The status of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach's Barbie screenplay at this year's Oscars continues to be a hot topic this week, as writer/director/producer Judd Apatow has now waded into the discussion surrounding the film's Adapted Screenplay designation and it calls “offensive” in a Twitter post on Saturday.
You can now buy a strange Barbie – but isn't that the point?
Earlier this week, the Academy's writing department made it clear that Barbie would be competing in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, rather than Best Original Screenplay, because Gerwig and Baumbach based the film's script on an existing character. As we noted at the time, this decision may feel a bit strange, but Barbie is drastically different from pretty much every other form of media that has featured the Barbie character to date, and at least seems likely to fall into the Best Original Screenplay category to be based on “previously published material” – it is consistent with the Academy’s previous decisions. “The Lego Movie” had to apply for “Adapted” back in 2014 because it worked on an existing brand, while basically every sequel ever nominated for a screenwriting award (including sequels to original works like “Top Gun” or “Before Sunrise”), has done this category due to the adaptation of existing characters.
But what's really interesting about Apatow's tweet – and the general emotional reaction to the verdict that came out last week – is the way it suggests that there is in everyone's mind the idea that the best adapted screenplay is somehow is a lesser award than best original screenplay; This implies that the authors in question did not think up every single aspect of the story they created and therefore it is not as “original” as a story that is supposedly off the shelf. Which is a little silly: Gerwig and Baumbach's Barbie script is undeniably creative, imaginative, funny, etc., but it also exists in conversation with the 60-year history and legacy of a character firmly entrenched in the public consciousness, and that Script would do it Without these associations, they don't work in the same way.
Interestingly, the distinction between Best Adaptation and Best Original has existed in one form or another since the very first Academy Awards in 1929, when the awards were presented for Best Text (Original Story) and Best Text (Adaptation). “were awarded. In the early years of the ceremony's existence, the Academy merged and divided the categories in various ways, finally arriving at the current dichotomy in 1944, as Best Story (a holdover from the era of the studio system) and Best Original Screenplay. were merged into a single category that ran alongside “Best Adapted Screenplay.” The result is that almost every single Academy Awards has acknowledged in one way or another that “adapted” and “original” are useful distinctions for written works.
This also means that Barbie's script will be competing in different categories at various awards shows this year; For example, the WGA has already accepted the script as an original. (Fortunately, at today's Golden Globes they got around the whole thing by having just a single screenplay category in the first place; Barbie will be competing against the book adaptations “Poor Things,” “Oppenheimer” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” as well as the originals “Past Lives” and “Anatomy” take a fall.)
[via Variety]