USC Libraries Scripter Awards: ‘Call Me by Your Name’ Wins Best Adapted Screenplay

Celebrating its 30th year, the USC Libraries Scripter Awards handed out wins to Bruce Miller and Margaret Atwood for lauded Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale” as well as James Ivory and Andre Aciman for Oscar-nominated drama “Call Me By Your Name.” Ivory, who is 89, hadn’t been back to his Alma Mater USC for 60 years. “I made my career on adaptations,” he said.

The jury vote for the 30th USC Libraries Scripter Award nominees was so close that two ties resulted for the film and television categories. Due to a three-way tie in the nomination round, the writers of seven films and the works on which the films are based competed for the honors this year. (I’m on the Scripter selection committee.)

Other nominees included movies “Mudbound,” “Wonder Woman,” “The Disaster Artist,” “The Lost City of Z,’ “Molly’s Game” and “Logan” as well as TV series “Mindhunter,” “Big Little Lies,” “Genius,” and another Atwood adaptation, “Alias Grace.”

The winner of the Scripter Award often goes on to other awards, including the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Winners in recent years include “Moonlight,” “The Big Short,” “The Imitation Game,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Argo,” which all won the Oscar in that category.

This year’s literary award-winner was UCLA grad Francis Ford Coppola, who said he always put his movie’s creators ahead of his movie titles: Bram Stoker, Mario Puzo, and S.E. Hinton: “The original author did the heavy lifting.”