So, OK. Anyone who knows Oscar knows about "The Big Five," which are Writing, Directing, Actress, Actor, and Picture. Only a few films have won them all in the same year: "It Happened One Night" (1934), "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991). Most recently, "American Beauty" (1999) got close, winning four of the five. Annette Bening got beat out for Best Actress.
Anyway, this is the first in a series of posts that will contain "Top Five" lists on the "Big Five Academy Awards" categories. We start...with writing.
The Academy Award for Writing...there are two. One for an Original work, conceived for the screen alone. The second for an Adaptation, something not initially thought of as a movie.
Since 1994, there have been some absolutely groundbreaking scripts written, several of which have actually changed movies for the better forever. Those are the ones I tried to capture here. Surely, there are many more than ten great scripts in the past twenty years, but these are the ones that meant something to me, and, from my perspective, movies, in general.