Oscar’s Goodwill Toward Actor-Writers

If Matt Damon and Ben Affleck walk off with the best original screenplay Oscar on March 23, it will mark the third year in a row that an actor has won an Academy Award for screenwriting. Last year Billy Bob Thornton won for “Sling Blade,” and the year before Emma Thompson took home the statuette for her adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.”

“It would be unprecedented,” says Bruce Davis, executive director of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Other actors have been there before--Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Woody Allen. Of them, only Welles won for his first screenplay (shared with Herman Mankiewicz), for “Citizen Kane.” Allen won for both his first writing and directing nominations for “Annie Hall,” though he’d already written and directed several films. Chaplin never won, either as writer or director.

Still, such instances have been relatively rare until recently when more actors have stepped behind the camera to write and direct. Of the recent crop of Oscar-nominated actor-writers only Thornton had previously co-written a produced script for “One False Move.”

For struggling professional scribes and even working-stiff writers, there has to be the sense that these hyphenates--actor-directors Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood and Warren Beatty, all of whom have won best directing Oscars in recent years--have a bit of a leg up when it comes to winning the big prize because of their notoriety.

“When you have an actor who’s a name brand, that helps,” admits Mark Gill, West Coast president of Miramax, which released both “Good Will Hunting” and “Sling Blade.” “And it can’t hurt that the actor can get on high-visibility talk shows that most writers can’t get on.”

What can be seen as an advantage, however, can also work against the nominated hyphenate, contends “Good Will Hunting” producer Lawrence Bender. When it comes time to mark their ballots, some academy members might be tempted to bypass someone who is “thought of as an actor rather than a writer.”

Most of the hyphenate actors in the writing and directing category also have been nominated for their acting in the same film. (Damon is up for his performance this year, as were Thompson and Thornton when they won their writing Oscars). Curiously, none of the actor-writer or actor-director hyphenates has ever taken home an acting Oscar. So their writing or directing Oscar can even be seen as a great consolation prize.

“There is the sentiment that Billy Bob won the screenplay award last year as a make-good for not winning as an actor,” says Gill. “That may or may not be true.”

What could help these actors is that the largest branch of the academy is made up of their fellow thespians (more than 1,200 voters in the approximately 5,500 member group). When marking out their final ballots, actors may find it difficult to pass up the chance to honor one of their own for striking out into a new endeavor. “They could be rewarding actors for being adventurous and trying something different and acknowledging that it worked,” observes Variety film critic Todd McCarthy.

But, cautions former academy President Arthur Hiller, “the high majority of academy voting members vote what they really feel represents excellence in the area in which they’re voting.”

Besides, as he points out, in order to get into the running at all, these actor-writers and actor-directors have to pass through the gantlet of the writing and directing branches of the academy who make the initial selection.

“And other writers and directors have to be the world’s most skeptical audience,” says Davis. “If they can convince that audience their work is impressive enough to deserve a nomination, it’s not too surprising that the rest of the academy endorses that.”

The court of opinion also can be swayed by that ineffable thing called passion. In the case of most, if not all, the hyphenates who have won Oscars for writing and directing, the project usually has been one they have pushed uphill to make--rather than having taken it on as a paid assignment.

“Certainly that was the case with Billy Bob,” says McCarthy. “He’d been working on ‘Sling Blade’ for eons. And Thompson certainly had an affinity for ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and how to bring out all the inherent humor in it.”

The story of “Good Will Hunting’s” trip from page to screen has been well-documented in recent months. “It’s their ‘Rocky’ story,” says producer Bender. “They worked on the script for a long time and it went through many incarnations. But they stuck by their passion and their vision.”

Recognizing the effort as well as the accomplishment could be another reason why the voting members of the academy may be giving actor-writers and actor-directors the edge, though this year Damon and Affleck may not be a shoo-in since the Writers Guild recently passed over them in favor of one of their competitors, James L. Brooks and Mark Andrus for their “As Good as It Gets” script.