Best Original Screenplay 1981

The Contenders:

Absence of Malice
Arthur
Atlantic City
Chariots of Fire (winner)
Reds

What’s Missing

For a year with some great movies in it, the list of Original Screenplay nominations is surprisingly…boring. There’s a massive hole in the list right off the bat: Raiders of the Lost Ark. You want another massive hole? How about An American Werewolf in London. Want another? Body Heat. All three of those movies belong in this list. There are some others, of course, but most are less likely and less appropriate for an Oscar nomination. Clash of the Titans doesn’t really belong here, even if I love it more than I should. The same is true of Escape from New York, Scanners, Time Bandits, and The Evil Dead. Sadly, as a sequel, The Road Warrior was probably ineligible. Both Outland and Nighthawks probably qualify, and both are sadly unappreciated.

Weeding through the Nominees

5. None of the actual nominees feels like it should be above third place at the highest, and most of them feel like they belong a lot lower. I’m dumping eventual winner Chariots of Fire first. My reasoning is simple: I’ve seen this movie several times, and in each case, after a month or two, all I can remember is the Vangelis soundtrack and white guys running on a beach in slow motion. If it’s that unmemorable, it doesn’t deserve to win, and it probably doesn’t deserve to even be nominated.

4. For almost the same reason, I’m putting Reds in fourth. This is a big, sweeping story that is really about a romance in the middle of it. It’s mildly interesting because it’s about some proto-Leninists who were there for the Russian Revolution, so there’s some interesting history here. But there’s little that I remember specifically about the movie, and again, that’s not a good sign for something that wants to win for its screenplay. In my world, this doesn’t even sniff a nomination.

3. I’d love to say lots of nice things about Absence of Malice, and there are some nice things I will say about it. I like that the ending is really unexpected in a lot of ways. I like that, in a cinematic world where newspaper reporters are always heroes, it portrays a reporter as fallible and imperfect. But it includes a completely unnecessary romance that serves only to get in the way of the story. My wife is a former reporter and for years would make me watch anything involving the news. She doesn’t remember this movie, even though we saw it together. That doesn’t say much for the movie.

2. In many ways, Arthur won simply by being nominated. Only horror and science fiction get less respect at the Oscars than does comedy. In fact, the only real downside of Arthur is that drunk comedy doesn’t play as well now as it did in 1981. Some scenes go on a bit too long, but it’s a fine film. If there’s something that keeps it off the top spot, it’s that the screenplay isn’t close to the best thing here. The best part of Arthur is the performance of John Gielgud, who transcends the screenplay, the film, and the rest of the known universe.

1. Atlantic City is a pretty good movie and the plot reminds me a great deal of a Warren Zevon song, which very much stands in its favor. What stands against it is that much of it focuses on a May/December romance between Susan Sarandon and Burt Lancaster, who was almost literally twice her age. I like the movie quite a bit, and even like the story. Of the options, it’s the one that I think I might keep if I made my own list. It’s my winner of what’s here, but it’s not my real winner.

My Choice

C’mon. Is there a choice other than Raiders of the Lost Ark? In a perfect world, I’d completely redo this entire list, keeping at most a single movie from the actual nominees. There are so many better choices possible, that I can’t help but wonder what the hell the Academy was thinking. Regardless of the nominations, though, Raiders wins.

Final Analysis