Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 2024

The Contenders:

Anora (winner)
The Brutalist
A Real Pain
September 5
The Substance

What’s Missing

It’s not always clear what is considered an original screenplay versus an adapted one, at least to me. It seems odd that Abigail is considered adapted while Lisa Frankenstein is considered original. Why? I’m not sure, but I did like Lisa Frankenstein’s screenplay a great deal. Horror never gets the respect it deserves at the Oscars, so films like Blink Twice, Longlegs, Oddity, Heretic, Immaculate, and Cuckoo are always left by the wayside. I Saw the TV Glow might be too radical to attract Oscar voters, while The Last Showgirl might have been too standard. Animated films--Flow and Memoir of a Snail--tend to follow the path of horror movies at the Oscars. They have their own category and not much else. The two biggest misses for me are Love Lies Bleeding and Eephus.

Weeding through the Nominees

5. I don’t love putting The Brutalist in last place here, but of all of these screenplays, it’s the one that feels the most self-indulgent in a lot of ways. This is a story that could have been told in 2/3 the time that is given to it, and while this might be more a fault of the cinematography and the director, why aren’t we given more of the actual architecture? The Brutalist is never going to be better than a good film in my opinion. It’s never going to rise to the level of great, and that starts with the screenplay.

4. Anora was the “lightning in a bottle” pick. The movie caught fire at the right time and won five of its six nominations. Of all of its wins, this might be the one I like the least (might—I haven’t really confronted all of its wins). This is a screenplay that telegraphs the conclusions we should be naturally reaching on our own. It feels remedial in a lot of places. I appreciate the way the film ends as the correct conclusion, but there’s not enough here that I felt was new that warranted the nomination, let alone the win. I realize this might be mildly controversial, but I’m okay with that.

3. Of the films that I needed to watch for the 2024 Oscars, September 5 was one that I wasn’t excited about seeing. This is a film about the 1972 Munich Olympics, which is a compelling story, but today any film that shows Palestinians murdering Israeli athletes is inherently political. Where the film succeeds is in focusing more on the people reporting the story—ABC Sports—which was unusual at the time. The new perspective changes things up and it works. I don’t dislike this nomination, although for me it’s right on the border of what I’d nominate.

2. In some ways, The Substance reminds me of the film Sorry to Bother You. The premise is fantastic and puts a new spin on a story that has been explored before. The issue I have is that it really feels like it spins out of control in the third act. This is a story that needed to be held tightly, and I think Coralie Fargeat did everything humanly possible to keep it as on track as she could, but the screenplay could have helped her a bit more on those final pages. Love the first two acts, love the actual ending, but the bridge between those two points doesn’t always work for me.

My Choice

1. A Real Pain was probably going to be my choice from the moment I saw it. The strength of this film is not that it’s a huge, sweeping story or an epic tale but that it is so completely and utterly human. I believe both of these characters as real people with a real, lived-in relationship. They talk like real people and exist like them, and despite all of this, there is that moment of heartfelt, desperate love and frustration when David tries to explain who his cousin really is to the other people on their trip. It feels like real life, and ultimately, even for things that are fanciful and strange, isn’t that what we want a screenplay to do? To make the world feel real?

Final Analysis