WRITERS GUILD TOP 101 SCREENPLAYS

[jake_fink]

The WGA recently announced their top 101 screenplays. Check them out at the link below. I think it's a very reasonable top ten, though not in the least surprising. I don't know that there are any notable absences, but there are a few that are, maybe, not as great as the company they are keeping... I mean, Groundhog Day?

http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/news_and_events/101_screenplay/101press.pdf

 

[Feraud]

Thanks for the link. It was funny to see Groundhog Day in the top 100! [huh]

I am glad to see Memento in the top 100. I like that film a lot.

 

[Andykev]

Yes, and CASABLANCA was named the Greatest Screenplay

All Reuters Movie News
'Casablanca' named greatest movie script
Friday April 7 3:17 PM ET

Round up the usual suspects: The Writers Guild of America has named "Casablanca" as No. 1 on its first list of the "101 Greatest Screenplays."

The screenplay for the wartime tale of courage and cynicism starring Humphrey Bogart was written by Howard Koch and brothers Julius and Philip Epstein.

It was followed on the list by the screenplay for "The Godfather," written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola; "Chinatown," written by Robert Towne; "Citizen Kane," by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles; and "All About Eve" by Joseph Mankiewicz.

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Rounding out the top 10 were 'Annie Hall," by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman; "Sunset Boulevard" by the writing team of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder and D.M. Marshman Jr.; Paddy Chayefsky's "Network"; Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's "Some Like It Hot"; and Coppola and Puzo's "The Godfather Part II"

Three writers -- Allen, Coppola and Wilder -- had four films on the list, while three others had three: William Goldman, John Huston and Charlie Kaufman.

The list was announced by the Writers Guild on Thursday night.

 

[Jack Scorpion]

I'd put Chinatown at #1 and sink Citizen Kane down a few slots.

 

[Quigley Brown]

I think it's funny that Star Wars is in there. Casablanca no.1? That film is given far too much credit than it deserves.

 

[jake_fink]

Yeah, some of the choices are odd. Star Wars is a peculiar choice because the second film (or is it the fifth, I can never figure out GL's Stalinist New Math), The Empire Strikes Back, is a much better screenplay than the lame-brained first film.

Lawrence of Arabia is a better film than A Man for All Seasons (another Robert Bolt), but the latter is a superior screenplay.

Casablanca is a strange number one since the film came together on the go, never really eniterly existing as a screenplay prior to production and so continually under the influence of the production. Strange choice for the Writers Guild of America I guess I should say.

There are very few foreign films, really only a few that just could not be ignored. There is no Eric Rohmer whose screenplay for Ma Nuit Chez Maud is better than most of the final sixty films on the list.


Forrest Gump? Field of Dreams? Rocky? Witness? Popular and in some cases mildly entertaining, but best screenplays? I don't know.

It may be that the membership had touble coming up with a list of 100 DECENT screenplays, never mind the best... and they had to name a few written in the last few decades or they'd look like a bunch of nostalgists .

I'd add Bruce Robinson for Withnail & I, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger for Wings of Desire and Sam Shepherd for Paris Texas, Carole Eastman for Five Easy Pieces and quite a few earlier films, The Front Page, for example, Duck Soup, Palm Beach Story, Lost Horizon, Bride of Frankenstein...

There are a few I'd boot off the list if I had me druthers. The Usual Suspects is one of them... I think it's ridiculously overrated and much dumber than it thinks it is. I don't think McQuarrie has a done a thing worth mentioning since then, demostrating that it was a fluke and not skill that pulled it together, and Bryan Singer seems to have been mistaken for a film director. This guy is a terrible combination of juvenile and pretentious, like that Buffy guy, but without being able to write even that well. I think he might have made some superhero movies since then... or maybe he's off directing cereal commercials and Wiggles videos as he should have been from the start. rolleyes: I know he's doing that new Superman movie, and you're welcome to it )

Anyway, rants aside, anything you want to cut or add?

 

[Quigley Brown]

My thoughts exactly, Jake (I just couldn't put it in writing as well as you did). The list wasn't sponsored by Coke or MacDonalds was it? Maybe the guild thought that most Americans should be familiar with at least 95% of the films. I saw Coming Home last night...which actually won an oscar for its screenplay...it deserved to be in there.

Out of the list I've seen them all except Memento, La Grande Illusion and Adaption. Maybe my library has them.

 

[jake_fink]

Memento is good fun, La Grande Illusion is a great film and Adaptation is an elaborate practical joke on the viewer. So, save yourself two precious hours and skip Adaptation.

 

[Jack Scorpion]

The Usual Suspects should not be on there, I agree. On the same note, anything by Charlie Kaufman or M. Night Shamalayan are too gimmicky to be there.

I'd take off Princess Bride and Being There. I enjoyed both movies, but not for their screenplays, for sure.

 

[Mojave Jack]

Jake, your avatar is freakin' me out, man.

 

[WEEGEE]

And

jake_fink--O.P.-

I'd add Bruce Robinson for Withnail & I, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger for Wings of Desire and Sam Shepherd for Paris Texas, Carole Eastman for Five Easy Pieces and quite a few earlier films

I agree!!!

Whats the opinion on "Groundhog Day" Why not?

 

[Zemke Fan]

Fasten your seatbelts...

... it's going to be a bumpy night.

Here are my comments about this thread and some of the preceeding posts (in no particular order).

1. It's about screenplays, not about movies. The WGA survey of their members asked the respondent to list their 10 favorite screenplays. I suspect that most WGA members -- to say nothing of nearly all Fedora Lounge members -- haven't read very many screenplays. This is due in no small measure to the fact that screenplays are generally hard to find/read. The advent of the Internet has changed that situation some... (see for example, Drew's Script-O-Rama) but it's still not possible to EASILY find these. I surmise that the WGA respondents included screenplays that are in their own individual collections and that would probably trend towards whatever genre they work in and/or favor.

2. Jake has it right when he observes that some screenplays are much better than their movies and vice versa. Take, for instance, the 1980s films that John Hughes both wrote and directed. Ferris Bueller is a truly classic movie, but the screenplay is awful. It looks as if were written in a week. Oh... wait... it WAS written in a week. Hughes didn't care because he knew he was going to straighten things out during production/post-production. On the other hand, the screenplay for The Sixth Sense was a riveting read. I liked the movie too, but the screenplay was good. Say what you might about writers/directors like Hughes and Shalyaman, at least they are superb storytellers and that's mostly what good scripts and movies are all about any way.

3. I couldn't disagree with ya'll more about Groundhog Day. A hundred years from now, this is still going to be a classic movie and it follows the script pretty closely. A friend of mine is a Groundhog Day fanatic and he has compiled an incredible list of essays that describe the "Zen" of the film. The best of these is Mario Sesti's essay from the catalog for "The Hidden God: Film and Faith," for the Musem of Modern Art Film at the Gramercy Theater Program (Winter 2003-2004). Click Here

4. I, too, don't see the appeal of Charlie Kaufman -- except that he is an original storyteller. His writing comes from someplace weird and dark and you've got to at least respect a guy that original.

5. Usual suspects, JF, right on the nose. Way too clever for its own good. It didn't pass my essential test for quintessential movies -- I only watched it ONCE after I bought the DVD. (Movies that I keep coming back to again and again are the ones that make my own top 101 list.)

Ooops... it appears that my two cents worth actually became five cents worth!

 

[WEEGEE]

Punxsutawney travel destination

Thanks Zemke Fan...for the essay Groundhog Day The Movie, Buddhism and Me by Mario Sest.

I think Groundhog Day a great film.

If you have not done it i recommend spending a (few days) in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania in the begining of February...it was a very
surreal day or three.

 

[jake_fink]

About Groundhog Day I guess I can only say, different strokes for different folks, and I do love Robert Mitchum... well, not love LUV, but... you know.

Speaking of the Mitch, couldn't Out of the Past have made it to the list? And speaking of noir, what about The Killers?

Planet of the Apes could have been there, though it is just an elongated Twilight Zone episode - but then isn't Groundhog Day?

Someone out there mentioned Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment in a thread many months ago (it may have been Harry Lime), but that could have been included. Billy Liar; A Taste of Honey; Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; The Entertainer; Room at the Top.

Some of the screenplays included are starting to bug me. Too much William Glodman, always a better writer about writing screenplays than a writer of screenplays. When Harry Met Sally is derivative pap, and there is enough Woody Allen on the list that ersatz Woody Allen is not needed. Kaufman's work always has the same problem, a weak third act, but everything he's written is on there. With that kind of love-in going on, why didn't they just throw his grocery lists in as well.

Any-hoo... I'm starting to sound obsessed.