To hear it from Vanity Fair Oscar blogger Stu Van Airsdale, the Best Original Screenplay contest is a toe-to-toe between Juno‘s Diablo Cody and Michael Clayton‘s Tony Gilroy, and — interestingly — he thinks Gilroy has the edge.
“So. Cody and Gilroy. One statuette, two phenomena. Even cynics like Eric Henderson, blogging at Slant magazine, anticipate a closer race than most Oscar media are letting on: As Henderson writes, ‘Gilroy’s double-dip on Michael Clayton and status as a lost cause over in Best Director ensure a few votes from those who feel pity, and from those who have apparently seen none of the myriad law-and-order TV dramas from which the film’s ruinously clich√É∆í√Ǭ©d plot resolution was lifted.’
“Less ironically, Gilroy’s status as a dues-paying hack from way back (the guy wrote a figure-skating opus 16 years ago, for Christ’s sake) is as compelling a nominee back story to Oscar voters — industry wonks all — as Cody’s stripping career or her singular young voice.
“But the gamebreaker is that one represents a movie, the other a movement — a myth, really, cultivated via an overexposure borrowed in part from its beneficiary. And even if movies aren’t really what the Oscars are all about, Best Original Screenplay is the category where the Academy begs you to believe otherwise. It’s why I foresee Tony Gilroy taking home Michael Clayton‘s lone trophy, leaving an upset Juno counting its money as the little movie that could — and didn’t.”
Question: will Cody’s industry rep as a newly empowered Attitude Queen, vaguely indicated by her no-shows at the Critics Choice awards and at the Santa Barbara Film Festival screenwriters’ panel, result in a couple of extra Gilroy votes, or is this just me talking out of my ass? Just asking. I have no dog in this race.