WGA Nominees an Independent, Offbeat Group : Movies: Stories about drag queens, gangsters, juvenile murderers and cross-dressing directors may push the boundaries of tradition--but they also set new standards for the industry.

The 47th annual Writers Guild of America nominations announced Thursday reflect the increasing appeal of offbeat independent films, whose commercial success is finally catching up to their critical acclaim.

In the best original screenplay category, all but one of the five nominations are for independent features, including Stephan Elliott (Gramercy’s “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”), Woody Allen and Douglas McGrath (Miramax’s “Bullets Over Broadway”), Richard Curtis (Gramercy’s “Four Weddings and a Funeral”) and Frances Walsh and Peter Jackson (Miramax’s “Heavenly Creatures”).

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski rounded out the field with a nod for Disney’s “Ed Wood”--a picture about a cross-dressing, talentless movie director which, according to the writers, was shot from their first draft without the usual notes from the studio.

“(Director) Tim Burton is an 800-pound gorilla who used his weight to make an uncompromised piece of art--and, judging from the box-office grosses, not a particularly commercial one,” Alexander says. “If getting it made was a blessed event, this nomination, I guess, is twins.”

Frank Pierson, WGA West president, says independent films are a source of “fresh blood” in today’s marketplace. “They are doing research and development for the majors,” he notes, “exploring ideas and unknown audiences which the studios--realizing there’s money there--will try to appeal to in the next few years.”

“Priscilla,” a raucous road story about two drag queens and a transsexual, and “Heavenly Creatures”--the grizzly true story of two Australian school girls convicted of murder--testify to the willingness of independent film makers to push traditional boundaries. So does Miramax’s “Pulp Fiction,” an edgy, dark Quentin Tarantino film that is certain to draw a host of Oscar nominations next Tuesday but was eliminated from WGA competition because the production companies were not union signatories.

The nominees for best adapted screenplay were acknowledged for more mainstream studio fare--Eric Roth for Paramount’s “Forrest Gump,” Robin Swicord for Columbia’s “Little Women” and Paul Attanasio for Disney’s “Quiz Show.” But Alan Bennett, writer of the Samuel Goldwyn Co.’s British drama “The Madness of King George,” and Directors Guild nominee Frank Darabont, who wrote and directed the independent Castle Rock’s “The Shawshank Redemption,” also made the cut.

While Hollywood considered the blockbuster “Forrest Gump” an odds-on favorite for a WGA nomination, Roth took nothing for granted.

“I bet on horses,” he says, “and I’ve seen too many favorites that don’t win--or, in this case, don’t get nominated. In a town of ‘yes’ people, you mistrust compliments. Though the script felt good to Tom Hanks, (director) Bob Zemeckis and me, the writers are an independent bunch. You never knew if the film’s popularity would work against it.”

“Quiz Show,” a drama based on the Charles van Doren TV scandal of the 1950s, was the first produced screenplay for Attanasio, a former Washington Post film critic. After a tepid showing the first time out, Disney plans to re-release the movie in February.

“In an age in which the camera is God, ‘Quiz Show’ is a literate film--one that uses the camera as a tool rather than as an end in itself,” Attanasio says. “Having writers line up behind it means a lot since they know all the blind alleys: where you could have screwed up . . . and where you did.”

In “Priscilla,” “Four Weddings” and “Bullets,” the guild singled out comedies in which independents, again, lead the way. (“The majors aren’t terribly interested in comedies which they believe don’t translate well abroad,” Pierson said.) And, nearly half of the nominees represent films of foreign origin, a testament to the increasing globalization of the movie industry.

By permitting foreign films to compete with the rest, the WGA distinguishes itself from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which segregates them into a separate category.

Union rules, however, worked against Tarantino, Hollywood’s man of the moment and winner of the Golden Globe best screenplay award. Because the companies that produced the film sidestepped the WGA, the guild--as it did with Spike Lee’s 1989 “Do the Right Thing”--declared the film ineligible.

According to “Pulp” producer Lawrence Bender, a decision was made not to join the union because Tarantino wanted to take artistic liberties in the credit sequence that violated WGA guidelines. Though Tarantino was eligible for his “Natural Born Killers” screenplay, the movie didn’t make the WGA’s Top 10.

The critically lauded “Little Women,” overlooked in the Golden Globe and Directors Guild nominations, at long last, scored a breakthrough.

Screenwriter Robin Swicord said she was undaunted by previous slights (“There are a lot of parties and politics involved . . . and Columbia has a policy of limiting its ads”) and that reaching a multi-generational audience of women was always the goal.

“Though a WGA nomination is like a little tiara, any award can be almost paralyzing,” she observes, with a laugh. “You start to wonder, ‘Will they like me?’ instead of focusing on the work. I have a good friend who won the Oscar and didn’t write again for six months. I’ve been convicted by a jury of my peers.”

To Pierson, the nominations represent a bright spot in an industry wallowing in self-doubt.

“You see all these film people sitting at Marjan’s Deli in the Brentwood Mart every day bemoaning the lack of good pictures,” he says. “Yet, in a year dominated by Schwarzenegger, ‘Speed’ and action-adventure thrillers, this list is a reminder that there are some interesting small films out there--that art is still alive.”

WGA winners will be announced March 19 at ceremonies at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and at New York’s Tavern on the Green.