Oscar Winners Streaming Now: Best Screenplay
We discuss some of the best written movies in Oscar history in part two of our series
Happy Friday and welcome to part two of our Oscar Winners Streaming Now series! Last week we highlighted some of our favorite Oscar-winning performances. This week it’s all about three of the best written movies to ever receive an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. We cover very different eras in Hollywood by discussing what makes these stories so wonderfully crafted and incredibly influential.
Stay tuned for the final installment in our Oscar Winners series next week and thanks for subscribing, movie lovers!
Billy recommends…
Argo (streaming on HBO)
In classic Oscar fashion an actor/director did not win for the best movie in their career. Of course I’m talking about Ben Affleck. Argo is great but so is every one of his directed movies. He was once a Hollywood darling turned disaster. Then as we think he couldn’t possibly redeem his acting career he tricks us all by turning into a director. One of the best directors in the world. This time though, I want to talk about the screenwriting. Which surprisingly, Affleck did not get a credit for.
Chris Terrio is our attached screenwriter and the challenge presented to adapting this new story seems impossible to succeed at, but my goodness he does. He only had to adapt a story about a true conflict that involved creating a fake story to get the characters out of the real-life conflict. Are you tracking??? Argo follows the true story of the Iran hostage crisis where 6 Americans were able to escape amid the initial chaos and while hiding out at the Canadian embassy have to be smuggled out of Iran.
This screenplay is great almost in spite of the dialogue. Like any good espionage type movie there is fast dialogue and efficient exposition that doesn’t slow down the story. Here we have all that, but the screenplay shines in the way it builds tension. At every moment of danger, which is almost constant, the audience is on the edge of their seat.
All of this movie earns the tension it builds up and that is all you can ask for from a movie like this. We know somewhat the result of these events and the known outcome could dampen the enticing story. Turn on Argo because there is not any wasted space in this story. From the go we get a masterclass in telling an efficient story that wrings out all the conflict it sets up.
Drew recommends…
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (streaming on Hulu)
I love when you watch a classic movie you haven’t seen in a long time and suddenly realize that you didn’t fully appreciate it the first time. Most people have heard of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but maybe they don’t know this is maybe the most fun of all the classic Westerns or how influential it has been on just about every buddy comedy since 1969.
Screenwriter William Goldman (All the President’s Men, The Princess Bride) won Best Original Screenplay that year for the film’s quick-witted humor and lively action. Goldman’s script based loosely on the real-life Wild West criminals is easygoing, funny, and anachronistic, while also tackling the myth of the Western outlaw. Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) make their living robbing banks and holding up trains for cash and gold, but the movie makes clear that their time is coming to an end. The way of the future -- represented by the invention of the bicycle -- is here. How long can they stave off the impending twilight of their era? Butch and Sundance flee to Bolivia to find out.
Never before had Wild West outlaws like this seemed so fun and relatable. Butch and Sundance, as written by Goldman, were far from black-hatted villains. They crack wise and make fun of each other. Audiences responded favorably, making Butch Cassidy the highest-grossing movie of 1969. Part of the reason this portrayal worked so well was because of Newman and Redford’s pure charisma. Newman was near the pinnacle of his career, coming off a decade that included The Hustler, Hud, and Cool Hand Luke, so he got top billing for playing Butch Cassidy. Redford was mostly unknown at this point, but he would quickly become one of the biggest stars in the world within a few years. With Butch as the talkative mastermind and Sundance as the stoic sharpshooter, together they formed one of film’s most famous bromances.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid became immensely popular because it featured two handsome and charming movie stars front and center, but also because it’s an entertaining Western that’s not too slow and not too violent. It’s easy to watch and rewatch, which may be why so many screenwriters have tried to imitate this lovable classic. Action comedies and buddy movies like Bad Boys, Rush Hour, 21 Jump Street, and The Other Guys owe a debt of gratitude to the genre’s OGs, Butch and Sundance.
The Philadelphia Story (streaming on HBO Max)
While many would claim the golden era for romantic comedies took place in the 1990s, the foundation that the Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts rom-coms built off was set over 50 years earlier. The Philadelphia Story is one such example of an Old Hollywood romantic comedy that created the mold for so many that came after. While it featured three of the biggest movie stars of its day, the Oscar-winning screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart (and uncredited Waldo Salt) has easily stood the test of time.
The Philadelphia Story is known as a “comedy of remarriage,” a now-defunct genre where characters divorce, fool around with others, and end up remarrying. This was a way around the strict Production Code of the 1930s and 40s, which censored such content as extramarital affairs in film. Ogden’s story is about a wealthy socialite (played by Katharine Hepburn) whose upcoming wedding is disrupted by the presence of her ex-husband (Cary Grant) and a tabloid magazine writer (Jimmy Stewart). What follows is a complex love triangle movie with witty ping-pong dialogue and fascinating social dynamics.
This is an Old Hollywood delight where three massive mid-century movie stars fall in and out of love while imbibing copious amounts of alcohol. Hepburn was just about the most singularly gifted actress ever, and she dazzles here as she keeps the male characters on a string. If you only know Grant from his Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, you will be impressed by his comic timing in this movie. Finally, Jimmy Stewart won his only Oscar for his work as a smitten tabloid journalist in this movie, and he can thank his unforgettable drunk performance for that (seriously, it’s some of the best drunk acting in history).
All of these performances are in service of a romantic story that goes in places that you can’t totally predict. It’s a smart and funny script that entertains while playing off class and gender relations. If you love rom-coms or simply enjoy watching movie stars be movie stars, you can’t miss it.
Links
Don’t call movie theaters dead yet. In a promising sign for the return of theatrical moviegoing, Godzilla vs. Kong did really good business last weekend by making $48.5 million at the box office, the most since the pandemic began.
Angelina Jolie is coming back to movies in Those Who Wish Me Dead, a Western thriller from writer-director Taylor Sheridan (Sicario, Wind River). Jolie hasn’t starred in a non-childrens movie since 2015.
Start getting excited now for 2022’s most anticipated rom-com, Ticket to Paradise starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts.