Here are the last 25 Oscar-Winning Original Screenplays of the Last 25 Years. Which one is your favorite? The one with the most choices...wins again!
The Piano; Pulp Fiction; The Usual Suspects; Fargo; Good Will Hunting; Shakespeare in Love; American Beauty; Almost Famous; Gosford Park; Talk to Her; Lost in Translation; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Crash; Little Miss Sunshine; Juno; Milk; The Hurt Locker; The King's Speech; Midnight in Paris; Django Unchained; Her; Birdman; Spotlight; Manchester by the Sea; Get Out.
Mine would be Pulp Fiction, with Little Miss Sunshine and Birdman close behind. Not only did Quentin Tarantino's style greatly influence many writers who came after him, but he took a traditional story structure and a whole bunch of time-tested screenwriting tropes and, themes, and uniquely utilized them, and created very moving story lines, memorable characters, and great dialogues.
So which is your favorite? Thanks in advance, and much good fortune in your creative endeavors!
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Fargo & Little Miss Sunshine are my favorites. In another category, Hell Or High Water was the best "nominated but didn't win" script I've come across in a long time.
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Bill:
Good Will Hunting for me too.
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Pulp Fiction!
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I'm 100% in agreement with Tom Batha here. Fargo especially!
I haven't read Manchester by the Sea, so I don't know if it really was better than Hell or High Water, but HoHW was certain Oscar caliber.
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Thelma & Louise (1991), The Hurt Locker and Lost in Translation
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The Usual Suspects with Gosford Park second. I'm not a big fan of Pulp Fiction. The only non-linear film I can recall enjoying was Rashomon.
Tom Batha and Allen Roughton: since you both had a co-tie between Fargo and Hell or High Water....hmmm...tonally, Pulp Fiction is kinda Hell or High Water meets Fargo, but different....so I'm gonna have to give Pulp Fiction your picks. Heh-heh.
Funny thing...I bought Hell or High Water at Wal-Mart a couple days ago in their $3.74 bin of DVD's. Every film in that bin - like a couple hundred or so - is like from the last couple years. Hmm...I hope it's a real DVD, and not like a giant Sweet Tart with "Hell or High Water" imprinted on it. I hate when that happens.
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top 3 of the 25
1. Almost Famous (the band singing Tiny Dancer on the bus is cinema greatness)
2. Good Will Hunting (William Goldman's uncredited masterpiece - just kidding!!).
3. Pulp Fiction (I read the production draft before the movie was released. Who believed 3- pages of two Gangsters talking about foot massages would be entertaining?)
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Birdman?!
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Sorry, I was thinking ornithology.
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Hell and High Water
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Nick. I think I know what it is and I wholeheartedly agree with you. The guy's an A+ writer/director, but this movie just didn't do it for me.
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Love the film, but the punks had a big assist from Terence Malik, a good friend of Affleck’s godfather.
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Such a hard choice, though there are also several on that list I didn't care for. Hmm, I'd have to choose between Almost Famous and Midnight in Paris. The writing in both was superb. Brilliant characters that earned the audience's empathy, in stories that captured the imagination. Even before both movies were over, I couldn't wait to watch them again.
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Phil: Those sure are two great scripts. The airplane scene in Almost Famous is one of the funniest scenes ever. Midnight in Paris kills it on so many levels, too, and that is such a great script to read if a writer is working on a Magic Realism type-of comedy. "A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph." "I see a film." "I see a rhinoceros!" What a great script. (Both.)
Best fortunes in your creative endeavors, Phil!
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The screenplay that should have won in 2001, ""Memento".
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Rutger, don't you mean: ""Memento", 2001 in won have should that screenplay The.
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I don't know Tony, can't remember...
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Quite a few in there, but, man, do I love ALMOST FAMOUS.
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Check your tattoos.
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is brilliant. That is one of the screenplays I use as an example when I teach screenwriting, because it is a perfect illustration of how every storytelling element ties into the others.
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Agreed, J. Genius script.
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I'll go back to 1978, Breaking Away. Amazing Independent Film packed with all kinds of messages without lecturing, with no gun violence or drug use! But there was that wicked bowling ball.
Rutger/Tony: Memento sure is a great story.
Jason/RB: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind sure is a great story, too, and I can understand why you use it in your screenwriting classes, Jason.
Besides being great to study for their overall excellence, Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Almost Famous are perfect examples for writers to see how quickly some scenes effectively accomplish their objectives. Some of those scenes are just two (important) lines of revealing dialogue, or just an image. When I first started writing scripts, most of my scenes had a lot of "chop" in them. It's such a great learning experience to study great scripts - preferably while watching the film - and see how things move.
Here are the links for those scripts, plus another great Charlie Kaufman story, Synecdoche, New York, for those who don't have them, and the Adaptation story that Nick mentioned, which has a pretty wild backstory/inspiration to it.
Synecdoche, New York
http://www.screenplaydb.com/film/scripts/synecdoche_ny.pdf
Memento
https://stephenfollows.com/resource-docs/scripts/memento.pdf
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Unprocessed/eternal-sunshine-script.pdf
Almost Famous (not a PDF)
http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/almost_famous.html
Adaptation
http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/adaptation.pdf
Best fortunes in all you creative endeavors!
Alessandro: that sure is a great film, but I don't have the screenplay or a link to it. Mi scuse!