One of the final bellwethers before the Academy Awards, the Writers Guild of America Awards, honoured Tom McCarthy’s newsroom drama Spotlight, which chronicles the Boston Globe’s investigation into allegations of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, and Adam McKay’s financial-crisis dramedy The Big Short.
Spotlight — which has been nominated for six Oscars, including best picture, and earned the ensemble honours at last month’s Screen Actor Guild Awards — picked up the award for original screenplay, beating out Bridge of Spies, Sicario, Straight Outta Compton and Trainwreck. It is the front-runner for the same category at the Oscars.
Taking the stage at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, Josh Singer, who co-wrote the film with McCarthy, acknowledged both the victims at the heart of the scandal and the journalists whose reporting helped bring it to light, giving a special nod to former Globe columnist Eileen McNamara and abuse survivor Phil Saviano, both of whom were in the audience.
“Phil’s story was the one the Spotlight team found,” Singer said. “He’d been trying to tell his story for a very long time. I think that story is finally now being told — and it needs to continue being told.”
In the adapted screenplay category, The Big Short — which has been nominated for five Oscars, including best picture, and was the big winner last month at the Producers Guild Awards — beat out Carol, The Martian, Steve Jobs and Trumbo. It too is favoured to win the Oscar.
Accepting the award alongside co-writer Charles Randolph, director McKay — previously best known for broad comedies such as Talladega Nights and Anchorman — nodded to the film’s deadly serious underpinnings in the global economic meltdown of 2007 and 2008.
“Millions of people lost their homes,” McKay said. “Millions of people lost their savings. That’s really what this was about. In the end, we really just want people to take a look at how the banks have taken control of our government.”
With the Academy Awards just two weeks away, Oscar watchers are looking for any indication of how voters may be leaning in what has been one of the most unpredictable years in memory. But the Writers Guild Awards are generally a rather spotty predictor of future Oscar wins, in part because guild rules render some potential contenders ineligible if the writer isn’t a WGA member or the production is not a signatory with the guild. Several of this year’s Oscar contenders in the screenplay categories — including Room, Brooklyn, Ex Machina and Inside Out — were not included on the WGA Awards ballots.
On the TV side, USA Network’s Mr Robot picked up the award for best new series, beating out Better Call Saul, Bloodline, The Last Man on Earth and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
AMC’s Mad Men was awarded best drama series over The Americans, Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones and Mr Robot.
HBO’s Veep took the award for comedy series over Broad City, Silicon Valley, Transparent and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
While the #OscarsSoWhite controversy has loomed large over this awards season and was much remarked upon at earlier ceremonies such as the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Producers Guild Awards, the diversity issue was mentioned only a couple of times, jokingly, on the dais during the WGA Awards ceremony.
Presenting the award for documentary screenplay — which went to Alex Gibney for the scientology film Going Clear — actor Keegan-Michael Key introduced a montage meant to honour all the past African-American winners of the WGA’s original and adapted screenplay awards.
The clip showed a single honoree — Richard Pryor, who shared a WGA award for the screenplay for the 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles — then cut immediately to the words “The End.”
Key did a double-take and paused, as the audience laughed and applauded.
“Wow,” he said. “The Oscars don’t look so bad.”