Whether the film adaptation of a movie is faithful to its source material, or makes changes to make the material its own is always a subject of hot debate. The USC Scripter Awards celebrate adaptations that the selection committee feels succeeded in the delicate balancing act of doing justice to the book while adapting it for the screen.
On Saturday February 22, the 37th USC Scripter Awards took place at the Town and Gown ballroom. The awards are given out by the USC Libraries Board of Councilors and serve as a fundraising event. Since 1988, the Scripter Awards have honored not only a film or television show, but the book it is based on.
This year, author Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan won the Scripter award for Best Adaptation of the Printed Word into Film for “Conclave.” The film is also nominated for eight Oscars including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.
Best episodic series adaptation was awarded to screenwriter – and USC alumni – Joshua Zetumer, and author Patrick Radden Keefe, for the episode “The People in the Dirt” from the limited series “Say Nothing.”
“I always appreciate the opportunity to celebrate the written word. We don’t get to do that very often,” Melissa Just, Dean of USC Libraries told Annenberg Media. “It’s such a unique award that reflects the position that we have here in Los Angeles, with USC and the film industry working so closely together, I don’t think you could really do this anywhere else.”
In addition to the awards for best adaptation, the library also gives out the Ex Libris Award which honors “exceptional commitment to the USC Libraries,” according to the organizer’s website. This year’s award went to Howard A. Rodman, who has been the chair of the Scripter Selection Committee for the past twelve years. Rodman is a USC professor and former chair of the John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television at the School of Cinematic Arts. Rodman is also a Vice President of the Academy of Motion Pictures.
“Other people have various other houses of worship. Mine are public libraries and university libraries. I feel very honored that the USC Libraries, and two successive deans of libraries, have had the generosity of spirit to ask me to come work with them on these awards,” Rodman said in an interview with Annenberg Media.
When trying to choose a winner, Rodman asks three questions.
“Was it a wonderful book or graphic novel? Was it a wonderful screenplay or movie or television show, and was there real imagination, creativity, skill, adeptness, agility and heart used in the translation from one to the other?” Rodman asked.
Rodman’s film adaptations include “Joe Gould’s Secret” (2000) and “Savage Grace” (2007). He has also adapted for television episodes such as The Quiet Room, The Swords, The Frightening Frammis, and Professional Man. He also adapted his own books, “The Great Eastern” and “Destiny Express.”
His extensive knowledge of the craft gives him a unique insight into what makes a good adaptation, because he understands the different skill sets needed to be both an author and a screenwriter.
“When I’m adapting my own work, I have to get my head to a point where I can do the full Marie Kondo and say to the novel that I spent years of my life and much blood writing, ‘thank you for your service,’ as I toss it over my shoulder, and then write a screenplay which is something totally new,” Rodman said.
When adapting other people’s work, Rodman said he tends to err on the side of faithfulness, while still giving the original work new life. “I’m painfully aware from failed experiments, that if you just pour amber over a book, you don’t get something that’s really living and vibrant, and you don’t get something that can break and mend the heart.”
Rodman’s experience not only benefits the Scripter awards, but his students as well. He said one lesson he tries to impart is to keep in mind why they want to tell a certain story.
“If you teach isolated abstract technique, people will write something which, from a distance of six feet, resembles a screenplay in all aspects, but isn’t really a screenplay. And so what I’m always saying is, what’s the story you were born to tell? What’s the story only you can tell?”
The Scripter awards honor stories told and translated across mediums to touch an even larger audience. As Rodman said in his speech at the ceremony, an adaptation “rips the binding, shreds the pages, pulps them and by wild alchemy transforms them into flickering light.”