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2009 Writers Guild Awards Nominees Announced

by Alex Billington
January 7, 2009

In addition to the American Society of Cinematographers, the Writers Guild of America has announced their nominees for the 2009 Writers Guild Awards today. The winners will be announced on Saturday, February 7th. There are three separate categories of nominees - original, adapted, and documentary. Last year's big winners were Juno and No Country for Old Men, both of which also took home an Oscar, which is why this is an important announcement. These nominees don't seem to be too far out of the ordinary and are a very strong indication of the probable Oscars nominations we'll be seeing in just a few weeks.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Burn After Reading - Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Milk - Written by Dustin Lance Black
Vicky Cristina Barcelona - Written by Woody Allen
The Visitor - Written by Tom McCarthy
The Wrestler - Written by Robert Siegel

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Screenplay by Eric Roth
The Dark Knight - Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan
Doubt - Screenplay by John Patrick Shanley
Frost/Nixon - Screenplay by Peter Morgan
Slumdog Millionaire - Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story - Written by Stefan Forbes & Noland Walker
Chicago 10 - Written by Brett Morgen
Fuel - Written by Johnny O'Hara
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson - Screenplay by Alex Gibney
Waltz with Bashir - Written by Ari Folman

Feature films eligible for a Writers Guild Award were released in 2008 and produced under the jurisdiction of Writers Guilds of America, East and West or affiliate guilds in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand. There were 255 films eligible for nomination in the categories of Original Screenplay (155) and Adapted Screenplay (100). Documentaries eligible for a Writers Guild Award featured an on-screen writing credit and were exhibited theatrically in Los Angeles or New York for one week.

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BahHumbug

Interesting group of choices. It's a shame that Wall-E isn't eligible but I'm surprised David Hare didn't get a nom for The Reader or Mike Leigh for Happy-Go-Lucky and the same goes for Revolutionary Road and Gran Torino but I actually think this group (The Visitor! The Wrestler! Burn! TDK!) is more deserving, it just hurts the Oscar chances for those other films in the Screenplay categories. I've only seen three of the documentary nominees but I was hoping to see Man On Wire get mentioned but I don't know enough about the making of the movie to know if it qualifies.
Will S.

Does Man on Wire count as a documentary? If so, I'm sorely disappointed it didn't get a nod.
BahHumbug

What else could it have been, even if it had a substantial amount of re-creation for a lot of the scenes.
Fuelbot

Burn After Reading was absolutely awful. And the Coen Brothers need to give that Oscar back for essentially taking No Country For Old Men word for word and calling it an adaptation.
scm1000

#4: Burn After Reading is frickin' amazing, and while I did notice how there were several word-for-word scenes from the book in No Country, it worked so perfectly on screen and there were still some important changes.
BahHumbug

I feel like Burn is something people either got or they didn't. I felt like the film catered waaaaay too much to a fan of the Coen Brothers schtick but hey, I'm a fan. I thought the film was such a well conceived joke within a joke, the Coens have yet to make a film I didn't like. Even the movies that everyone shits on by them, I seem to like.
Fuelbot

Burn After Reading is not frickin' amazing. It's a bunch of stupid people doing extremely stupid things, which I get is the joke, but was a film with some great performances I could've done without. And there weren't several word-for-word scenes.in No Country...it was more than half the book. Great editors, yes. Writers, no. It was extremely well directed and I admire them as directors, but as screenwriters they're a bit overrated. And the fact that they didn't even thank Cormac McCarthy when they won kinda pissed me off a bit.
BahHumbug

They thanked Cormac at a few other award ceremonies. I honestly like them both as writers and directors. In fact, I don't believe they've directed anything that they haven't written themselves.
Squiggly

My Picks: The Wrestler Doubt Waltz With Bashir I've not seen Fuel or Boogie man, tho, but unless they're mind-blowingly amazing, I think Bashir will take that one pretty easily. Gran Torino was not really that great a script. It's a good flick, but judging it for it's screenwriting... meh.
Dr. McPhearson

No "Rachel Getting Married?" No "Reader?" No "In Bruges?" And "Wall*E" wasn't even eligible? What the heck is going on here? I certainly hope the Oscar lists look different than this. Happy for "Dark Knight" and "Milk" though.