After a somewhat surprising victory last weekend at the BAFTAs, with the silent movie The Artist taking the Best Original Screenplay for writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, it looks like all bets might well be off for the same category at the Academy Awards in a week and half’s time.
The Artist is one of the five films in the Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars, nominated alongside Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s Bridesmaids, J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call, and Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation.
A lot of people were no doubt surprised by The Artist’s win last weekend over Allen’s Midnight in Paris, which was the favourite in the run-up, because they wouldn’t associate a silent film to have much by way of a screenplay. But naturally, you can’t make a film without one (unless it’s improvised), and we’ve now got the full screenplay for the BAFTA-winning, Academy Award-nominated film to share with you, courtesy of Deadline, who note,
“Campaigners for the film sent the entire script to Academy voters so they could see that it was indeed a fully fleshed out script.”
I’m still yet to see the film myself, but I’m planning on seeing it next week, so I won’t be spoiling it for myself by reading the script just yet. But if you’ve already seen it or would just like to see what an Academy Award-nominated (and quite possibly -winning) screenplay looks like, then you can click right here to see it in full.
Along with its nomination in the Best Original Screenplay category, The Artist has another nine nominations to its name, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Jean Dujardin, Best Supporting Actress for Bérénice Bejo, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design, and Best Film Editing.
The 84th Academy Awards will be held on 26th February from 7pm EST (midnight here in the UK), and you can be sure that we’ll be staying up to bring you the results as they’re announced.
