Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapated Screenplay 1996

The Contenders:

The Crucible
The English Patient
Hamlet
Sling Blade (winner)
Trainspotting

I Never Thought You'd Be a Junkie Because Heroin is so Passe

Film: Trainspotting
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

It’s an admission of mine to say that I was never really a part of the drug culture. Oh, I certainly saw my share of it, but I wasn’t much of a participator. My drug of choice in my college days was alcohol, and thus most of my drug-related stories involve booze instead of anything else. I don’t say this from a place of superiority (moral or otherwise) but from a place of fact. Drugs didn’t interest me that much, and I got my drinking out early. These days I don’t drink much. All of this makes it more difficult for me to really grok stories that center around drug culture.

This brings us to Trainspotting, a film that I’ve certainly heard out almost since it came out but have to this point managed to avoid seeing. I’ve even owned a copy for a year but still haven’t seen it until today. What I expected (at least from what I had been told about this film) was something akin to a Guy Ritchie film, something like Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Except for the sometimes impenetrable accents, though, there’s not a lot of commonality here. The person or people who told me this film was funny lied to me.