The 27th Annual USC Libraries Scripter Award – finalists announced

Scripter honors the screenwriter or screenwriters of the year’s most accomplished cinematic adaptation as well as the author or authors of the written work upon which the screenplay is based.

The Friends of the USC Libraries established Scripter in 1988. Previous Scripter winners include the screenwriters and authors of 12 Years a Slave, The Social Network, A Beautiful Mind and The English Patient.

Chaired by Howard Rodman, USC professor and vice president of the Writers Guild of America, West, the 2015 Scripter selection committee selected the five finalists from a field of 97 eligible adaptations.

Serving on the selection committee, among many others, are film critics Leonard Maltin, Anne Thompson and Kenneth Turan; authors Michael Chabon, Michael Ondaatje and Mona Simpson; screenwriters John Ridley, Erin Cressida Wilson and Steve Zaillian; and USC deans Elizabeth Daley of the School of Cinematic Arts, Madeline Puzo of the School of Dramatic Arts and Catherine Quinlan of the USC Libraries.

The finalists are in alphabetical order by film title:

• Gillian Flynn, author and screenwriter of Gone Girl

• Author Andrew Hodges, who wrote the book Alan Turing: The Enigma, and screenwriter Graham Moore
 for The Imitation Game
• Novelist Thomas Pynchon and screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson for Inherent Vice

• Jane Hawking, author of Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen, and screenwriter Anthony McCarten for The Theory of Everything
• Screenwriter Nick Hornby for Wild, adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

The studios distributing the finalist films and the publishers of the original stories are:

• Gone Girl—Twentieth Century Fox and Crown Publishers
• The Imitation Game—Weinstein Company and Princeton Univ. Press (film tie-in edition)
• Inherent Vice—Warner Bros. and Penguin Books
• The Theory of Everything—Focus Features and Alma Books
• Wild—Fox Searchlight and Vintage Books (film tie-in edition)

The USC Libraries will announce the winning authors and screenwriters at a black-tie ceremony on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015 in the historic Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library on the University Park campus of the University of Southern California. Academy Award winners Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford will serve as honorary dinner chairs.

Mosley to receive Literary Achievement Award

Celebrated mystery and crime writer Walter Mosley — the author of more than 40 books, including the series on private investigator Easy Rawlins — will receive the USC Libraries Literary Achievement Award.

Mosley is currently working on a Broadway version of his novel Devil in a Blue Dress, a 1995 film adaptation starring Denzel Washington.