managed to win an award from 1959 to 1988 before things really began to finally open up (see the next section).

Multiple Wins:

For a long time (over 20 years, including 21 films), the only films to win multiple critics awards were Original.  Drugstore Cowboy finally broke that run in 1989, becoming the first Adapted script to win multiple awards (it won three).  It was an ironic choice to break that barrier since it wouldn’t win any other awards or even earn any other nominations from the awards groups.  It was then followed two years later with three wins for Naked Lunch which did the exact same thing.  L.A. Confidential would become the first to win five awards (all but the NBR which wouldn’t revive the category until the following year).  Sideways would then become the first (and only) film to win all six Screenplay awards.

Multiple Films:

It’s rare for an award to go to more than one film.  There have been a couple of ties but the only case of a writer winning an award for multiple films was 2002 when the NBR (in their last year before the split awards) gave it to Charlie Kauffman for Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Human Nature.

Foreign Films:

Story of Adele H is the only Adapted Foreign Film to ever win a Screenplay award.

Single Awards:

No Adapted Screenplay has ever won multiple critics awards without winning at least one other critics award.  Only three have even won a single award without winning any other awards (Cider House Rules, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, In the Loop).

Other Awards:

If you can do math, you know that 95 films have won Screenplay and additional critics awards.  Of those, 48 won only one Screenplay award but those single winners include some of the biggest films ever at critics awards including (in points order) GoodFellas, Schindler’s List, Hurt Locker, Silence of the Lambs and Terms of Endearment.  Those five films won a combined five writing awards but 23 Picture awards, 19 Director awards and 28 acting awards.  The only other comparable group are those that won five or more Screenplay awards because those four films (listed above) won a combined 21 writing awards but also 20 Picture awards, 19 Director awards and 16 acting awards.  Overall, 52 films have won Screenplay and Picture, the biggest overlap (followed closely by Director with 49).  Aside from Squid and the Whale (exempted above), the only films with four Screenplay wins without a Picture win are Adaptation and The Queen.  Screenplay awards have overlapped with every critics award (even Art Direction though just once – Inception).

Best by Group

• NYFC:  L.A. Confidential, 1997
• LAFC:  L.A. Confidential, 1997
• NSFC:  L.A. Confidential, 1997
• BSFC:  L.A. Confidential, 1997
• CFC:  L.A. Confidential, 1997
• NBR:  Sideways, 2004

Worst by Group

• NYFC:  Naked Lunch, 1991
• LAFC:  About Schmidt, 2002
• NSFC:  Naked Lunch, 1991
• BSFC:  Naked Lunch, 1991
• CFC:  Up in the Air, 2009
• NBR:  Cold Mountain, 2003

10 Best Screenplays that Didn’t Win any Critics Awards (post-1966):

1. The Princess Bride
2. The Godfather
3. Trainspotting
4. All the President’s Men
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
6. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
7. Brokeback Mountain
8. Chimes at Midnight
9. M*A*S*H
10. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

5 Most Acclaimed Post-1966 Screenplays to not Win a Critics Award (based on Consensus Awards percentage):

1. Missing
2. A Beautiful Mind
3. Julia
4. A Room with a View
5. Brokeback Mountain

Least Acclaimed Performances to Win the Critics by Group

• NYFC:  Secret Lives of Dentists, 2003
• LAFC:  About Schmidt, 2002
• NSFC:  The Pianist, 2002
• BSFC:  Short Cuts, 1993
• CFC:  GoodFellas, 1990
• NBR:  All the Pretty Horses, 2000

Most Critically Acclaimed Screenplay Snubbed by a Critics Group:

• NYFC:  Social Network, 2010
• LAFC:  No Country for Old Men, 2007
• NSFC:  Sense and Sensibility, 1995
• BSFC:  No Country for Old Men, 2007
• CFC:  Sense and Sensibility, 1995
• NBR:  A Beautiful Mind, 2001

Critical Oddities:

note:  These are the scripts that won multiple Critics Awards but failed to earn nominations from any of the awards groups.

• Drugstore Cowboy, 1989
  • NYFC, LAFC, NSFC
• Naked Lunch, 1991
  • NYFC, NSFC, BSFC

The Nighthawk Awards

note:  Because my awards go, retroactively, all the way back through 1912, there are a lot more nominees and winners than in the other awards.  But I don’t always have a full slate of nominees and some years I don’t have any nominees.

Directors:

Five directors have had eight films nominated, three of them writer-directors (Huston, Kubrick, Wilder) and two of them not writers (Hitchcock, Wyler).  David Lean’s films have the most wins (4) but he only wrote one of them (Great Expectations).  Kubrick, Welles and Wilder won three awards each while John Ford and Ang Lee were non-writing directors whose films won three each.

Franchises:

Fanny (the 1932 film though eligible in 1948) is the first sequel to earn a nomination.  After that it’s a bit of a wait until The World of Apu.  The Godfather Part II is the first sequel to win the Nighthawk.  After that there are 10 more that earn nominations through 2011 including two Star Trek films and three Harry Potter films though only Return of the King wins the Nighthawk.

Genres:

With 41 wins and 186 nominations, Drama is the biggest genre but that’s to be expected, earning between 40 and 50% of both marks.  Comedy is next in the high teen percentages for both noms and wins.  No other genre has more than 25 noms (just under 6%) or less than 6 (1.41%).  Crime is the only other genre with more than 6% of the wins (8 wins for 9.41%) while Adventure and Sci-Fi have never won.

Best Picture:

Of the 85 Picture winners just over half of them win Adapted Screenplay (47).  Another four Picture winners earn Adapted noms.  Five films do manage to win Adapted Screenplay without a Picture nom, all of them coming in at #6 for the year (That Obscure Object of Desire, Being There, French Lieutenant’s Woman, Hours, Education).  In all, almost exactly half of the Adapted Screenplay nominees are nominated for Picture.

Foreign Film:

Eight Foreign Films win the award, starting in 1929 (Nosferatu) and most recently in 2000 (Crouching Tiger).  That includes Bergman twice and Kurosawa twice.  In total, 52 Foreign films earn nominations with Kurosawa (5 noms) and Truffaut (4 noms) leading the way.

Single Nominations:

Sixteen films manage to earn an Adapted Screenplay nom with no other Nighthawk noms with increased frequency lately (four times from 2001 to 2011 after only four times from 1974 to 2000).

Other Categories:

Picture has the biggest overlap (239 films) with Director not far behind (231) with Editing and Actor both over 200 while Actress is barely over half that.  Every category overlaps at least 10 times but no film has won both Adapted Screenplay and Animated Film (though ten films have won Animated Film and earned an Adapted Screenplay nom – the only film with an Adapted Screenplay nom without an Animated Film win is Toy Story 2).

Top 10 Nighthawk Points:

1. Ingmar Bergman  –  1040
2. Woody Allen  –  960
3. Billy Wilder  –  840
4. Akira Kurosawa  –  680
5. Stanley Kubrick  –  480
6. Charlie Chaplin  –  440
7. Joel and Ethan Coen  –  440
8. Federico Fellini  –  360
9. Preston Sturges  /  Dudley Nichols  /  Michael Powell  /  Emeric Pressburger  –  320
10. Ernest Lehman  /  Orson Welles  /  John Huston  /  Luis Buñuel  –  320

Top 10 Nighthawk Drama Points:

1. Ingmar Bergman  –  1160
2. Akira Kurosawa  –  1000
3. Billy Wilder  –  480
4. Micheal Powell  –  400
5. Emeric Pressburger  –  400
6. John Huston  –  400
7. Stanley Kubrick  –  400
8. Dudley Nichols  –  320
9. Orson Welles  –  320
10. Ethan and Joel Coen  /  Christopher Nolan  –  320

Top 10 Nighthawk Comedy Points:

1. Woody Allen  –  1160
2. Billy Wilder  –  760
3. Charlie Chaplin  –  520
4. Luis Buñuel  –  520
5. Preston Sturges  –  400
6. Cameron Crowe  –  400
7. I.A.L. Diamond  –  360
8. Ethan and Joel Coen  –  360
9. Federico Fellini  –  320
10. Mel Brooks  /  Terry Gilliam  /  Andrew Stanton  –  320

Top 10 Nighthawk Weighted Points:

1. Ingmar Bergman  –  1471
2. Woody Allen  –  1433
3. Billy Wilder  –  1330
4. Akira Kurosawa  –  1080
5. Ethan and Joel Coen  –  723
6. Stanley Kubrick  –  616
7. Luis Buñuel  –  580
8. Federico Fellini  –  529
9. John Huston  –  515
10. Charlie Chaplin  –  496

Top 10 Nighthawk Absolute Points:

1. Woody Allen  –  1670
2. Ingmar Bergman  –  1470
3. Akira Kurosawa  –  1160
4. Billy Wilder  –  1120
5. Ethan and Joel Coen  –  970
6. Stanley Kubrick  –  660
7. Pedro Almodovar  –  570
8. David Mamet  –  550
9. John Sayles  –  540
10. John Huston  –  530

Top Nighthawk Absolute Points by Decade:

• 20s:  Buster Keaton  –  230
• 30s:  Robert Riskin  –  210
• 40s:  Preston Sturges  –  460
• 50s:  Billy Wilder  –  470
• 60s:  Akira Kurosawa  –  650
• 70s:  Woody Allen  –  460
• 80s:  Woody Allen  –  580
• 90s:  Ethan and Joel Coen  –  360
• 00s:  Ethan and Joel Coen  –  400

Top 5 Films to win the Nighthawk (based on quality of film not writing):

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. Rashomon
3. The Seventh Seal
4. The Godfather
5. Touch of Evil

Weakest 5 Films to win the Nighthawk (based on quality of film not writing):

1. The Awful Truth
2. Dracula
3. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
4. That Obscure Object of Desire
5. An Education

Weakest 5 Films to earn a Nighthawk nomination  (based on quality of film not writing):

1. Animal Crackers
2. The Front Page
3. Anna Christie
4. Little Caesar
5. Oh God!

Top 5 6th Place Finishers at the Nighthawks:

1. Thirteen Days
2. Oliver Twist  (1951)
3. Pride and Prejudice  (2005)
4. The Quiet American
5. The Best Man

The Nighthawk Winners:

• 1925-26:  Greed
• 1927-28:  Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
• 1928-29:  Nosferatu
• 1929-30:  All Quiet on the Western Front  (Oscar)
• 1930-31:  Dracula
• 1931-32:  Scarface
• 1932-33:  I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
• 1934:  The Thin Man  (Oscar)
• 1935:  The Informer  (Oscar)
• 1936:  The Petrified Forest
• 1937:  The Awful Truth  (Oscar)
• 1938:  Bringing Up Baby
• 1939:  The Wizard of Oz
• 1940:  The Grapes of Wrath  (Oscar)
• 1941:  The Maltese Falcon  (Oscar)
• 1942:  The Magnificent Ambersons
• 1943:  Casablanca  (Oscar)
• 1944:  Double Indemnity  (Oscar)
• 1945:  The Lost Weekend  (Oscar)
• 1946:  The Best Years of Our Lives  (Oscar)
• 1947:  Great Expectations  (Oscar)
• 1948:  Treasure of the Sierra Madre  (Oscar, WGA)
• 1949:  The Bicycle Thieves  (Oscar)
• 1950:  All About Eve  (Oscar, WGA, Globe)
• 1951:  A Streetcar Named Desire  (Oscar, WGA)
• 1952:  Rashomon
• 1953:  From Here to Eternity  (Oscar, WGA)
• 1954:  Sabrina  (Oscar, WGA, Globe)
• 1955:  Mr. Roberts  (WGA)
• 1956:  The Killing
• 1957:  The Bridge on the River Kwai  (Oscar)
• 1958:  Touch of Evil
• 1959:  The Seventh Seal
• 1960:  The Virgin Spring
• 1961:  West Side Story  (Oscar, WGA)
• 1962:  Lawrence of Arabia  (Oscar)
• 1963:  Tom Jones  (Oscar)
• 1964:  Dr. Strangelove  (Oscar, WGA)
• 1965:  Doctor Zhivago  (Oscar, Globe)
• 1966:  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf  (Oscar, WGA, Globe)
• 1967:  The Graduate  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA)
• 1968:  The Lion in Winter  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA)
• 1969:  Chimes at Midnight
• 1970:  M*A*S*H  (Oscar, WGA, Globe)
• 1971:  A Clockwork Orange  (Oscar, WGA, BAFTA)
• 1972:  The Godfather  (Oscar, WGA, Globe)
• 1973:  The Exorcist  (Oscar, WGA, Globe)
• 1974:  The Godfather Part II  (Oscar, WGA, Globe)
• 1975:  Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• 1976:  All the President’s Men  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA)
• 1977:  That Obscure Object of Desire  (Oscar)
• 1978:  Midnight Express  (Oscar, WGA, Globe)
• 1979:  Being There  (WGA, Globe, BAFTA)
• 1980:  Breaker Morant  (Oscar)
• 1981:  The French Lieutenant’s Woman  (Oscar, Globe, BAFTA)
• 1982:  Sophie’s Choice  (Oscar, WGA)
• 1983:  Terms of Endearment  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, LAFC)
• 1984:  Amadeus  (Oscar, Globe, BAFTA, LAFC)
• 1985:  Ran  (BAFTA)
• 1986:  A Room with a View  (Oscar, WGA, BAFTA)
• 1987:  The Princess Bride  (WGA)
• 1988:  Dangerous Liaisons  (Oscar, WGA, BAFTA)
• 1989:  Glory  (WGA, Globe)
• 1990:  GoodFellas  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, CFC)
• 1991:  The Silence of the Lambs  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, CFC)
• 1992:  Howards End  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA)
• 1993:  Schindler’s List  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, CFC)
• 1994:  Ed Wod  (WGA)
• 1995:  Sense and Sensibility  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, BFCA, NYFC, LAFC, BSFC)
• 1996:  Trainspotting  (Oscar, WGA, BAFTA)
• 1997:  L.A. Confidential  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, BFCA, NYFC, LAFC, NSFC, BSFC, CFC)
• 1998:  Out of Sight  (Oscar, WGA, NSFC, BSFC)
• 1999:  The End of the Affair  (BAFTA)
• 2000:  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon  (Oscar, WGA, BAFTA)
• 2001:  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring  (Oscar, WGA, BAFTA)
• 2002:  The Hours  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA)
• 2003:  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King  (Oscar, WGA, BAFTA)
• 2004:  Sideways  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, BFCA, NYFC, LAFC, NSFC, BSFC, CFC, NBR)
• 2005:  Brokeback Mountain  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, BFCA)
• 2006:  The Departed  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, BFCA)
• 2007:  No Country for Old Men  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, BFCA, NYFC, CFC, NBR)
• 2008:  Slumdog Millionaire  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, BFCA, CFC, NBR)
• 2009:  An Education  (Oscar, BAFTA, BFCA)
• 2010:  The Social Network  (Oscar, WGA, Globe, BAFTA, BFCA, NYFC, LAFC, NSFC, BSFC, CFC)
• 2011:  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy  (Oscar, BAFTA)

Consensus Awards

Most Awards (not including the Nighthawk):

• Sideways  (11 wins)
• The Social Network  (10 wins)
• L.A. Confidential  (8 wins)

Consensus Chart

note:  The chart below I imported from Excel and I hope it isn’t too confusing.  It’s about as big as I could make to still have it fit.