The Valley Line: USC School of Libraries presents annual Scripter Award
The recent, simply amazing, fabulous days of 80-plus degree winter weather were divine but certainly not helping our Southern California drought situation. I’d love to see more rain.
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These are busy days for the folks from our burg. The award season is going full blast with the “biggie” — the Academy Awards slated for Feb. 22 on ABC.
A most unique award — the Scripter Award — given jointly to the author and screenwriter of a current film, was presented by the USC School of Libraries on Jan. 27. The Scripter Award, established by the Friends of the USC Libraries in 1988, honors the screenwriter of the year’s most accomplished cinematic adaptation as well as the author of the written work upon which the screenplay is based. Scripter is the only award of its kind that recognizes authors of the original work alongside the adapting screenwriters.
The winning film of this 27th annual Scripter Award is “The Imitation Game.” The triumphant screenwriter, Graham Moore, was in attendance at the ceremony.
This annual event, held in the Edward Doheny Memorial Library on the USC campus, is always a well-attended ceremony. This year, more than 300 formally-attired guests first gathered in the library’s marble-clad foyer and then moved into the L.A. Times Reference Room that had been transformed into an elegant dining room. I particularly get a thrill from dining while surrounded by books, some richly bound and with gold letters while others are more simply bound, just like the film stories that were selected for Scripter Award consideration this year.
Once guests were seated in the Reference Room, they were warmly welcomed by Catherine Quinlan, dean of the USC Libraries.
Quinlan, who for the past seven years has also acted as emcee for the event, figuratively and literally passed the emcee torch to Glenn Sonnenberg, who serves on the Scripter Award Selection Committee. Proceeds from the night’s gala event benefited the USC Cinematic Arts Library. Honorary dinner co-chairs for the evening were actress Helen Mirren and her husband Taylor Hackford, a USC alumnus.
Quinlan presented Sonnenberg with an Olympic torch that was carried in the 1984 Olympic Games, hosted by Los Angeles.
As the formal part of the evening began, Howard A. Rodman, vice president of the Writers Guild of America, West; professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; and an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting, Labs, ruled over the podium.
Rodman presented writer Walter Mosley with the Literary Achievement Award for his prizewinning career encompassing a range of genres from mystery to science fiction, erotica to nonfiction.
“In one stroke, Walter stood the crime genre on its head,” Rodman said. “And in doing so, over the course of a 25-year career, has triumphantly turned the world 180 degrees.”
Mosley, a native of Southern California, has set much of his work here, including his “Easy” Rawlins series that features a black detective working in post-war Los Angeles. He is currently working on a Broadway version of his first novel, “Devil in a Blue Dress,” which was adapted in 1995 into a film starring Denzel Washington.
In receiving the award, Mosley credited libraries for their central role in guaranteeing intellectual freedom and a civil society, “By making libraries stronger, we make America stronger.”
The name of the winning film was revealed after clips from the five finalists were shown. Besides “The Imitation Game,” finalists included, “Gone Girl,” “Inherent Vice,” “The Theory of Everything” and “Wild.”
When Rodman announced the winner being “The Imitation Game,” screenwriter Moore loped to the stage to accept his award.
Moore based his adaptation on “Alan Turing: The Enigma,” a 1983 biography by Andres Hodges of the brilliant British World War II code-breaker and computer pioneer who was later persecuted for his homosexuality. Hodges, a senior research fellow at the Mathematical Institute at Oxford University’s Wadham College, was unable to attend the ceremony, so Rodman accepted his award for him.
“Alan Turing never got to stand on a stage and hear people applaud his name,” Moore said in his acceptance speech. “And I do right now, and that is a profound injustice. All that I can do is spend the rest of my life endeavoring to repair it.”
“The Imitation Game’s” Scripter win adds to the accolades for the Weinstein Co. film, which has been nominated for eight Academy Awards and eight BAFTAs.
Also garnering attention at the ceremony were Cheryl Strayed, author of the book “Wild” and Anthony McCarten, screenwriter of “The Theory of Everything.”
Guests attending the dinner and award ceremony went home with the books, “Gone Girl,” “Alan Turing: The Enigma,” “Inherent Vice,” “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen” by Jane Hawking, and “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.” Also included was the printed screenplay of “The Imitation Game.”
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JANE NAPIER NEELY covers the La Cañada social scene. Email her at jnvalleysun@yahoo.com with news of your special event.