The Oscar Project

In which I will watch every movie that has ever won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

The Oscar Project

The Oscar race has ended, but The Oscar Project has just begun. In the coming weeks and months, I will watch and write about every film that has ever won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. This is a new addition to my Substack newsletters for Paid Subscribers and will appear in inboxes on occasional Tuesdays.

Starting with the first winner in 1940, The Great McGinty, written by Preston Sturges, and ending with this year’s Anora, written by Sean Baker, I’ll analyze each movie through the lens of my screenwriting life—drawing on the tools I’ve developed, borrowed or stolen over the years.

Sean Baker’s film won 6 Oscars including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay

The Oscar Project is not intended as a movie review, but rather one person’s experience (mine, Bill Gullo) as I watch these movies while thinking about screenwriting, storytelling and life in general. You can expect the same pragmatic advice, blunt truths and wily sense of humour you find in all my posts.

All told, I will watch 85 films to fully realize the venture, and then, armed with this cinematic knowledge — and perhaps a few colorful graphs or charts — I’ll set out to write an Oscar-winning screenplay of my own. If that sounds impossible or harebrained to you, then I know I’m on the right track.

And yes I will even watch Crash (2004), a movie that made me regret having eyes and ears. I hope that provides a sense of my commitment to this project.

At the end of this post, thanks to Wikipedia and AI, you’ll find a list of the films that have won the award since it was introduced in 1940. If you see a mistake, please send me a message and I’ll correct it, but if you want to be my writing & research assistant that would be even better.

The Oscar Goes To…

Each year, the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay is given to the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. Hence, original.

I’m no film historian, but Wikipedia sure helps me sound like one. According to that source, the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Beginning with the Oscars for 1957, the two categories were combined to honor only the screenplay.

So apparently there used to be an Oscar for Best Story, but I don’t actually care. If you care, researching that history is definitely one way to spend your time, and if you do learn something interesting please share with us here at Screenwriting is Writing (with me, Bill Gullo).

One reason to celebrate this particular Oscar category is because it is uniquely challenging to take an Original Idea from someone’s head and then translate it into a screenplay that is cast, produced, shot, edited and released to audiences. This year, Sean Baker snuck back to the mic after Anora won Best Picture to celebrate and encourage indie films; that’s the way I feel about the Original Screenplay, and yes Anora definitely had one of those.

Many producers and studios are reluctant to invest in Original Ideas because they don’t come with what they call a built-in audience which makes people in the marketing department angry.

The 85 Movies

While 85 films represent a lot of popcorn in my future, they do not represent many women or BIPOC writers. After the list of films below, I will list the names of winners in those demographics. SPOILER: there (3) solo women writers and three (3) solo BIPOC writers have won the award and a handful more who won as part of a team.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences clearly has many flaws and biases (#Oscarssowhite), but our clear-eyed, goose-stepping government has told us that diversity and representation doesn’t matter anymore so let’s move on like many Democratic leaders. The point of The Oscar Project after all, is not to highlight the criminal disparities in our racist, patriarchal system. We’re here to have a good time!

Pick a Genre Any Genre

I’ve wanted to do The Oscar Project for years. Originally I dreamed of it as a book (remember books?), but now that I’ve found a home on Substack, I’m excited to publish the essays here. The idea was partly inspired by an early conversation with my agent at the time who told me I should “pick a genre.”

Pick a Genre, Any Genre

To be honest, this was perfectly sound advice. After enjoying my well-written intimate dramas that could never get produced, my agent encouraged me to pick a genre in order to be a more commercially viable writer. Again, perfectly fine advice, but at that stage of my life I simply was not thinking or creating through a genre lens. If I had been I suspect I’d be a lot more ‘successful’ in the traditional $ense.

As I pondered my chosen genre, I was overcome with uncertainty about the task at hand. What should my genre be? And would I throw a genre reveal party? If I chose science fiction, the gift bag could include space helmets and ray guns, but if I chose horror, the bags could be filled with spiders and worms. It was a lot to think about.

Eventually I announced my intention to write Oscar movies. My agent thought I had misunderstood her and was not thrilled, but this was the same person who answered my question, “What’s selling now?” by saying, “Scripts where you can understand the movie by reading the title. Like, ‘I want to fuck your sister.” At the time, I laughed and joked, “Oh yeah, I’m working on something called, “I Fucked Your Nanny.” She laughed and paused, slightly curious to hear more.

I did eventually gravitate toward a couple of genres—psychological thrillers, where I could explore odd psychological spaces, and science fiction, which allowed me to disguise social commentary beneath a commercial shell. Currently, I have a sci-fi feature being sent out to talent, and my script Bastard—a dramatic psychological thriller—managed to attract Martin Scorsese as an executive producer, thanks in part to the incredible filmmaker and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who was attached to direct. But I’ve yet to write something that checks the Oscar-worthy boxes. Perhaps The Oscar Project will be the key.

The Great McGinty

My first entry will be Preston Sturgess’ 1940 classic. A satire on political corruption, The Great McGinty does not feature an ignorant, hateful, orange narcissist, but the story does follow a down and out guy — a veritable ‘bum’ as they said back then — who rises through the ranks of a corrupt political machine.

While The Oscar Project itself is not politically motivated, many Best Original Screenplay winners, like The Great McGinty, explore themes of political corruption, abuse of power, or institutional failure—Network (1976), The Lives of Others (2006), Spotlight (2015), and many more.

As we navigate these next four years, it will be interesting to look back at defining films of the past while moving through this redefining period in our country’s history. That’s kinda the point of art—to provide context and perspective on what it means to be alive at any given time on planet Earth.

Brian Donlevey offers up a knuckle sandwich to Akim Tamiroff in The Great McGinty

Stay tuned for the first official installment of The Oscar Project. As always, THANK YOU for supporting independent writers in all the ways. If this project sounds exciting to you, please consider Upgrading to a Paid Subscription now

And Now…

Here are the 85 films that have won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay since the category was introduced in 1940. (following info generated by AI)

1940s

• 1940 – The Great McGinty – Preston Sturges

• 1941 – Here Comes Mr. Jordan – Sidney Buchman, Seton I. Miller

• 1942 – Citizen Kane - Orson Welles, Herman J. Mankiewicz.

• 1943 – Princess O'Rourke – Norman Krasna

• 1944 – Going My Way – Frank Butler, Frank Cavett

• 1945 – Marie-Louise – Richard Schweizer

• 1946 – The Seventh Veil – Muriel Box, Sydney Box

• 1947 – Miracle on 34th Street – George Seaton

• 1948 – The Search – Richard Schweizer, David Wechsler

• 1949 – Battleground – Robert Pirosh

1950s

• 1950 – Sunset Boulevard – Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr.

• 1951 – An American in Paris – Alan Jay Lerner

• 1952 – The Lavender Hill Mob – T.E.B. Clarke

• 1953 – Titanic – Charles Brackett, Richard Breen, Walter Reisch

• 1954 – On the Waterfront – Budd Schulberg

• 1955 – Interrupted Melody – William Ludwig, Sonya Levien

• 1956 – The Red Balloon – Albert Lamorisse

• 1957 – Designing Woman – George Wells

• 1958 – The Defiant Ones – Nedrick Young, Harold Jacob Smith

• 1959 – Pillow Talk – Stanley Shapiro, Maurice Richlin

1960s

• 1960 – The Apartment – Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond

• 1961 – Splendor in the Grass – William Inge

• 1962 – Divorce Italian Style – Ennio De Concini, Alfredo Giannetti, Pietro Germi

• 1963 – How the West Was Won – James R. Webb

• 1964 – Father Goose – Peter Stone, Frank Tarloff

• 1965 – Darling – Frederic Raphael

• 1966 – A Man and a Woman – Claude Lelouch, Pierre Uytterhoeven

• 1967 – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – William Rose

• 1968 – The Producers – Mel Brooks

• 1969 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – William Goldman

1970s

• 1970 – Patton – Francis Ford Coppola, Edmund H. North

• 1971 – The Hospital – Paddy Chayefsky

• 1972 – The Candidate – Jeremy Larner

• 1973 – The Sting – David S. Ward

• 1974 – Chinatown – Robert Towne

• 1975 – Dog Day Afternoon – Frank Pierson

• 1976 – Network – Paddy Chayefsky

• 1977 – Annie Hall – Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman

• 1978 – Coming Home – Waldo Salt, Robert C. Jones, Nancy Dowd

• 1979 – Breaking Away – Steve Tesich

1980s

• 1980 – Melvin and Howard – Bo Goldman

• 1981 – Chariots of Fire – Colin Welland

• 1982 – Gandhi – John Briley

• 1983 – Tender Mercies – Horton Foote

• 1984 – Places in the Heart – Robert Benton

• 1985 – Witness – Earl W. Wallace, William Kelley, Pamela Wallace

• 1986 – Hannah and Her Sisters – Woody Allen

• 1987 – Moonstruck – John Patrick Shanley

• 1988 – Rain Man – Ronald Bass, Barry Morrow

• 1989 – Dead Poets Society – Tom Schulman

1990s

• 1990 – Ghost – Bruce Joel Rubin

• 1991 – Thelma & Louise – Callie Khouri

• 1992 – The Crying Game – Neil Jordan

• 1993 – The Piano – Jane Campion

• 1994 – Pulp Fiction – Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary

• 1995 – The Usual Suspects – Christopher McQuarrie

• 1996 – Fargo – Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

• 1997 – Good Will Hunting – Ben Affleck, Matt Damon

• 1998 – Shakespeare in Love – Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard

• 1999 – American Beauty – Alan Ball

2000s

• 2000 – Almost Famous – Cameron Crowe

• 2001 – Gosford Park – Julian Fellowes

• 2002 – Talk to Her – Pedro Almodóvar

• 2003 – Lost in Translation – Sofia Coppola

• 2004 – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, Pierre Bismuth

• 2005 – Crash – Paul Haggis, Bobby Moresco

• 2006 – Little Miss Sunshine – Michael Arndt

• 2007 – Juno – Diablo Cody

• 2008 – Milk – Dustin Lance Black

• 2009 – The Hurt Locker – Mark Boal

2010s

• 2010 – The King's Speech – David Seidler

• 2011 – Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen

• 2012 – Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino

• 2013 – Her – Spike Jonze

• 2014 – Birdman – Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Armando Bo

• 2015 – Spotlight – Josh Singer, Tom McCarthy

• 2016 – Manchester by the Sea – Kenneth Lonergan

• 2017 – Get Out – Jordan Peele

• 2018 – Green Book – Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie

• 2019 – Parasite – Bong Joon-ho, Han Jin-won

2020s

• 2020 – Promising Young Woman – Emerald Fennell

• 2021 – Belfast – Kenneth Branagh

• 2022 – Everything Everywhere All at Once – Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

• 2023 – Anatomy of a Fall – Justine Triet, Arthur Harari

• 2024 – Anora – Sean Baker

FEMALE WINNERS (info generated by AI)

There have been three (3) women who have won the award as a solo writer:

• Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003),

• Diablo Cody (Juno, 2007)

• Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, 2020).

And four (4) female writers who’ve won as part of a writing team:

• Muriel Box (The Seventh Veil, 1946) – Co-wrote with Sydney Box,

• Sonya Levien (Interrupted Melody, 1955) – Co-wrote with William Ludwig,

• Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall, 2023) – Co-wrote with Arthur Harari

• Fran Walsh (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003) – Co-wrote with Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyen.

BIPOC WINNERS (info generated by AI)

Let's count the number of Best Original Screenplay winners who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC).

Black Writers

1. Jordan Peele (Get Out, 2017) – First Black winner in this category

Latino/Hispanic Writers

2. Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her, 2002) – Spanish

3. Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, 2014) – Mexican (co-wrote with three others)

4. Armando Bo (Birdman, 2014) – Argentinian (co-wrote with three others)

5. Nicolás Giacobone (Birdman, 2014) – Argentinian (co-wrote with three others)

6. Guillermo Arriaga (Babel, 2006) – Mexican (Nominated, but did not win)

Asian Writers

7. Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, 2019) – South Korean (co-wrote with Han Jin-won)

8. Han Jin-won (Parasite, 2019) – South Korean (co-wrote with Bong Joon-ho)

Indigenous Writers

• No known Indigenous writers have won in this category to date.

Total BIPOC Winners

• Solo wins: 2 (Get Out, Talk to Her)

• Co-written wins: 5 (Birdman, Parasite)

• Total wins involving BIPOC writers: 7

Again, if you see mistakes here, blame the robots and let me know!